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Title details for Fate, Time, and Language by David Foster Wallace - Available

Fate, Time, and Language

An Essay on Free Will

by David Foster Wallace
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The Pulitzer Prize finalist and author of The Pale King and Infinite Jest weighs in on a philosophical controversy in this fascinating early work.
 
In 1962, the philosopher Richard Taylor used six commonly accepted presuppositions to imply that human beings have no control over the future. David Foster Wallace not only took issue with Taylor's method, which, according to him, scrambled the relations of logic, language, and the physical world, but also detected a semantic trick at the heart of Taylor's argument.
Fate, Time, and Language presents Wallace's brilliant critique of Taylor's work. Written long before the publication of his fiction and essays, Wallace's thesis reveals his great skepticism of abstract thinking and any school of thought that abandons "the very old traditional human verities that have to do with spirituality and emotion and community." As Wallace rises to meet the challenge to free will presented by Taylor, we witness the developing perspective of this major novelist, along with his struggle to establish solid logical ground for his convictions. 
 
This volume, edited by Steven M. Cahn and Maureen Eckert, reproduces Taylor's original article and other works on fatalism cited by Wallace. James Ryerson's introduction connects Wallace's early philosophical work to the themes and explorations of his later fiction, and Jay Garfield supplies a critical biographical epilogue.

  • Creators

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  • Release date

    January 22, 2011

  • Formats

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      • ISBN: 9780231527071

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      • ISBN: 9780231527071
      • File size: 1096 KB

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Publisher's Weekly

      October 11, 2010
      A progression of ordinary-seeming premises that would obliterate free will is challenged on its own grounds by the late, celebrated author of Infinite Jest. Written in the mid-1980s as one of Wallace's two undergraduate theses at Amherst College (his first novel, The Broom of the System, was the other), it addresses a "logical slippage"—as James Ryerson puts it—in Richard Taylor's six famous presuppositions that contend that man has no control over his fate. The paper, a survey of Taylor's argument and its influence on late-20th-century philosophy, is reprinted in its entirety, and the language of modal logic can be heavy going at times—be prepared for pages of highly specialized discussion on logic that necessitate accompanying diagrams. Still, as an early glimpse at the preoccupations of one of the 20th century's most compelling and philosophical authors, it is invaluable, and Wallace's conclusion—"if Taylor and the fatalists want to force upon us a metaphysical conclusion, they must do metaphysics, not semantics"—is simply elegant.

    • Library Journal

      November 15, 2010

      This is the late Wallace's previously unpublished senior undergraduate philosophy thesis (1985, Amherst Coll.). He writes on the classical philosophical problem of fatalism, which is essentially the problem of asserting individual free will. As an undergraduate Wallace learned the logic needed to refute a claim of fatalism and the need to propose new logical systems for making his argument against fatalism. This book includes New York Times Magazine editor James Ryerson's introductory essay to establish context; a republication of philosopher Richard Taylor's essay to which Wallace was specifically responding; and a number of previously published papers that feature objections to fatalism or refutations by fatalists, e.g., an essay by coeditor Cahn (philosophy, Columbia Univ.). VERDICT Wallace's senior thesis is accessible to all who have a basic understanding of logic. This book is for any reader who has enjoyed the works of Wallace and for philosophy students specializing in fatalism.--Jim Hahn, Univ. of Illinois Lib., Urbana

      Copyright 2010 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

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  • English

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