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.'

LRB 20 July 1995 | PDF Download