Language Lost and Found: On Iris Murdoch and the Limits of Philosophical Discourse [Hardcover]

Language Lost and Foundtakes as its starting-point Iris Murdoch's claim that we have suffered a general loss of concepts. By means of a thorough reading of Iris Murdoch's philosophy in the light of this difficulty, it offers a detailed examination of the problem of linguistic community and the roots of the thought that some philosophical problems arise due to our having lost the sense of our own language. But it is also a call for a radical reconsideration of how philosophy and literature relate to each other on a general level and in Murdoch's authorship in particular.

Niklas Forsbergis Lecturer in the Department of Philosophy at Uppsala University, Sweden. He has previously written on Wittgenstein, Cavell, Murdoch, Austin and Derrida.

This fascinating book offers a valuable explication of Murdock's relentless attempts to reveal what is missing in comtemporary moral philosophy and culture. Greatly influenced by Kierkgaard, Wittgenstein, and Simone Weil, the complexity and messiness of ordinary life, and with one's deepest commitments-many of which cannot be accessed, or altered by means of arguments intended to defend philosophical positions. Forsber (Univ. of Uppsala, Sweden) makes excellent use of the work of Stanley Cavell, Cora Diamond, and Stephen Mulhall, who show how one might avoid the tendency of philosophers toward deflection from the difficulties of reality. These are difficulties tha people have when language fails in the face of experiences that refuse refuction to the abstraction of the clearly defined concepts sought after in philosophy--what Murdoch called its dryness. Novelists like what it is like to struggle with the deeply confusing, distressing issues of the present without stepping aside from the emotional intensity of the encounters. S.A. Mason, Concordia University, CHOICE

A fair bang in the philosophy of literature & This [book] will reverberate. -British Journal of Aesthetics