HowTheLightGetsIn Festival and the Institute of Art and Ideas: Language Wars: The Weapon of the Word

From freedom to feminism, democracy to truth, we go to war over words. Sometimes it is actually bloody. Millions died in the crusades over definitions of the word 'God'. Millions more over definitions of 'socialism' in Stalin's Russia and Mao's Cultural Revolution. But some argue meaning is unknown or unknowable even in a specific context. Wittgenstein maintained words do not have a meaning outside of a given language game. Derrida that there is no decidable meaning in any circumstance. Every sentence can be deconstructed to identify an indefinite number of possible meanings. Meanwhile, linguistic studies have shown that even in everyday use common nouns have at least ten to thirty different 'meanings'.

Should we stop arguing over the meaning of words and recognise words have no single or correct meaning? Are attempts to define words a means of imposing a perspective, and therefore at root a power play? Or is it the case that without an agreed set of meanings, we are profoundly lost in a world of confusion?

The Panel

Babette Babich is a pioneering philosopher known for her deep exploration of science, technology, and ecological thought. She is a Professor of Philosophy at Fordham University, NYC, and the director of The Nietzsche Society. Graham Priest is the Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the Graduate Center, City University of New York, renowned for his work in logic, especially non-classical logic. Sandra Laugier is an acclaimed Professor of Philosophy at Université Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne, known for her influential work on ordinary language philosophy and the intersection of philosophy and popular culture.

See more big ideas like this discussed live at the Institute of Art and Ideas' annual philosophy and music festival HowTheLightGetsIn. For more information and tickets, visit https://howthelightgetsin.org