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Habermas does not rule out the possibility of violence in language. In fact his account explicitly licenses a broad conception of violence as 'systematically distorted communication'. Yet he does rule out the possibility that language simultaneously imposes as it discloses. That is, his argument precludes the possibility of recognizing that there is an antinomy at the heart of language and philosophical reason. This occlusion of the simultaneously world-disclosing and world-imposing character of language feeds and sustains Habermas's legal and political arguments, where he states that in order to achieve consensus rational deliberation must eliminate force. In this paper, I claim that this argument operates through a manoeuvre that leaves Habermas's position curiously blind to its own predicament. To explain why, I turn to Kant's treatment of the problem of evil in Religion Within the Boundaries of Mere Reason. Here, as in the Western philosophical tradition more generally, evil has no separate existence: it is folded back into Kant's philosophical scheme. Arendt notes that as soon as Kant identifies the problem of evil he rationalizes it into comprehensible motives. I will show how, through a move that is structurally similar to Kant's rationalization of evil, Habermas rationalizes and attempts to eliminate violence from his consideration of law and language. In Habermas's work, law and language appear as ciphers for reason. The case to be made here is that Habermas's inability to recognize the paradoxical character of language and reason makes his work blind to the violence in which it is unavoidably implicated.

This article elucidates Márkus' new Marxist philosophy of language based on his critique of the paradigm of language represented by Popper, Wittgenstein, Lévi-Strauss, and Gadamer. His critique suggests that instrumental rationality, pure reason, alienated reason, and objective and idealistic rationality of the paradigm of language are elements that should be overcome. From his critical perspective, value rationality, practical reason, personal reason, and historical materialism are advocated instead. He not only critically develops the philosophy of language but also adds new levels of meaning to Marxism.

This article outlines the philosophy of language of the vitalist philosopher Ludwig Klages, as it can be found in his late work Language as the Source of Psychology ( Die Sprache als Quell der Seelenkunde). First published in 1948, this treatise is full of examples of how everyday usage of words should give us pause for thought – underlining the link between philosophy and life that is inherent to the project of vitalism or Lebensphilosophie. In line with the remit for submissions to this issue of the Journal of European Studies intended to mark 50 years since its inception, the article reflects the interest of its contributor (translation studies and the history of ideas), forms part of a larger project to retrieve the thought of a largely forgotten thinker, and showcases a work that occupies a key position in the history of twentieth-century thought and has been seminal to the contributor's own development. For ultimately Klages's philosophy of language illustrates the truth of Goethe's maxim, 'the point of life is life itself'.