John Langshaw Austin

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John Langshaw Austin (born March 26, 1911 in Lancaster , † February 8, 1960 in Oxford ) was a British philosopher and the founder of speech act theory . He is not to be confused with the legal philosopher John Austin .

Life

John Langshaw Austin attended the Shrewsbury School since 1924 with a focus on ancient languages. In 1929 he received a scholarship to Balliol College at Oxford University , where he increasingly occupied himself with Greek philosophy, in particular with Aristotle , and was especially influenced by the moral philosopher Harold Arthur Prichard . After graduating in 1933, Austin became a fellow at All Souls College and a tutor at Magdalen College in 1935 . Before World War II , he lectured on Aristotle and Leibniz , and published an essay on a priori concepts. Between 1936 and 1939 he held regular discussions with Isaiah Berlin and Alfred Jules Ayer . Austin served as an officer in the British Secret Service during World War II .

In 1941, John Langshaw Austin and Jean Coutts married. The marriage had four children: Charles, Harriet, Lucy and Richard. After the war, Austin set up the Saturday morning classes. a. Ludwig Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations , Gottlob Frege's Foundations of Arithmetic and Noam Chomsky's Syntactic Structures were discussed. From 1952 until his sudden death, Austin White's was Professor of Moral Philosophy at Oxford University, in between he held visiting professorships at Harvard University (1955) and at the University of California, Berkeley (1958–1959). In 1958 he was elected a member ( Fellow ) of the British Academy .

Austin died of lung cancer at the age of 48.

Positions

Justification of speech act theory

In How to Do Things with Words , published in 1962 (lectured at Harvard University in 1955), Austin accuses verificationists and other philosophers of mistakenly thinking that linguistic meaning is limited to truth conditions . His criticism is aimed at the fact that language philosophers usually overlook the fact that an utterance always represents an action at the same time . In a first theory, Austin distinguishes between performative and constative utterances. Performative utterances can succeed or fail, while constatives are true or false. He later rejected this theory in favor of a theory that every utterance can have three dimensions simultaneously:

  1. Locution - the utterance of words that belong to a vocabulary and follow a grammar. At this level one can check the utterance for its truth.
  2. Illocution - the role of the utterance, e.g. B. an apology, an order or a statement.
  3. Perlocution - the immediate consequence of the utterance, e.g. B. the obligation to keep a promise.

Austin claims that there are success conditions for illocutionary acts that require certain preconditions for the execution of the act, and that combine the execution of the act with certain conventional consequences.

Critique of Phenomenalism

In Sense and Sensibilia , the posthumous transcript of a series of lectures, Austin criticizes in detail and with many examples the epistemological theory of sensory data ( phenomenalism ) that was common at the time , according to which it is not material objects that are objects of sensory perception, but sensory data about which the perceiver has absolutely certain knowledge owns. First and foremost, he argues against Alfred Jules Ayer .

reception

John Langshaw Austin is one of the founders of the philosophy of normal language (also the philosophy of ordinary language English. Ordinary Language Philosophy ). This influence does not result primarily from his publications, but from his teaching activities. Austin published only a few essays during his lifetime; the two monographs were only published posthumously as adaptations of his lectures. This can result in incomplete and contradicting accounts of his development of the linguistic-philosophical theory of speech acts.

Since Austin’s philosophy was mainly based on his personality and teaching, the Oxford School quickly lost its importance after his death. Austin's influence on the development of speech act theory in the philosophy of language and linguistics has been preserved . Paul Grice included these studies of linguistic actions in his theory of meaning as early as 1957. Peter Strawson combined both approaches in the concept of the act of illusion. John Searle worked out Austin's theory on the actual speech act theory, which Eike von Savigny then developed further. Donald Davidson and Arthur C. Danto took up Austin's investigations into linguistic and non-linguistic actions and systematized them. Wolfgang Stegmüller comes to the following judgment about Austin:

“It's actually a scandal. It is a shameful scandal for all those who have dealt in any way with languages ​​in the last 2500 years that they did not make its discovery long before JL Austin , the essence of which can be expressed in one short sentence: With the help of linguistic utterances, we can perform the most varied types of actions . "

Publications

author
  • Performatif-Constatif . In: La Philosophie analytique , Les Editions de Minuit, Paris 1962, pp. 271–304.
    • English translation Performative-constative In: Charles E. Caton (Ed.): Philosophy and Ordinary Language . Urbana, Ill., 1963.
    • German translation in: Rüdiger Bubner (Ed.) Language and Analysis . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1968, pp. 140–153.
  • Philosophical Papers . Posthumously edited by James Opie Urmson u. Geoffrey James Warnock. Clarendon Press, Oxford 1961.
    • German edition: Collected philosophical essays . Translated and edited by Joachim Schulte. Reclam, Ditzingen 1986 ISBN 3-15-008278-1 . German first edition under the title Word and Meaning . List, Munich 1975.
  • How to Do Things with Words. The William James Lectures delivered at Harvard University in 1955 . Edited posthumously by James Opie Urmson et al. Marina Sbisà. Second, improved edition Clarendon Press, Oxford 1975 [1. Edition 1962].
  • Sense and Sensibilia . Lecture manuscripts from 1947–1949. Published posthumously by Geoffrey James Warnock, Oxford University Press, Oxford 1962.
editor
  • Horace WB Joseph: Lectures on Leibniz . Oxford 1949.
translator

See also

literature

  • Brian Garvey (Ed.): JL Austin on Language. Palgrave, Houndmills (UK) 2014.
  • Verena E. Mayer: John Langshaw Austin . In: Julian Nida-Rümelin (ed.): Philosophy of the Present in Individual Representations. From Adorno to v. Wright (= Kröner's pocket edition . Volume 423). Kröner, Stuttgart 1991, ISBN 3-520-42301-4 , pp. 41-49.
  • Wolfgang Stegmüller : Main currents of contemporary philosophy . Volume II. Kröner, Stuttgart 1987/8. Ed., Pp. 64-85 ISBN 3-520-30908-4
  • Geoffrey James Warnock: JL Austin . Routledge, 1989.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ PMS Hacker: Austin, John Langshaw . In: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography , Oxford University Press, Oxford 2004, Vol. 2, pp. 1000-1002.
  2. ^ PMS Hacker: Austin, John Langshaw , cit.
  3. ^ Deceased Fellows. British Academy, accessed May 1, 2020 .
  4. ↑ John L. Austin: On the theory of speech acts (How to do things with Words). German adaptation by Eike von Savigny. Reclam, Stuttgart 1972, p. 7.
  5. ↑ Verena E. Mayer: John Langshaw Austin . In: Julian Nida-Rümelin Ed .: Philosophy of the Present in Detail from Adorno to v. Wright . Kröner, Stuttgart 1991, p. 47 f.
  6. ↑ Wolfgang Stegmüller: Main currents of contemporary philosophy . Volume II. Kröner, Stuttgart 1987/8. Ed., P. 64.
  7. ^ Austin's manuscripts in: Bodleian Library, MS. Closely. misc. c. 394/5.
personal data
SURNAME Austin, John Langshaw
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English philosopher and linguist, founder of speech act theory
DATE OF BIRTH March 26, 1911
PLACE OF BIRTH Lancaster
DATE OF DEATH February 8, 1960
Place of death Oxford