The Other Malaysia

Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus: The ‘Picture theory of meaning’ and the limits of language
Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921) was written based on notes that he wrote while serving in the trenches as an Austrian soldier in world war one, and is in many ways influenced by the works of two important logicians and philosophers, Bertrand Russell [...]

A. Frege and Analytical Philosophy:
The tradition of Western philosophy which began with Socrates/Plato and Aristotle took off from the starting point of the dialectic and the questioning of the world around us. From the pre-Hellenic philosophers to the early modern philosophers of the 17th century (Descartes, Hobbes and Locke) the aim of philosophy was [...]

Post lecture notes for students of IR 6901: (Week 3, part 2) Introduction to Discourse Analysis, with a special reference to religio-political discourse:
Hobbes: Private Language and the policing of definitions in a state
Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) wrote his works before John Locke but for the purposes of this lecture I will start with Locke [...]

Post lecture notes for students of IR 6901: (Week 3) Introduction to Discourse Analysis, with a special reference to religio-political discourse: (Part 2)
Locke: Nominalism and the language of governance and politics
John Locke (1632-1704) is known for his theories on governance and is widely credited with the development of the idea of separation of powers and [...]

Post lecture notes for students of IR 6901: (Week 2) Introduction to Discourse Analysis, with a special reference to religio-political discourse: (Part 2)
Descartes, Hobbes and Locke: from Idealism and Essentialism to Foundationalism and Empiricism.
Russell (1946) notes that the long shadow of Plato and Aristotle was to have a deleterious effect on the development of Western [...]

From Socrates/Plato and Aristotle to Descartes, Hobbes and Locke: Western Philosophy and the search for grounding in knowledge-claims and language-use.
Question: How do you know that you are reading this? Let me frame the question a little wider: How do you know that you are actually reading this right now, and not sleeping in bed and [...]

Welcome to the course IR 6007 ‘Introduction to Discourse Analysis with a special reference to religio-political discourse’.
Before we get into the course, allow me to highlight some of the points that were briefly discussed today:
1. What is discourse analysis and what is this course about?
Before we go any further, let me point out that discourse [...]

To all of you who managed to get to the end of the course without suffering any adverse medical side-effects, well done. Now that the exams are over, I do hope that you will take a brief pause (a brief one) and energize yourselves for the next trimester.
For the next trimester I will be doing [...]