Authors

John Langshaw Austin (1911 - 1960) was an influential philosopher who taught at Oxford from 1952 to 1960. His main works are: Philosophical Papers (1961); Sense and Sensibilia (1962); and How to Do Things with Words (1962)   His notes on the locutionary,...

Mikhail Bakhtin (1895 - 1975) is a Russian philosopher and literary theorist whose works have contributed to many disciplines (linguistics, anthropology, philosophy, literary theory, and critique). Bakhtin's authorship is a detective problem because he and others say...

Emile Benveniste (1902 - 1976) is a French linguist whose most important work is Problems in General Linguistics (1966). His contribution to semiotics includes proving how language can be separated neither from discourse nor from subjectivity. In Benveniste's...

Justus Buchler (1914 - 1991) is a contemporary American philosopher, creator of a general theory of human reasoning, which has a direct as well as broad general significance for the study of signs. The difference it makes in the three modes of inference: affirmative,...

Karl Buhler (1879 - 1963) is a German psychologist who has devoted much of his work to language and expression. One of his most notable contributions is the principle of domination, which assumes that although each message has several functions, usually one dominates....

Ernst Cassirer (1874 - 1945) was a German philosopher, professor at a number of universities, including Berlin, Hamburg, Oxford, Yale, and Columbia University in New York. His books Language and Myth (1925); Symbol, Myth and Culture (1935); An Essay on Man (1944); and...

Jacques Derrida (1930 - 2004) was a contemporary French philosopher who had considerable influence on literary theorists and critics, as well as on philosophers. He is the champion of deconstructionism. This prolific author is often self-describing as a...

René Descartes (1596 - 1650) was an early modern philosopher who had a profound and constant influence on later thinking. In his attempt to propose a knockout denial of skepticism, he came to the position of "I think, therefore I exist" (Cogito, ergo sum). Even with...

John Dewey (1859 -1952) was an American philosopher associated with the pragmatic movement. Some of his most important books are: Experience and Nature (1925) Logic: The Theory of Inquiry (1938) Knowing and the Known (1949) These titles are particularly important in...

Umberto Eco was born in 1932. He is a contemporary semiotician, medievalist, and novelist of Italian descent. The subject matter of his work on semiotics ranges from high-tech and theoretical issues to analyzes of comics such as Superman and Krazy Kat. His typical...