Communicative PRAXIS and the Space of Subjectivity - Paperback

by Calvin O. Schrag (Author)

Communicative Praxis and the Space of Subjectivity spans the fields of philosophy and communication, illustrating how the amalgam of discourse and action, and language and social practices, is constitutive of the way that we define ourselves and makes sense of the world in which we exist.

The author provides an elaboration of an original concept in which communication and praxis are commingled, which allows discourse and action to be viewed as twin halves of the constitution of meaning in our personal and social existence. The interwoven texture of discourse and action and language and social practices accommodates the author's novel notions of reference, self-implicature, and rhetoric. These notions are developed against the backdrop of an entwined hermeneutical understanding and explanation. Communicative praxis is multifaceted saying, writing, and doing that is about something, by someone, and to and for someone.

The interlacing moments of hermeneutical reference, self-implicature, and rhetoric display an interface of the fields of philosophy and communication studies. The economy of communicative praxis is stimulated by the forces of philosophical analysis and interpretation coupled with an acknowledgment of the transactional dynamics in the rhetoric of the ongoing community of investigators and concerned citizens. The art of thinking, which philosophers--by mandate of their tradition--have been called upon to develop, proceeds hand in glove with the contextuality of thought as it emerges from the rough and tumble of everyday social and political interactions. It is thus that Communicative Praxis and the Space of Subjectivity can properly be viewed as a work that integrates the disciplines of philosophy and communication studies in such a manner as to enrich the contributions of each.

Author Biography

CALVIN O. SCHRAG, the George Ade Distinguished Professor of Philosophy Emeritus of Purdue University, is the author of several works in philosophy, including Radical Reflection and the Origin of the Human Sciences, The Resources of Rationality, and The Self After Postmodernity. He is the founding editor of the international philosophical quarterly, Continental Philosophy Review.