Philosophy is said to have taken the 'linguistic turn' in this century. One hundred years ago, a philosopher would think in terms of mind, spirit, experience, consciousness; now the by-word is language.

To recognize a difficulty is not to solve it.

Language steps in where the angels of experience fear to tread.

Philosophy is an everlasting fire, sometimes damped down by setting itself limits, then flaring into new life as it consumes them. Every field of inquiry is limited, but philosophy has an essential relation to the question of limits, to its own limits.

We are passengers, comprehended and displaced by metaphor.

What I would like to show is that there is a vital dimension of their writing, which I call performative reflexivity, which if ignored or misunderstood will impede an adequate response to it.

Dialogue never ends not for lack of time or opportunity but for essential reasons.

To understand how indirect communication is possible we must grasp what it is about ordinary communication that is being changed.

The point is that philosophy is seen to have come full circle, and to have exhausted itself.

After Hegel, philosophy confronts the possibility of its own death, and in some sense has to do so if it is to remain the most fundamental kind of thinking.