ABSTRACT
All the thinkers discussed in this section share the belief that the nature of language provides grounding for a particular account of ethics; language, they believe, is a good thing, and gives people resources both theoretical and prac-- tical in their efforts to live worthy lives. Because it emerges within human exis-- tence, language, they argue, must be friendly to humans, respectful of their inclinations, interests, capacities, and desires. But they cannot escape the prob-- lem we have already seen so often before in this account of the fortunes of the concept of language over the past century. Language is not a limited whole, a determined entity. It has no single character, no essence, no dominant or fun-- damental quality. In its infinitude, it lends support to countless hypotheses and projects, but also undercuts them. The brutal fact is that all ethically desirable features of language can be negated by opposite features that can, with equal warrant-that is, no warrant at all-be advanced as the essence of language. Language can, in other words, also be represented as an antiethical agent, a negative indicator of the law, and it is to these arguments that we must now turn.
