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This paper addresses the problem of relativism in the social sciences and the related notion that the political life of modernising societies necessarily presents a choice between regressive/Gemeinschaftlich and progressive/Gesellshaftlich visions of community and society – between Mannheim's 'liberal/natural law' and 'conservative thought styles.' Starting from Gellner's account of Wittgenstein and Malinowski as instantiations of this 'Hapsburg Dilemma', it is argued that the Gellner/(early) Malinowski solution of epistemological co-habitation is unsatisfactory. Linking the development of human knowledge to long term dynamics of social development, Elias's processual concept of involvement and detachment, conceived as a (highly) variable balance, allows social scientists to move beyond the dualities of 'thought styles'. Involvement and Detachment provides the foundation for a historical sociology of language games and a reinvigorated social science, understood as contributing to the cumulative expansion of the social stock of knowledge.

Ernst Tugendhat's major work, Vorlesungen zur Einführung in die sprachanalytische Philosophie (1976), was translated into English in 1982. Although trained in Heideggerian phenomenological and hermeneutical thinking, Tugendhat increasingly came to believe that the most appropriate approach to philosophy was an analytical one. This influential work grew from that conviction and brought new perspectives to some of the central and abiding questions of metaphysics and the philosophy of language. Presented in a fresh twenty-first-century series livery, and including a specially commissioned preface written by Hans-Johann Glock, illuminating its enduring importance and relevance to philosophical enquiry, this impressive work has been revived for a new generation of readers

The conceptualization of the philosophy of the text requires a preliminary idea about the ways of the textual presentation of philosophy as such. At the same time, philosophical views per se are difficult to classify and systematize — at best, they are arranged by eras and cultural-ethnic factors. In this regard, it seems fruitful and justified not to build various rationalistic constructions but to take an open look at the very existence of philosophizing. From such perspectives, philosophy appears not so much a single, monolithic, and strictly ordered system as a 'system of systems' that are interrelated, interconnected, and reminiscent of Ludwig Wittgenstein's 'family of language games'. Philosophy is a universal, ultimate understanding of the world, society, human beings, and their self-determination in this rea­lity. In this interpretation, being in itself appears as a text. Philosophizing as such is reali­zed in various forms of textualization, which are the focus of this article. Verbal textualization (sing­le words, paremia, aphoristics, parables, detailed plots, hermeneutic interpretations, con­ceptual systems) does not exclude visual, activity-driven textualizations and their mutual translations. Philosophy is capable of taking on diverse, dissimilar forms. It is as diversified as the paths of human self-determination, self-awareness, self-explanation, and self-justification. The­refore, the claims to exclusiveness and validity of any one way to textualize philosophizing do not seem justified.

The logic of globalization suggests that world languages such as English will begin to challenge national vernaculars in such a way as to threaten their existence as living languages. The power of nationalism suggests that groups supporting national vernaculars will use all political resources to stem the tide of globalization. This paper analyzes the micro rationality of language choice, seen as an n-person tipping game. It demon strates that for many postcolonial states, multilingual outcomes for individuals is a powerful equilibrium. The maintenance of multilingual repertoires rather than the replacement of competing languages in all domains by English, the paper concludes, will be the mark of the emerg ing world language system.

This paper examines the relationship between organization science and managerial practice. Science and practice are viewed as interdependent, yet semiautonomous, domains which engage in their own specialized forms of discourse or "language games." The paper examines both the internal dynamics of these language games and the relationship between them. The analysis suggests a reinterpretation of the role played by organizational scientists in relation to practitioners. Organizational scientists should be viewed not as engineers offering technical advice to managers but as providers of conceptual and symbolic language for use in organizational discourse. This view's implications for enhancing the relationship between organization science and managerial practice is discussed.

This book offers a new way of doing African philosophy by building on an analysis of the way people talk. The author bases his investigation on the belief that traditional African philosophy is hidden in expressions used in ordinary language. As a result, he argues that people are engaging in a philosophical activity when they use expressions such as taboos, proverbs, idioms, riddles, and metaphors. The analysis investigates proverbs using the ordinary language approach and Speech Act theory. Next, the author looks at taboos using counterfactual logic, which studies the meaning of taboo expressions by departing from a consideration of their structure and use. He argues that the study of these figurative expressions using the counterfactual framework offers a particular understanding of African philosophy and belief systems. The study also investigates issues of meaning and rationality departing from a study on riddles, explores conceptual metaphors used in conceptualizing the notion of politics in modern African political thought, and examines language and marginalization of women and people with disabilities. The book differs from other works in African philosophy in the sense that it does not claim that Africans have a philosophy as is commonly done in most studies. Rather, it reflects and unfolds philosophical elements in ordinary language use. The book also builds African Conception of beauty and truth through the study of language