Description:
Scharfstein describes the extraordinary powers that have been attributed to language everywhere, and then looks at ineffability as it has appeared in the thought of the great philosophical cultures: India, China, Japan, and the West. He argues that there is something of our prosaic, everyday difficulty with words in the ineffable reality of the philosophers and theologians, just as there is something unformulable, and finally mysterious in the prosaic, everyday successes and failures of words.
Brief description: Ben-Ami Scharfstein is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Tel-Aviv University. He is the author of eleven books, including Amoral Politics: The Persistent Truth of Machiavellism and Ineffability: The Failure of Words in Philosophy and Religion, both published by SUNY Press.
Review Quotes:
"The topic is so extremely significant, yet it is one of those issues that lie so deep and are so fundamental that we rarely pause to consider them because (perhaps) they are the ground on which we stand." -- Robert Campany, Indiana University