The theory of speech acts in phenomenology and in the analytic philosophy: the experience of a comparative analysis

The article views the thesis about the unity of the theory of speech acts in the twentieth-century philosophy by the comparative analysis of A. Reinach's phenomenology and J. Austin and J. Searle's theory of speech acts in the analytic philosophy. The topical, genetic, thematic and methodological parameters to the comparison of these theories have been applied in the article. The comparison of these theories allows considering the extensive transformations of the contemporary philosophy. Topical and genetic parameters demonstrate that the sources of the theory of speech acts are philosophical investigations of Franz Brentano, Gottlob Frege and Edmund Husserl. There are common features and specific nuances that should be taken into consideration while making a thematic comparison between the theory of speech acts in phenomenology and the theory of speech acts in the analytic philosophy. The fact that unites these directions is that Reinach's theory moves in the common stream of the anti-psychological tendency. This tendency shows us the solidarity of Reinach's phenomenology and Frege's point of view. But the distinction is that Frege's structure of "meaning" gives the chance of interchangeability of the elements in the proposition, because the structure is focused on the functional aspects of "meaning". Further this circumstance provides the development of speech acts in the analytic philosophy as performative, contextual and pragmatic actions. For example, in Searle's speech acts theory, the intentions of a speaker are supplemented with conventional conditions. These conditions provide the stability of meaning. Reinach's point of view is that "meaning" exists as an eidetic partless element. Therefore it is necessary to understand the non-performative, non-contextual and non-pragmatic character of "meaning" in his theory. For this reason, the analysis of a natural language has no systematic character. The "meaning" of speech acts is static and can be considered only in terms of "categorial intuition" and "cognition of state of affairs". The speech act in the analytic philosophy can be understood in the context of the terms "usage" and "action". Thus one can speak about the unity of the theory of speech acts in the phenomenological and analytic philosophy by considering some features of foundations of these theories. Fairly speaking, one can agree that Reinach's phenomenology opens a new field of philosophy by anticipating Husserl's research in the themes of "life-world" and "intersubjectivity", and also makes a contribution to the formation of the "post-metaphysical philosophy of language". One should speak about the "family resemblance" of Reinach's phenomenology and Austin and Searle's theory of speech acts in the analytic philosophy in the framework of a separate thematic field rather than assert the unity of these theories.

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