Philosopher John Searle as guest in the doctoral program GeKKo

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One of the most important contemporary philosophers, the US-American Prof. Dr. John Searle, visited the University of Kassel on May 29 and 30, 2012. In a public lecture on May 30, he spoke on the topic of "Language and Social Ontology." John Searle, who came to Kassel at the invitation of the German linguist Prof. Dr. Andreas Gardt, was also a guest at the University of Kassel's doctoral program GeKKo and discussed his theses with the students in a workshop.

Photos: A. Czajkowska

    Prof. Dr. John Searle: The Person

    by Andreas Gardt 

    Searle, who teaches at Berkeley, has made a name for himself in the fields of philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, and the ontology of social phenomena, among others. He became famous in 1969 with his work "Speechacts", in which he defines the utterances we make not as mere descriptions of reality, but as actions between people. A sentence like "It's eight o'clock" is never just a pure statement, but always expresses a will that the speaker directs at the person addressed: A warning to hurry or, depending on the situation, an invitation to take one's time. Speaking is thus more than the mere utterance of words and becomes a form of interpersonal action.

    In the course of his career, John Searle participated in some central debates that had an impact beyond (language) philosophy. For example, he declared it fundamentally impossible to build thinking computers because they lacked the property of intentionality, of purposeful reference to facts in the world. In recent years, he has increasingly focused on the question of the social construction of reality. Here, too, language plays a central role: our entire social institutions, from our legal system to currency to something as mundane as a cocktail party, can only come about by being determined by acts of language into what they ultimately are for us.

    Through it all, John Searle maintains a robust realism that leaves no doubt about the existence of even a reality not mediated by language, a position that has also earned him numerous opponents in the current intellectual landscape, which emphasizes the constructedness of all our approaches to the world.

    Note: Allegations of sexual assault have been made against John Searle during his tenure at Berkeley University, see for example Wikipedia or Press.