Philosophy of Communication

The establishment of this Section is informed by the belief that the Philosophy of Communication is a particularly salient area of inquiry today, given the increased understanding of the fundamental role communication plays in almost all aspects of life, and increasingly, of science, and the social changes brought about by an increasingly globalised ‘communication society’.

These developments require the exploration of the relations between communication theory and traditional areas of philosophy, such as metaphysics and ontology, philosophy of language, epistemology, social and political philosophy and ethics. There are many examples of thinkers who have paid explicit attention to the emerging field of the philosophy of communication, from Empedocles and Aristotle to Leibniz, Dewey, Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, Luhmann and Habermas (to name a few), but a forum for the systematic discussion of topics in this field has been lacking up until now in Europe, as has the systematic discussion of the philosophy of communication itself.

Thinkers have had occasion to refer to communication in their theory formation, but have done so often in an ad hoc manner, highlighting specific aspects of communication but neglecting others, and have often proceeded in relative isolation. Even the opposing seminal accounts of Luhmann and Habermas of the nature and social role of communication have scarcely been examined from the point of view of their relative merits for a general philosophical understanding of communication and a communicative understanding of philosophy.