Hyenas, Institutions and God

Geoffrey Hawthorn

  • The Construction of Social Reality by John Searle
    Allen Lane, 241 pp, £20.00, May 1995, ISBN 0 7139 9112 7

John Searle is in a café in Paris. The waiter arrives. ‘Un demi,’ Searle asks, ‘Munich, à pression, s’il vous plaît.’ The waiter brings the beer. Searle drinks it, puts a few francs on the table, and leaves. ‘An innocent scene’, he agrees, ‘but its metaphysical complexity is truly staggering, and its complexity would have taken Kant’s breath away if he had ever bothered to think about such things.’ Kant didn’t think about such things because, at the time, philosophers were obsessed with knowledge. ‘Much later,’ Searle observes, ‘for a brief, glorious moment, they were obsessed with language. Now this philosopher at least is obsessed with certain general structures of human culture.’

You are not Logged In

  • If you have already registered login here
  • If you are a print subscriber using the site for the first time please register here
  • If you are not yet a subscriber you can subscribe here
  • If you are a member of a subscribing institution or University library please login here
  • If you have an Institutional print subscription and online access is not included, find out about our Institutional online subscriptions