The Philosophy of J. L. Austin

These new essays on J. L. Austin's philosophy constitute the first major study of his thought in decades. Eight leading philosophers join together to present a fresh evaluation of his distinctive work, showing how it can be brought to bear on issues at the top of today's philosophical agenda, such as scepticism and contextualism, the epistemology of testimony, the generality of the conceptual, and the viability of the semantics/pragmatics distinction. The contributors offer in-depth interpretations of Austin's views and demonstrate why his work deserves a more central place in mainstream philosophical discussion than it currently has. The volumes also contains a substantial introduction that situates Austin's thought in its original intellectual milieu and provides an overview of the many different ways in which his ideas have influenced later developments, in philosophy and elsewhere.

Martin Gustafsson is Professor of Philosophy at Abo Akademi University, Finland. His chief research interests are in the philosophy of language, the philosophy of action, philosophical methodology, and the history of analytic philosophy. He has published papers on Austin, Cavell, Davidson, Hacking, McDowell, Quine, Rawls, Wittgenstein, and others.


Richard Sorli is Associate Professor at the Department of Philosophy, University of Bergen, Norway. His research interests centre on philosophy of language, early analytic philosophy, and political philosophy. He has published papers on Wittgenstein, Cavell, Frege, Heidegger, and Carnap.