Philosophy of Consciousness: Language and Meaning
Facilitator: John Thornton
10-week module on Saturday mornings, 10am-2pm, 11th, 18th, 25th January, 1st, 8th, 22nd and 29th February, 7th, 14th and 21st March
Council’s learning resource centre at the City Clean depot, Upper Hollingdean Road, Brighton BN1 7GA (entrance gates opposite the Hollingbury Pub)
The module continues our investigation into the question of what it means to be conscious by means of a phenomenological examination of language and meaning. Again, we shall look at what Heidegger had to say, particularly in his lecture The Way to Language.
Then, moving on to a more contemporary philosopher, we shall consider Gadamer’s influential work on hermeneutics. Our emphasis here will be on exploring the immediate experience of the emergence of meaning and understanding. To assist us, we shall also use the work of Henry Bortoft and his 21 st century attempt to make hermeneutics intelligible to a modern audience. This means, in a break with tradition, we shall finally be looking at a secondary source, although Bortloft does produce an original synthesis of the ideas and insights of the phenomenological legacy and succeeds in tying them back to the earlier investigations of Goethe. So perhaps, if there is time, we shall also enter into the poetical-scientific world of Goethe…