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[...] despite being the most empathetic character in the novel who is always perceptive of other people's pain and suffering, Mario himself does not feel pain. [...] this neurological deficit seems an unmistakable reference to Wittgenstein's question [...]: what determines the meaning of the uttera…

[...] In Infinite Jest it is exactly this abhorrence of 'unsophisticated naïveté', this 'transcendence of sentiment' through hyperreflexivity and irony, that leads to emptiness, to 'anhedonia, death in life'. The desire to avoid naïveté at all costs is itself a form of naïveté--the 'queerly persi…

Now, most theorists of authenticity prefer to speak of authenticity as the product of continuous self-creation and development and not of an inherent, fixed self-essence. But if there is nothing 'inherent' about the authentic self, then the question arises as to whether we can even speak meaningful…

[...] Wallace is not calling for a return to old truths and values. In other interviews, he says: 'we're going to have to make up a lot of our own morality, and a lot of our own values'. And: 'there's probably no absolute right in all situatons handed down from God on the stone tablets. [...] it …

[...] our use of these concepts cannot take place without their being 'founded' by what we could call 'paradigmatic cases': examples that are common knowledge within a certain life-form, that function as a sort of standard, and thereby form part of the foundation of our meaningful use of certain co…