Nelson Goodman's proposal for a reconception of meaning consists in replacing the absolute notion ofsameness of meaning by that oflikeness of meaning (with respect to pertinent contexts). According to this view, synonymy is a matter of degree (of interreplaceability) with identity of expression as a limiting case. Goodman's demonstration that no two expressions are exactly alike in meaning is shown to be unsuccessful. Although it does not make use of quotational contexts for the test of interreplaceability, it is tantamount to (...) their acceptance. Goodman rejects quotational contexts; I argue that they should be accepted. This move offers two advantages.Firstly, and mainly, it allows interlinguistic comparison of meaning, something that has not been deemed possible in the received version of Goodman's account.Secondly, it restores the full scale of likeness of meaning damaged by the renunciation of those contexts that guarantee difference in meaning for diverse expressions. (shrink)

This essay is an attempt to begin to think through the complex interlacing of Levinasian ethics, violence, terror and war. The question driving this essay is: in the midst of the harrowing debris of body parts that followed the synchronised explosions of bombs in a number of London train carriages and a bus, what can possibly remain of the ethical? This question will be examined in the context of what remains unspeakable in the face of such acts of violence. Framed (...) by the authorising rubric of declarations of law—as ‘that which speaks in the language of legislation and promises certainty in the anxious aftermath of the loss of certainty’, and the attendant concerns with the question of the ‘enemy’ —this essay seeks to examine the ‘unspeakable remainder’ of declarations of law, as that which unsettles promises of certainty in the anxious aftermath of a terrorist explosion and its ongoing trauma. In the course of this essay, I proceed to think through the contentious relation between violence and ethics in the context of a Levinasian framework, arguing for a Levinas that challenges and unsettles pietistic views of his ethical philosophy. In deploying the neologism necroethics, I attempt to examine anachronic and necrological violence and its relation to the ethical injunction to own responsibility for the dead. (shrink)