Linguistic Phenomenology and “Person” Talk

Abstract

In this paper I shall first point to two instances of the use of the phrase and show how I propose to use it here. I shall make use of this specifie way of doing philosophy in the special case οι persoti, more particularly in the case of person-talk. It will be necessary to distinguish between a weak sense and a strong sense of ; and these two senses will be related to what I, at present, understand to be certain principles of a linguistic phenomenology (appropriate to the investigation of person) which I will try to state in very rudimentary and incomplete form. Finally, I will try to draw these admittedly gossamer threads into some semblance of order so that they may be seen as something of a rope-bridge, a first approximation of something far better, to be thrown across that contemporary philosophical chasm which is presently widest at the English Channel. I do not know what the reader's response may be to my experiment, but I have toconfess that I have found it both interesting and fun, although any real significance would probably have to emerge from dialogic contexts far less formai than those usually imposed upon papers delivered before formai meetings of communities of those who do philosophy professionally and later placed in learned Journals. In his Presidential Address to the Aristotelian Society, J. L. Austin articulated almost the paradigm of his way of doing philosophy. In particular, he said :