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Overview
In 1962, the philosopher Richard Taylor used six commonly accepted presuppositions to imply that human beings have no control over the future. David Foster Wallace not only took issue with Taylor's method, which, according to him, scrambled the relations of logic, language, and the physical world, but also noted a semantic trick at the heart of Taylor's argument.
Fate, Time, and Language presents Wallace's brilliant critique of Taylor's work. Written long before the publication of his fiction and essays, Wallace's thesis reveals his great skepticism of abstract thinking made to function as a negation of something more genuine and real. He was especially suspicious of certain paradigms of thought-the cerebral aestheticism of modernism, the clever gimmickry of postmodernism-that abandoned "the very old traditional human verities that have to do with spirituality and emotion and community." As Wallace rises to meet the challenge to free will presented by Taylor, we witness the developing perspective of this major novelist, along with his struggle to establish solid logical ground for his convictions. This volume, edited by Steven M. Cahn and Maureen Eckert, reproduces Taylor's original article and other works on fatalism cited by Wallace. James Ryerson's introduction connects Wallace's early philosophical work to the themes and explorations of his later fiction, and Jay Garfield supplies a critical biographical epilogue.
Columbia University Press
Editorials
Publishers Weekly
A progression of ordinary-seeming premises that would obliterate free will is challenged on its own grounds by the late, celebrated author of Infinite Jest. Written in the mid-1980s as one of Wallace's two undergraduate theses at Amherst College (his first novel, The Broom of the System, was the other), it addresses a "logical slippage"--as James Ryerson puts it--in Richard Taylor's six famous presuppositions that contend that man has no control over his fate. The paper, a survey of Taylor's argument and its influence on late-20th-century philosophy, is reprinted in its entirety, and the language of modal logic can be heavy going at times--be prepared for pages of highly specialized discussion on logic that necessitate accompanying diagrams. Still, as an early glimpse at the preoccupations of one of the 20th century's most compelling and philosophical authors, it is invaluable, and Wallace's conclusion--"if Taylor and the fatalists want to force upon us a metaphysical conclusion, they must do metaphysics, not semantics"--is simply elegant. (Dec.)Rebecca Newberger Goldstein
Fatalism, the sorrowful erasure of possibilities, is the philosophical problem at the heart of this book. To witness the intellectual exuberance and bravado with which the young Wallace attacks this problem, the ambition and elegance of the solution he works out so that possibility might be resurrected, is to mourn, once again, the possibilities that have been lost.
Financial Times
[A] tough and impressive book.
Times Literary Supplement
an excellent summary of Wallace's thought and writing which shows how his philosophical interests were not purely cerebral, but arose from, and fed into, his emotional and ethical concerns.
Notre Dame Philosophical Review
Fate, Time, and Laguage contains a great deal of first-rate philosophy throughout, and not least in Wallace's extraordinarily professional and ambitious essay....
Australian Literary Review
Valuable and interesting.
Financial Times
[A] tough and impressive book.— Anthony Gottlieb
Times Literary Supplement
an excellent summary of Wallace's thought and writing which shows how his philosophical interests were not purely cerebral, but arose from, and fed into, his emotional and ethical concerns.— Robert Potts
Notre Dame Philosophical Review
Fate, Time, and Laguage contains a great deal of first-rate philosophy throughout, and not least in Wallace's extraordinarily professional and ambitious essay....— Daniel Speak
Australian Literary Review
Valuable and interesting.— James Ley
Library Journal
This is the late Wallace's previously unpublished senior undergraduate philosophy thesis (1985, Amherst Coll.). He writes on the classical philosophical problem of fatalism, which is essentially the problem of asserting individual free will. As an undergraduate Wallace learned the logic needed to refute a claim of fatalism and the need to propose new logical systems for making his argument against fatalism. This book includes New York Times Magazine editor James Ryerson's introductory essay to establish context; a republication of philosopher Richard Taylor's essay to which Wallace was specifically responding; and a number of previously published papers that feature objections to fatalism or refutations by fatalists, e.g., an essay by coeditor Cahn (philosophy, Columbia Univ.). VERDICT Wallace's senior thesis is accessible to all who have a basic understanding of logic. This book is for any reader who has enjoyed the works of Wallace and for philosophy students specializing in fatalism.—Jim Hahn, Univ. of Illinois Lib., UrbanaJustin Moyer
The particulars of Wallace's argument will elude lay readers unfamiliar with philosophy's "contingent future-tensed propositions" and "law of the excluded middle." Still, fiction lovers with even a minimal knowledge of Aristotle and Wittgenstein will understand that the core proposition of fatalism—we have no say in what we do—haunted Wallace's writing.—The Washington Post