J. L. Austin Quotes on Knowledge
J. L. Austin (1911–1960), the leading figure of postwar Oxford ordinary-language philosophy, gave the analytic philosophy of his generation its most distinctive epistemological method in the essays on perception (Sense and Sensibilia, 1962) and on knowledge ("Other Minds," 1946). The Other Minds paper inaugurates the analytic philosophical literature on "I know" by drawing the distinction between knowing and being sure, defending the performative dimension of first-person knowledge claims, and challenging the demand for a single uniform analysis of so context-sensitive an expression. How to Do Things with Words extends the corresponding speech-act analysis to the broader philosophy of language.
Quotes
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“To say something is to do something.”
P. 49 -
Attributed to J. L. Austin:
“There is more to the surface of the world than meets the philosopher's eye.”
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“Ordinary language is not the last word, but it is the first.”
p. 185 -
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.”
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“A Plea for Excuses " (29 October 1956), address in London, published in Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society (1956-7)”
Going back into the history of a word, very often into Latin, we come back pretty commonly to pictures or models of how things happen or are done. These models may be fairly sophisticated and recent, as is perhaps the case with "motive" or "impulse", but one of the commonest and most primitive types of model is one which is apt to baffle us through its very naturalness and simplicity. -
“Infelicity is an ill to which all acts are heir which have the general character of ritual or ceremonial, all conventional acts.”
How to Do Things with Words (1975), edited by Marina Sbisà and , J. O. Urmson, p. 18 -
“The Nicomachean Ethics is only intended as a guide for politicians , and they are only concerned to know what is good, not what goodness means ... and in any case one can know what things are good without knowing the analysis of "good".”
Philosophical Papers(1979) | p. 22