Nonsense

In Praise of Nonsense explores the possibilities and parameters of a postmodern imagination freed from the philosophical responsibilities of fiction, fact, and replication of lived experience. Mobilizing an array of scholars and contemporary artists, this study examines postmodern thinking through the lenses of identity and visual culture. Speculative, critical, and always creative in its approach, In Praise of Nonsense focuses on theories of disappearance, irony, and nonsense, where the pleasures of the imaginary give rise to artistic inspiration. When truth is unhinged, so is falsity, and all artistic thinking is called into question. The book takes on the ambitious project of holding postmodernism accountable for its own conclusions while also considering how those conclusions might still be given philosophical and artistic form.

“La Folle de Chaillot” a été crée au Théâtre de l’Athénée dans le courant de l’hiver 1945-1946 à Paris. Les  répétitions générales (essais) du mercredi 19 et jeudi 20 décembre 1945 ont précédé la première de gala qui eu lieu le vendredi 21 décembre au profit de l’association des résistants de 1940. Cette soirée fut sous la présidence effective du général de Gaulle chef de la France en uniforme, lequel avait à ses côtés son épouse, Jean-Pierre Giraudoux et le président de l’association des résistants Paul Rivet du Musée de l’Homme. Cet instant français, selon  Joseph Kessel, fut suivi en janvier 1946 par le départ du Général

I am planning a history of the notion of philosophical nonsense and naturally difficult historical and exegetical questions have come up.  Charles Pigden has argued that the notion goes back at least as far as Hobbes and that Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Kant (on some interpretations) and pragmatists such as William James, as well as numerous Twentieth-Century philosophers make use of it.  In this ‘paper’ I put forward for general discussion such questions as whether Hobbes was the first 'nonsensicalist', whether Kant was a 'nonsensicalist' at all, which philosophers if any have considered contradictions to be meaningless and whether Wittgenstein thought that his concept of criterion could legitimately be used verificationistically.  I shall continue to add further questions as they occur to me.

How do philosophical accusations of talking nonsense relate to the layperson’s notions of meaning and meaningfulness?  If one were to explain carefully what philosophical nonsense was supposed to be, would one be greeted with incredulity?  How do people react to being accused to talking nonsense themselves?  Is anything analogous to an illusion of meaning recognised in everyday life?  In dream-reports perhaps?  Or in the utterances of schizophrenics or those under the influence of drugs?  Or in certain jokes and hoaxes?  Are contradictions felt to be meaningless?  I argue that, though it is clear that experimental philosophy could shed some light on these questions, their subject matter creates special difficulties.  First, it is more difficult than usual to formulate questions and produce ‘vignettes’ that do not subtly encourage certain responses at the expense of others.  Second, the fact that philosophical nonsense is a metaphilosophical concept ensures that its investigation is going to be more indirect than would be that of knowledge or intention, for example.

A brief study of the word "nonsense" in terms of nonsense literature. This version of the essay is from the first edition of Keywords for Children's Literature (2011). A revision of this essay, including more international nonsense references (but less history on English nonsense) appears in the second edition (2021).

This collection gives sustained attention to the literary dimensions of children’s poetry from the eighteenth century to the present. While reasserting the importance of well-known voices, such as those of Isaac Watts, William Blake, Lewis Carroll, Christina Rossetti, A. A. Milne, and Carol Ann Duffy, the contributors also reflect on the aesthetic significance of landmark works by less frequently celebrated figures such as Richard Johnson, Ann and Jane Taylor, Cecil Frances Alexander and Michael Rosen. Scholarly treatment of children’s poetry has tended to focus on its publication history rather than to explore what comprises – and why we delight in – its idiosyncratic pleasures. And yet arguments about how and why poetic language might appeal to the child are embroiled in the history of children’s poetry, whether in Isaac Watts emphasising the didactic efficacy of “like sounds,” William Blake and the Taylor sisters revelling in the beauty of semantic ambiguity, or the authors of nonsense verse jettisoning sense to thrill their readers with the sheer music of poetry. Alive to the ways in which recent debates both
echo and repudiate those conducted in earlier periods, The Aesthetics of Children’s Poetry investigates the stylistic and formal means through which children’s poetry, in theory and in practice, negotiates the complicated demands we have made of it through the ages.

Sass, like R. D. Laing before him, wants to make sense of schizophrenic discourse.  In 'Paradoxes of delusion – Wittgenstein, Schreber and the schizophrenic mind' he uses Wittgenstein’s later work, particularly the Blue Book, to this end.  Read criticises Sass for not taking Wittgenstein’s nonsensicalism seriously enough and suggests that some schizophrenic utterances cannot be understood at all.  I argue that Sass’s position is more consistent than Read’s, though it is probably true that Sass is the less thoroughgoing Wittgensteinian.  Read’s way of arguing his case exhibits all the difficulties that those who employ the notion of philosophical nonsense are apt to get themselves into.  The denigratory vocabulary he uses to characterise schizophrenic discourse – ‘confused’, ‘inchoate’, ‘incoherent’, ‘empty’, ‘without content’ – is itself confused and confusing, but, more importantly, his talk of ‘transitional remarks’ and his admission that he is himself ‘trafficking in nonsense’ suggest that he is falling into the very error of which he accuses Sass.

“Approcci comunicativi e sovrapposizioni di voci nel delirio di Alice nel Paese delle Meraviglie”
Saggio pubblicato sulla rivista di poesia e critica letteraria "Euterpe" n°28, Febbraio 2019

INFO. www.associazioneeuterpe.com
rivistaeuterpe@gmail.com

Here I bewail the slapdash and confusing way in which philosophers bandy about the word ‘incoherent’ (and ‘incoherence’ and ‘incoherently’).  To some it appears to mean: inconsistent; to others: pragmatically self-defeating; and to yet others: nonsensical, i.e. meaningless.  And often one is left guessing.

Este trabajo presenta una lectura de tres relatos paradigmáticos del nonsense ocampiano en su inflexión Lear, “El automóvil”, “Sábanas de tierra” y “La pista de hielo y de fuego”, de la compilación titulada Y así sucesivamente (1987). Se sabe que Silvina Ocampo leía a Edward Lear, aunque no es posible afirmar que haya querido imitarlo, rendirle homenaje o escribir relatos a la manera de limericks. Sí se puede, en cambio, leer estos cuentos a partir del modo en que los atraviesan ciertos rasgos propios del nonsense de Lear. La hipótesis de trabajo afirma que en ellos aparece, desprendida de la rima, la estructura narrativa efímera del limerick, que trastorna la forma del relato y la impregna de fugacidad y tontería. El lector se encuentra entonces con cuentos anómalos, de raras formas breves, con aire de inconclusos. Son historias mínimas en las que casi no hay narración, puesto que una sola anécdota insignificante ocupa, como en los limericks de Lear, el espacio todo del relato.

Edward Lear has secured a prominent position in the history of literature and travel writing thanks to his nonsense books and his journals; he is considered one of the most innovative zoological illustrators of the nineteenth century and is being rediscovered as a landscape painter in watercolour and oil. This article argues that he also deserves to be remembered among the precursors of modern comic art. His picture stories, though never published in his lifetime, represent an early instance of autobiographical graphic narrative while his limericks, never out of print since 1861, introduced a radically innovative caricatural style and a conception of the relationship between pictures and text that strongly influenced modern comic artists.

Thomas Nagel in ‘What is it like to be a bat?’ suggests that we don’t yet have much idea of how mental entities could be identical with physical ones (though he wisely stops short of accusing physicalists of not meaning ANYTHING WHATSOEVER by their identity-claims).  Colin McGinn goes further by suggesting that we may forever remain in this state of ignorance and incomprehension because of the inherent limitations of the human intellect.  I argue that the mere possibility that McGinn is right shows that it is over-hasty to conclude from philosophy’s failure to solve its problems that there must be something wrong with the problems themselves.  I also try to relate Nagel’s and McGinn’s view to David Stove’s response to philosophy’s apparent failure to make much progress.  He seems pessimistic about whether we will ever fully understand what is wrong with some philosophical claims.

Nonsense literature is often regarded as written for children only. If authors write in a nonsense genre, they are most likely to be labelled as children's writers with their books inevitably ending up in the Waterstones children's department. However, nonsense is not just a meaningless gibberish created for the mere entertainment of children, it has a far more contradictory and dark nature. By reading Peake alongside Lear, I will try to show that nonsense (at least in the case of these two writers) has, in fact, a disturbing and adult nature and that the adult writers, who once were claimed as children's, thus need to be re-categorised.

FROM THE BACK COVER: What is the essential nature of meaning? . . . . . This book answers by examining interpretive theories from the past and present. It finds that an historical struggle with meaning has been underway since the Reformation, a struggle that reaches crisis proportions in the 20th century. On the one hand, this crisis is mollified by Heidegger's hermeneutical phenomenology, which argues that we are always already in a meaningful relationship to the objects of the world. On the other hand, this crisis is exacerbated when phenomenology, structuralism, and aesthetic theory directly make meaning into an object of study. . . . . . . . . These historical developments culminate with the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, whose non-hermeneutical phenomenology delimits a cause of meaning said to be closely linked to the core of subjectivity. Intriguingly, Lacan's work reveals meaning to be sexual in nature. By integrating his notion of sexual difference with his work in discourse theory and topology, this book demonstrates how the subject's struggle with meaning can be suspended.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . GENERAL DESCRIPTION: Broadly speaking, the majority of books on Jacques Lacan focus on the earlier periods of his career. They also tend to target the psychoanalytic clinical community, or else discuss his work in various political, social, and cultural contexts. But in almost all cases these books refrain from a detailed exegesis of his actual texts. They instead prefer to comment on his theoretical apparatus as a whole before turning to its practical implications. . . . . . This book positions itself against this grain. Firstly, it closely analyzes some half-dozen key Lacanian texts. This analysis is organized under a single thematic – the question of meaning – in order to advance the reader's understanding of the trajectory of Lacan's thought across his entire career, as well as to promote the book's thesis that the field of meaning can be suspended. Accordingly, an initial chapter takes up the hermeneutical tradition from Flacius onward. This is then supplemented by a chapter which surveys phenomenological, structuralist and aesthetic theories of meaning and their differing methods of textual analysis. Together these two chapters provide a unique context for the sustained analysis of Lacan's texts which begins in the third chapter, an analysis that forms the bulk of the book's content. This contextualization potentially widens the book's appeal to any scholar wishing to explore his relationship to those textual objects he interacts with on a daily basis. And because this book assumes the reader has little to no familiarity with Lacan, the reader will find patient explanations of the basics of his theories before slowly being led up to the more difficult theories of his late years. Again the argument is that Lacan has something to offer all scholars. His work is not just reserved for psychoanalysts. . . . . . It is with his late theories that the serious student of Lacan will find the book's most original contribution. For in the fourth chapter a detailed account is provided of how Lacan derived his infamous formulae of sexuation from Aristotelian logic. These formulae are then extensively discussed against the backdrop of interpretive theory and textual analysis, showing how these formulae capture much more than just the difference between the sexes. Strikingly, this difference is also found to run through meaning itself, something the final chapter aims to demonstrate. It does this by amalgamating three key components of late-Lacan: sexuation, discourse theory and his use of topological spaces. This amalgamation is a first in the literature. But this amalgamation is not just useful in demonstrating the book's thesis. It further suggests how seemingly divergent aspects of late-Lacanian theory can be made to work together.

If we are to understand nonsense poetry, we need to look at the overall concept of literary nonsense. The first stage for most commentators is to carefully extract the literary use of ‘nonsense’ from the everyday use(eg Thomas, 1985; Kennedy, 1991; Sewell, 1952; Tigges, 1988).In everyday use ‘nonsense’ can simply mean, as its morphological roots suggest, ‘a lack of meaning’. In literary nonsense we have to adapt this to ‘a partial lack of meaning’. In literature a lack of meaning can often be found in broken conventions of language use(grammatical, lexical, meaningful, interactional, in terms of truth, possibility, world knowledge).
If we take two of the most famous nonsense poems in the English language, ‘Jabberwocky’ and ‘The Owl and the Pussycat’, we can also clearly see the two most common realisations of this partial lack of meaning. ‘Jabberwocky’ has reduced meaning through the use of non-standard vocabulary with no clear referents(nobody really knows what a mome rath actually is).‘The Owl and the Pussycat’ only uses standard vocabulary(except for ‘runcible’)but it lacks conventional meaning because it describes a series of events which are physically impossible in the real world. Amongst other things, owls and cats don’t go to sea in boats, owls don’t sing, and definitely(considering their lack of fingers)don’t play guitars. Pigs don’t have the dexterity to remove rings from their noses, and nor do they have the capitalist inclination to charge for said ring.

This essay takes up the subject of of nonsense around the writings of Lewis Carroll and Gilles Deleuze in order to reveal an affinity (rather than difference) between Carroll’s and Artaud’s treatments of nonsense—a reading provocative in its consequent opposition to Deleuze’s own reading of the relation between Carroll and Artaud in Logic of Sense.

In a unique and innovative approach, the present book wishes to examine the rich, yet apparently peripheral tradition of nonsense language, by focusing on the sometimes marginal genre of nonsense verse. The object of the study is to discuss the possibility of translating such verse from English into another language by gradually tracing the mechanisms involved in the process of translation.

The translation into French of an English nonsense poem representative of the Anglo-Saxon literary tradition, i.e. Lewis Carroll’s famous Jabberwocky, is chosen as the object of a succinct contrastive analysis. In a step by step approach, the study wishes to investigate the linguistic, aesthetic and literary conventions of nonsense verse, by aiming to verify the originally presented theoretical observations to the concrete case analysis of the final chapter.

Based on Fernand de Saussure’s theory relating to the arbitrariness of the linguistic sign and Gérard Genette’s theory about the proposed motivation of the poetic language, it further builds on the realization that in poetry these theories must be aesthetically amended.
The most salient features observed in the analysis of nonsense language are then discussed, indicating the reasons due to which ungrammaticality and foregrounding contribute to the aesthetic effect produced by nonsense verse.

Subsequently, Etienne Souriau’s three categories of baragouin, charabia and lanternois are investigated, making it possible to verify the previously examined linguistic theories against a selection of examples from universal literature. This leads to the discovery of a specific pattern and set of criteria which can be applied in the translation of the Jabberwocky. It is demonstrated that the type of nonsense verse investigated seeks to imitate the natural language on four distinct levels, i.e. word, syntax, morphology and phonology, generating language-bound surface formations which abide by their corresponding language specific conventions.

The Jabberwocky is hence identified as a case of linguistic substitution of the natural model of language. The translation of the poem into French is viewed in terms of the replacement of such surface formations in the source language with other surface formations in the target language. While the surface formations are language specific, the actual substitution is viewed as a universal operation which should be preserved in translation.

This paper looks at philosophical accusations of talking nonsense from the perspective of argumentation theory.  An accusation of this sort, when seriously meant, amounts to the claim that someone believes there is something she means by her utterance when in fact she means nothing whatsoever by it.  Such accusations may indeed be peculiar to philosophy.  They also involve the claim that there can be ILLUSIONS OF ARGUMENTATION, both inter- and intra-personal.  The problem of how one could possibly diagnose such illusions is raised and I suggest that, if there is a way, it will require a therapeutic rather than a polemical approach.  This suggestion is of course made by Wittgenstein and some of his followers but, in my view, it has remained undeveloped.  It often takes the form of a comparison with psychoanalysis.  I note that the more like psychoanalysis it becomes, the less like traditional argumentation, philosophical or otherwise, it will be.

"ABSTRACT:
    This study assumes the subject's pursuit of meaning is generally incapacitating and should be suspended. It aims to demonstrate how such a suspension is theoretically accomplished by utilizing Lacan's formulae of sexuation integrated with his work in discourse theory and topology.
    Part I places this study into context by examining scholarship from the established fields of hermeneutics, phenomenology, (post)structuralism, aesthetic theory and psychoanalysis in order to extract out their respective theory of meaning. These theories reveal that an historical struggle with meaning has been underway since the Reformation and reaches near crisis proportions in the 20th century. On the one hand this crisis is mollified by the rise of Heideggerian-Gadamerian hermeneutical phenomenology which questions traditional epistemological approaches to the text using a new ontological conceptualization of meaning and a conscious rejection of methodology. On the other hand this crisis is exacerbated when the ubiquitous nature of meaning is itself challenged by (post)structuralism's discovery of the signifier which inscribes a limit to meaning, and by the domains of sense and nonsense newly opened up by aesthetic theory. These historical developments culminate in the field of psychoanalysis which most consequentially delimits a cause of meaning said to be closely linked to the core of subjectivity.
    Part II extends these findings by rigorously constructing out of the Lacanian sexuated formulae a decidedly non-hermeneutical phenomenological approach useful in demonstrating the sexual nature of meaning. Explicated in their static state by way of an account of their original derivation from the Aristotelian logical square, it is argued that these four formulae are relevant to basic concerns of textual theory inclusive of the hermeneutical circle of meaning. These formulae are then set into motion by integrating them with Lacan's four discourses to demonstrate the breakdown of meaning. Finally, the cuts and sutures of two-dimensional space that is topology as set down in L'étourdit are performed to confirm how the very field of meaning is ultimately suspended from a nonsensical singular point known in Lacanian psychoanalysis as objet a. The contention is that by occupying this point the subject frees himself from the debilitating grip of meaning."

The book consists of 17 chapters, each of which discusses a separate phenomenon: approximation, nonsense, falsification, fascination, infantilism, mannerism, simulation, etc. The last chapter of "Varia: Extracts and Comments" is an appendix to the whole. Short texts, reminiscent of microblogs, and sometimes microfelietons, contain analyzes of non-trivial, underground or aberrant cases of using language in communication -- in journalistic, promotional, artistic and colloquial discourses.
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Twentieth-century philosophy has often been pictured as divided into two camps, analytic and continental. This study challenges this depiction by examining encounters between some of the leading representatives of either side. Starting with Husserl and Frege's fin-de-siècle turn against psychologism, it turns to Carnap's 1931 attack on Heidegger's metaphysics (together with its background in the Cassirer-Heidegger dispute of 1929), moving on to Ayer's 1951 meeting with Bataille and Merleau-Ponty at a Parisian bar, followed by the 'dialogue of the deaf' between Oxford linguistic philosophers and phenomenologists at the 1951 Royaumont colloquium, leading up to the Derrida-Searle controversy. Careful study shows that it is implausible to assume the existence of a century-old 'gulf' between two sides of philosophy. Vrahimis argues that miscommunication and ignorance over the exact content of the above encounters must to a large extent be held accountable for any perceived gap.

The enactive approach is a growing movement in cognitive science that replaces the classical computer metaphor of the mind with an emphasis on biological embodiment and social interaction as the sources of our goals and concerns. Mind is viewed as an activity of making sense in embodied interaction with our world. However, if mind is essentially a concrete activity of sense-making, then how do we account for the more typically human forms of cognition, including those involving the abstract and the patently nonsensical? To address this crucial challenge this collection brings together new contributions from the sciences of the mind that draw on a wide variety of disciplines, including psychopathology, phenomenology, primatology, gender studies, quantum physics, immune biology, anthropology, philosophy of mind, and linguistics. This book is required reading for anyone who is interested in how the latest scientific insights are changing how we think about the human mind and its limits.

talk delivered at the Einstein Forum, Potsdam, Germany, on 29 January 2015 and later published in a different version in The Routledge Companion to Sounding Art, edited by Marcel Cobussen, Vincent Meelberg, and Barry Truax (Routledge, 2017) 341-50

Esta tesis presenta una lectura de los dos últimos libros de Silvina Ocampo, Y así sucesivamente (1987) y Cornelia frente al espejo (1988), a partir del interés central y aún inexplorado que los relatos de estos volúmenes manifiestan por los procedimientos y tópicos propios del nonsense, los que alcanzan una resolución formal y temática específica en este momento de su búsqueda narrativa. Estos libros fueron publicados por la autora luego de un largo período desde la edición de su anterior colección de cuentos (Los días de la noche, 1970), en el que se abocó casi exclusivamente a la escritura de relatos para niños.

The distinction between sense and nonsense is central to Wittgenstein's philosophy. It is at the basis of his conception of philosophy as a struggle against illusions of sense generated by misunderstandings of the logic of our language. Moreover, it informs the notions of "grammar" (in the later work) and "logical syntax" (in the early work), whose investigation serves to clear up those misunderstandings. This Element contrasts two exegetical approaches: one grounding charges of nonsensicality in a theory of sense specifying criteria that are external to the linguistic performance under indictment; and one rejecting any such theory. The former pursues the idea of a nonsensicality test; the latter holds that illusions of sense can only be overcome from within, through the very capacity of which they constitute defective exercises. The Element connects the two approaches to opposite understandings of Wittgenstein's conception of language, and defends a version of the second approach.

There are passages in Wittgenstein where he compares his method to psychotherapy and one or two where he seems to suggest that the ‘patient’ has the last word on his ‘illness’ and ‘cure’.  This paper tries to take these seriously, especially in connexion with the idea that victims of philosophical confusion talk nonsense.

Philosophical accusations of talking nonsense made in a polemical spirit are bound to fail, since the only way one can effectively criticise another’s utterance is by attaching some meaning to it.  But if the other acknowledges the possibility that his puzzlement arises from his having been taken in by nonsense, then perhaps a co-operative investigation of this suggestion might be fruitful.  Indeed self-diagnosis ought in principle to be possible.  Ought it not to have happened at least once in the history of philosophy if philosophical nonsense has ever been exposed? 

But there are difficulties.  For example:
a) We must ask whether or not philosophical nonsense, when exposed as such, is supposed to lose all appearance of meaningfulness.  Either answer is problematic.
b) The acknowledged similarity of the methodology under investigation to that of psychoanalysis exposes it to many of the familiar objections to the methodology of psychoanalysis, especially those that draw attention to the misleading influence of suggestion by an authority-figure.
c) The proposal that relentless cross-questioning of a suspected nonsense-talker will eventually lead her to ‘dry up’ (if she really is talking nonsense) seems to involve a version of the so-called Socratic Fallacy.

This paper starts from Tractatus, 6.53, and ask how one could show someone ‘that he had failed to give a meaning to certain signs in his propositions’.  Once one has fully mastered the ‘austere’ conception of nonsense – that nonsense has neither meaning, form, content, nor logic – the difficulties of the enterprise become evident.  It is not clear how one could be in a position to conclude much about an utterance without first finding a meaning in it.  Suggestions made by Guy Robinson, Edward Witherspoon and Hans-Johann Glock are considered but it is concluded that the last, best hope for nonsensicalism lies in a therapeutic approach.  I end with a plea for someone who is sympathetic to this aspect of Wittgenstein’s philosophy to make a serious attempt to work out the details.

The thesis of this thesis is: the interpretation of Wittgenstein’s notion of logical syntax in the Tractatus advanced by interpreters such as Hacker, Cheung, and Johnston leads to two problems, the resolution of which requires an alternative interpretation of Wittgenstein’s notion of logical syntax that falls on the resolute side of the exegetical spectrum.

In Chapter 1, I present and defend my reading of Hacker’s notion of logical syntax: logical syntax consists of combinatorial rules governing signs that determine which combinations of signs are admissible, i.e. have the capacity to represent reality. I show that it has been misunderstood by resolute readers. In Chapters 2 and 3, I discuss two problems with Hacker’s interpretation. First, it yields a conception of nonsense that precludes a coherent reading of Wittgenstein’s claim that his own sentences are at once nonsensical and elucidatory. Second, it cannot account for the phenomenon of meaningfully using words in innovative ways, i.e. such that they do not symbolize in the same way as before. In Chapter 4, I defend my alternative conception of logical syntax: logical syntax consists in the formal aspects of the immanent normative structure of our meaningful use of words. In Chapter 5, I summarize the trajectory of Chapters 1-4 and draw some further conclusions about how to approach the Tractatus as a philosophical book.

Illustrating a book is always a challenge. To re-illustrate the original self-illustrated book is a double jeopardy, especially when certain illustrations have become inseparable from the work and its creator. How do you compete with what has already become a part of the cultural legacy? And how does a shift in meaning through translation affect the image? How does it influence the reader’s perception? In this dissertation, I'm trying to tackle these issues by analysing different editions of Lear’s nonsense works illustrated by various artists.

El lugar común que identifica a la literatura de Silvina Ocampo como fantástica resulta un pretexto tranquilizador que de algún modo domestica su rareza. En las interpretaciones críticas actuales sigue funcionando esta idea reductora que, si para una coyuntura determinada resultaba explicativa, hoy se revela improcedente. Entiendo que, en sus momentos más característicos, los relatos de Ocampo se definen menos por los tópicos y procedimientos que involucran lo sobrenatural, lo anormal o lo irreal, que por una forma de la escritura cuyo desatino deja atónito al lector. Para leer esta literatura en nuevos términos, pienso en el nonsense como relato de la insensatez, un modo de uso de la locura como estética y como ética.

I originally entitled this paper ‘Why are there no uncontroversial examples of philosophical nonsense?’, but since this seemed apt to provoke rather superficial responses, I decided to re-title it.  In it I ponder the fact that, not only are there no uncontroversial examples of philosophical nonsense, there are no uncontroversial examples of what one might call ‘analogue philosophical nonsense’.  These would be non-philosophical cases of someone’s believing he means something when in reality he means nothing.  (Someone’s saying, ‘It’s 5 o’clock on the sun’ is sometimes offered as an example.)  I ask what conditions such cases would need to satisfy.  What would count as a compellingly clear case of an illusion of meaning?  Why has no one described one?

.Taking as my starting-point Cora Diamond’s paper ‘What nonsense might be’, I extend her ‘austere’ conception of nonsense to encompass the talking of nonsense.  We need to focus on the utterer as well as the utterance.  This brings out how difficult it is going to be to DIAGNOSE the talking of (philosophical) nonsense, without falling into the ‘sense that is senseless’ trap (PI, I, 500).  It is not clear to what extent Diamond sees the problem here.  I suggest that if there is a way round the difficulty, it will involve adopting a therapeutic approach.