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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.
"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
Foreword
by Frank E. Reynolds
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1 Psychological Prelude
2 The Exaltation of Words
3 The Devaluation of Words
4 Reasons behind Reasons for Ineffability
5 In Judgment of Ineffability
Notes
Bibliography
Index of Names