Hagi Kenaan argues that philosophy s concern with abstract forms of linguistic meaning and the objective propositional nature of language has obscured the singular human voice In this strikingly original work Kenaan explores the ethical and philosophical implications of recognizing and responding to the individual presence in language The Present Personal fuses phenomenology and aesthetics and the traditions of Continental and Anglo American philosophy drawing on Wittgenstein J L Austin Kant Kierkegaard and Heidegger as well as literary works by Kafka Kundera and others Is philosophy deaf to the sound of the personal voice While philosophy is experienced at admiring resenting celebrating and at times renouncing language philosophers have rarely succeeded in being intimate with it Hagi Kenaan argues that philosophy s concern with abstract forms of linguistic meaning and the objective propositional nature of language has obscured the singular human voice In this strikingly original work Kenaan explores the ethical and philosophical implications of recognizing and responding to the individual presence in language In pursuing the philosophical possibility of listening to language as the embodiment of the human voice Kenaan explores the phenomenological notion of the personal He defines the personal as the irresolvable tension that exists between the public character of language necessary for intelligibility and the ways in which we as individuals remain riveted to our words in a contingently singular manner The Present Personal fuses phenomenology and aesthetics and the traditions of Continental and Anglo American philosophy drawing on Wittgenstein J L Austin Kant Kierkegaard and Heidegger as well as literary works by Kafka Kundera and others By asking new questions and charting fresh terrain Kenaan does more than offer innovative investigations into the philosophy of language The Present Personal and its concern with the intimate and personal nature of language uncovers the ethical depth of our experience with language Kenaan begins with a discussion of Kierkegaard s existential critique of language and the ways in which the propositional structure of language does not allow the spoken to reflect the singularity of the self He then compares two attempts to subvert the hegemony of content the pragmatic turn of J L Austin and the poetic path of Heidegger Kenaan concludes by turning to Kant and discovering an analogy between the experience of meaning in language and the aesthetic experience of encountering beauty Kenaan s reconceptualization of philosophy s approach to language frees the contingent singularity of language while at the same time permitting it to continue to dwell within the confines of content