Beyond Language: A Philosophical Journey
Ebook
Overview
Our use of everyday language should be mysterious, but familiarity hides the feeling of mystery. This book is a brief meditation on that mysterious activity. Building language outward from descriptions of the present moment, the meditation moves through our talk about space and time, to the realm of everyday thinking and science. But language enriches us further--through communities of meaning (morality, art, mysticism) to transcendence (the universe, God, and self). This meditation repeatedly cycles us from familiarity to wonder--about community, about consciousness, and ultimately about life itself.
“This Heraclitean-like exploration of language, time, science,
relationship, law, and transcendence—written in succinct prose
capped with spare, arresting poetry—will lead a reader to
self-reflection and to an enriched awareness of reality’s elemental
but expansive force. The author’s generous humanity evinces—and
evokes—a sense of gratitude ‘for all that is.’”
—Patrick Jordan, managing editor emeritus, Commonweal
“Walker fought in Vietnam, completed his PhD in philosophy, trained
and practiced law in New York, and retired to work pro bono on
behalf of social justice. Beyond Language is his first
excursion into literature and poetry. Its key theme is that
literature and fine art enable us to explore the limits of the
verbal pathways we construct to communicate as social beings, and
thereby to understand what exists beyond language. The book itself
is an artistic accomplishment.”
—K. Sayre, professor emeritus, University of Notre Dame
“Part philosophy of language, part deep personal meditation,
Beyond Language is a profound and sensitive exploration of
the omnipresence and potency of words. Words define us personally
and communally. Through words we encounter systems of law and
worlds of artistic expression. Walker teaches us that only through
words can we grasp what it is to be human and to seek to approach
the infinite.”
—Frederick M. Lawrence, secretary and CEO, The Phi Beta Kappa
Society, and distinguished lecturer, Georgetown University Law
Center
“As a philosopher, law professor, and researcher in artificial
intelligence, Vern Walker has examined more closely than most how
we use language to perform real work in the world. In this
fascinating book, Professor Walker extends his view beyond
language. Combining poetic expression and analytic prose in this
work of experience, knowledge, and beauty, he employs ‘language to
demonstrate the limitations of language,’ the most important work
language can perform.”
—Kevin D. Ashley, author of Artificial Intelligence and Legal
Analytics: New Tools for Law Practice in the Digital
Age
- Title: Beyond Language: A Philosophical Journey
- Author: Vern R. Walker
- Publisher: Resource Publications
- Print Publication Date: 2021
- Logos Release Date: 2021
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Ebook
- ISBNs: 9781666701555, 9781666701531, 9781666701548, 1666701556, 166670153X, 1666701548
- Resource ID: LLS:9781666701555
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2022-09-29T19:48:56Z
Vern R. Walker is Professor Emeritus of Law at Hofstra
University in New York, and he also has a doctorate degree in
philosophy. He is the author of many articles on language, meaning,
argument, and reasoning, in both law and philosophy.