Abstract

William james is often thought of as a philosopher who rejected language as incapable of dealing with the unfinished character of the universe. Actually, There are two different complementary uses of language in james' texts. Sometimes he does reject language as inadequate; but at other times he presents a surprisingly "modern" view of language. Specifically, James recognized that meanings vary from context to context; that some words have an "intentional" aspect, And that language cannot be viewed as consisting of substantive words strung together by neutral logical connectives. In this paper, I try to "unpack" these two different natures of uses language found in james' works