Action, Meaning, and Argument in Eric Weil's Logic of Philosophy

Book excerpt: This volume investigates Eric Weil’s innovative conceptualization of the place of violence in the philosophical tradition with a focus on violence’s relationship to language and to discourse. Weil presents violence as the central philosophical problem. According to this reading, the western philosophical tradition commonly conceptualizes violence as an expression of error or as a consequence of the weakness of will. However, by doing so, it misses something essential about the role that violence plays in our conceptual development as well as the place violence holds in our discursive practices. The author draws comparisons between Weil’s work and that of Robert Brandom. Brandom’s inferentialism creates a sophisticated program at the junction of pragmatics and semantics, philosophy of language, logic, and philosophy of mind. The monograph builds on these insights in order to show how an inferentialist reading of Eric Weil is fruitful for both Weilian studies and for inferentialism. This volume will notably be of interest to scholars in philosophy, argumentation theory, and communication studies.