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An Investigator of Language

Book with Wine
1970: Els mots i els homes
1970: Indagaciones sobre el lenguaje
1971: Las palabras y los hombres
1974: Cambio de marcha en filosofía
1959: “Le Langage de la Poésie
1970: “The Language of Religious Experience
1982: “The Languages of History

“I have resumed writing Chapter IV Language as an activity and as a structure of my slow-going book (Indagaciones sobre el lenguaje). I am brooding over the possibility that language is no more a tool than the eye or hand is. Can I say that I see with my eye? Can I say that my eye sees? In fact, I am my eye as seeing; analogously, I am a talking being. I am not doing something with my body, as if the body were something with which someone, namely I, were doing something. Can I conceive language in a similar manner? I am afraid I will go to bed without having reached any conclusion.”
 - (letter, 1969)

Ferrater Mora wrote several books and a number of essays that could be said to deal with language, the problems raised by language, and linguistic philosophy. He investigated a host of questions concerning the very nature of language itself. In Indagaciones sobre el lenguaje Ferrater discusses linguistic rules and games, the difference between language as an activity and as a structure, the notion of use, the difference between verbal and nonverbal languages, and so forth. In Cambio de marcha en filosofía Ferrater Mora examines what has sometimes been called linguistic or analytic philosophy. He discusses, among other things, analysis, touching on the nature of reason, some of the ways in which philosophy may be related to language, attitudes toward analysis. He also reflects on language in Las palabras y los hombres. In particular, Ferrater Mora writes on the language of religious experience, the languages of history, and the notion of meaning and reference. These are just some of the many problems centered around the notion of language that Ferrater Mora deals with in the material included in this section.