Sinossi
«Che cos’è il linguaggio? Quali sono i limiti dell’intelletto umano (se esistono)? E qual è il bene comune per il quale dovremmo lottare?»
Ecco i tre quesiti che Noam Chomsky affronta nelle lezioni raccolte in questo volume, elementi essenziali della domanda delle domande: «Che genere di creature siamo?» Non si tratta certo di questioni da poco, ma se c’è qualcuno che ha sia la competenza scientifica sia la capacità didattica necessarie per trattare tali problemi coinvolgendo il lettore e rendendolo davvero partecipe del ragionamento, questi è sicuramente Chomsky. Che, senza avere mai la pretesa di offrire soluzioni definitive, rende semplice il difficile, e mettendo a nostra disposizione le sue enormi conoscenze ci mostra quanto spesso e quanto facilmente le ovvietà, così banali nel loro essere vere, possano essere ignorate o rifiutate, mentre l’errore diventa prassi, se non teoria, dominante. Partendo dal «linguaggio» e arrivando al «bene comune», il grande intellettuale americano si mostra qui per intero. Per una volta, in questo libro il linguista e il «politico» si incontrano, e dimostrano (se ce ne fosse bisogno) che si tratta di una persona sola: in Chomsky tout se tient. E mai come in queste pagine risulta evidente che lo scienziato che ha rivoluzionato la linguistica e l’appassionato militante perseguono un medesimo fine: la comprensione di ciò che l’uomo è nella sua natura più profonda.
- ISBN: 8868336812
- Casa Editrice: Ponte alle Grazie
- Pagine: 128
- Data di uscita: 12-01-2017
Recensioni
Noam Chomsky is not known as a slouch. And there is nothing slouch-like in this book. But it is limited. That appears to be his answer to the question posed by the title. This brief book consists of four essays: “What is language?”, “What can we understand?”, “What is the common good?” and “The myste Leggi tutto
A short book based on Chomsky's lectures at Columbia, composed in his usual boring* style, a deceptively simple summa of his work on language, science and society. I've been reading Chomsky's books since the 1970s. This is my favorite. If you haven't read Chomsky before, this is probably not the best Leggi tutto
The first Chomsky I had to put down. I think this piece is meant for PhD linguists who care about super intellectual, nerd impedimenta. With yawning sentences like, "Suppose X and Y are merged, and neither is part of the other, as in combining read with that book to form the syntactic object corresp Leggi tutto
This is an incredible book as it clarified Chomsky's linguistic project, which can be summed up by asking: what do we expect to discover when language is brought under naturalistic inquiry? What we expect to discover according to Chomsky is a computational procedure that accounts for the Basic Prope Leggi tutto
I read this for a philosophy group and ended up questioning why on earth we had chosen this for discussion. Then I spent time puzzling about why the publishers had thrown this together for the general public. Four areas supposedly brought together to get Chomsky’s take on what kind of creatures we a Leggi tutto
My gut tells me the author slopped together some essays or incomplete thoughts he had over the years, put them together as a slightly incoherent book labeled it as ‘what kind of creature are we’ and loosely tied them together under the rubric on the nature of thought, language, common good, and anth Leggi tutto
When Wilhelm von Humbolt noted that language makes “infinite use of finite means” what he meant was that a limited amount of words can ultimately give rise to an unlimited variety of meanings and expressions. That little kernel of observation lies at the heart of Chomsky's linguistic postulations. E Leggi tutto
I have a couple (couple dozen?) books on my Kindle that I bought on various whims when they were on sale. Another history of World War 1 for just $1.99? Sure! A book on poverty in the United States for $2.99? Why not? A short book purportedly covering the basic ideas of Noam Chomsky for $3.99? I’ve Leggi tutto
Decent and brief introduction to Chomsky's ideas done by himself. All these seemingly diverse topics (language, knowledge, politics/anarchism, and mysteries) belong together simply because he was interested in them during his lifetime.
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