The Romantic Irony of Semiotics : Friedrich Schlegel and the Crisis of Representation

Introduction 1. Bi-planar Semiotics 2. A temporary leap of faith Part I Chapter One The syntactico-semantic paradigm of irony: and beyond 1. General formulae of irony 2. Referentiality: the ontological status of the entities articu¬lated in irony 3. Taxonomy 4. Syntax 5. The indices of irony 6. Towards a pragmatics of ironic context 7. ‘Miscellaneous’ and ‘specificity’: the uncontained residue of rhetoric 8. Five semiotic formulae 9. Paradigmatization of the correlations between the rhetori¬cal and the semiotic meta-languages of irony and the resultant view of the ontological status of irony 10. Conclusion: the rhetorical episteme A kind of postscript to chapter one Part II Chapter One An ironic twist of a semiotics of narrative: Friedrich Schlegel’s Roman 1. Five semiotic formulae (1.1—1.5) 2. “Individual relativism of speech perception” 3. Crises confronting the semiotics mode 4. Partiality of semiotic solution to irony Chapter Two Irony the iconoclast: The crisis of representation 1. Hegelian Phenomenology versus Schlegelian Irony 2. The negative dialectics of irony 3. Adorno versus Schlegel: The fragmented connection 4. Schelling versus Schlegel: recuperation versus praxis Chapter Three “Über die Unverständlichkeit”: Irony as communicational deconstruction of the semiotic paradigm 1. Irony of semantic exchange 2. Irony of the “Isotopy” 3. The (inter)-semiosic irony of analysis 4. Irony of codes 5. Irony of temporal distinctions 6. Irony of the ontological status of the subject of enuncia¬tion Conclusion Bibliography Index of Names Index of Subjects

Causal uncertainty is a wide-spread phenomenon. Courts are often unable to determine whether a defendant's tortious conduct was a factual cause of a plaintiff's harm. Yet, sometimes courts can determine the probability that the defendant caused the plaintiff's harm, although often there is considerable variance in the probability estimate based on the available evidence. The conventional way to cope with this uncertainty has been to apply the evidentiary rule of 'standard of proof'.

The application of this 'all or nothing' rule can lead to unfairness by absolving defendants who acted tortiously and may also create undesirable incentives that result in greater wrongful conduct and injustice to victims. Some courts have decided that this 'no-liability' outcome is undesirable. They have adopted rules of proportional liability that compensate plaintiffs according to the probability that their harm was caused by the defendant's tortious conduct.

In 2005 the Principles of European Tort Law (PETL) made a breakthrough in this regard by embracing rules of proportional liability. This project, building on PETL, endeavours to make further inquiries into the desirable scope of proportional liability and to offer a more detailed view of its meaning, implications, and ramifications.