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Introduction Imagine trying to teach someone the English word cheese . You hold up a piece of Camembert, point to it, and say, "Cheese." It seems like the simplest possible language lesson. Surely the learner now knows what the word means. Yet this ordinary scene conceals one of the deepest questions in the philosophy of language. Has the learner really acquired the meaning of the word? Or have they merely associated a sound with a particular object? This question brings together three thinkers whose interests might initially seem unrelated: Bertrand Russell, Ferdinand de Saussure, and Roman Jakobson. Russell maintains that words ultimately derive their significance from our acquaintance with the world. Saussure argues that meaning emerges from a system of linguistic differences rather than from direct contact with objects. Jakobson, meanwhile, offers an unexpected way of testing these competing intuitions. Translation, he suggests, is not merely a practical activity. I...

Introduction Why is it easier to translate a scientific article than a sonnet? Most people would answer that poems are simply more difficult. Roman Jakobson offers a more interesting explanation. The decisive difference, he argues, is not between information and poetry but between two ways language functions. Sometimes words primarily direct our attention toward the world they describe. At other times, language draws attention to itself—to its sounds, rhythms, repetitions, and patterns. When this happens, form is no longer a mere vehicle for meaning; it becomes part of meaning itself. This distinction lies at the heart of Jakobson's classic essay On Linguistic Aspects of Translation (1959). It also explains why he can make two apparently contradictory claims. On the one hand, "all cognitive experience and its classification is conveyable in any existing language" (Jakobson, 1959, p. 233). On the other, "poetry by definition is untranslatable" (p. 238). These ...

Aristotle’s Unexpected Challenge For more than two millennia, Aristotle’s account of the good life has shaped philosophical reflection on human flourishing. Yet many influential thinkers of the twentieth century rejected one of its central assumptions: that human beings possess a fixed nature with a determinate end. Existentialists famously declared that “existence precedes essence,” while poststructuralists questioned stable foundations of identity, meaning, and reason. From this perspective, Aristotle’s conception of the contemplative life appears to belong to a metaphysical world that modern philosophy has left behind. And yet an unexpected tension remains. Many philosophers who denied any predetermined human purpose nevertheless devoted their lives to precisely the activity Aristotle regarded as the highest expression of human fulfillment: sustained intellectual inquiry. They immersed themselves in reading, writing, teaching, and archival research, often at the expense of w...

Introduction Translation is commonly understood as the passage from one language into another. Roman Jakobson opens On Linguistic Aspects of Translation from a very different starting point. Before discussing bilingual dictionaries or lexical equivalence, he offers a striking definition of linguistic meaning itself: "the meaning of any linguistic sign is its translation into some further, alternative sign" (Jakobson, 1959, p. 232). Borrowed directly from Charles Sanders Peirce's theory of signs, this claim transforms the scope of the essay. Translation is no longer a specialized linguistic practice but the very process through which signs become intelligible. Read from this perspective, Jakobson's discussion of lexical equivalence, Benjamin Lee Whorf's linguistic relativity, and even the familiar expressions sunrise and sunset all serve a single philosophical purpose. They illustrate that understanding is inseparable from interpretation, and interpretation ...