Conversation (eBook)

Conversation: A New Theory of Language

The threefold social order was Rudolf Steiner’s conception of an archetypal social organization that would utilize the norms of universal spiritual initiation, individual freedom, and the fundamental social law. A social science purporting to encompass these norms has yet to arise, but with Carl H. Flygt’s book, a step in that direction has been achieved.

Flygt’s argument is that the phenomenon of conversation has an objectively treatable structure and, as such, can be held to standards that not only can awaken human clairvoyance, but can also liberate the emotions and the spiritual will and contribute to a cultural background that makes real community into an explicit and fundamental social value.

Flygt’s treatment of language use and social background is penetratingly original, academically up to date, and anthroposophically convincing.

C O N T E N T S:

Foreword by Madison Smartt Bell
Introduction

1. Basic Conversation Theory
2. The Meta-conversation
3. Logic
4. Truth
5. Freedom
6. Energy
7. Intentionality
8. Love
9. Institutions

Appendix A: The Art of Goethean Conversation
Appendix B: The Conversational Contract
Appendix C: Private Property

Glossary
Further Reading and Bibliography

About the Author

Carl H. Flygt is an anthroposophical psychologist living near San Francisco. Born and imprinted largely in Middle Tennessee, he became interested in the psychological and evolutionary significance of altered states of consciousness induced by exogenous agents, such as marijuana and LSD. Accordingly, he migrated to California where, in the cultural wake of the 1960s, the New Age movement was coming into prominence. His book on language is the outcome of twenty-five years of study, experimentation, and devotion to the ideal of a psycho-social unity devolving from the deepest wishes and dreams of which the human being is capable.

Madison Smartt Bell is a professor of English at Goucher College in Baltimore, Maryland. He is the author of 22 books, including three collections of short stories, two biographies, 15 novels, and the fiction writing textbook Narrative Design. His books have been prominently published in the United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Greece, Denmark, Holland, Brazil, and Japan. His short fiction has appeared in Best American Short Stories and the Norton Anthology of Short Fiction, among others. As an active literary journalist he contributes to The New York Times, The Nation, The New York Review of Books, and The Boston Globe, among others. He has taught fiction writing at the 92nd Street Y, the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, the Writing Seminars of Johns Hopkins University, and at Goucher College since 1984.