J. L. Austin 1911 – 1960
John Langshaw Austin was a British philosopher, the leading figure of post-war Oxford ordinary-language philosophy alongside Gilbert Ryle. As White's Professor of Moral Philosophy he conducted weekly Saturday-morning discussions whose patient attention to the ordinary uses of language reshaped post-war analytic thought. His posthumous How to Do Things with Words founded speech-act theory by analyzing utterances as actions, distinguishing locutionary, illocutionary, and perlocutionary force. Sense and Sensibilia dismantled sense-datum theories of perception. He died of cancer at forty-eight.
Key facts
- Nationality
- British
- Era
- Contemporary
- Movements
- Analytic
Selected quotes
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Attributed to J. L. Austin:
“To say something is to do something.”
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Attributed to J. L. Austin:
“There is more to the surface of the world than meets the philosopher's eye.”
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Attributed to J. L. Austin:
“Ordinary language is not the last word, but it is the first.”
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Attributed to J. L. Austin:
“We can do things with words.”
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Attributed to J. L. Austin:
“It seems to be too readily assumed that if we can show how a thing is done, we are debunking it.”