Metaphilosophy, Contemporary ? What is philosophy for? How should philosophy be done? These are metaphilosophical questions, metaphilosophy being the study of the nature of philosophy. Contemporary metaphilosophies within the Western philosophical tradition can be divided, rather roughly, according to whether they are associated with (1) Analytic philosophy, (2) Pragmatist philosophy, or (3) Continental philosophy. Home page for Willard Van Orman Quine, mathematician and philosopher including list of books, articles, essays, students, and travels. Includes links to other Willard. The pioneers of the Analytic movement held that philosophy should begin with the analysis of propositions. In the hands of two of those pioneers, Russell and Wittgenstein, such analysis gives a central role to logic and aims at disclosing the deep structure of the world. But Russell and Wittgenstein thought philosophy could say little about ethics. The movement known as Logical Positivism shared the aversion to normative ethics. Nonetheless, the positivists meant to be progressive. As part of that, they intended to eliminate metaphysics. The so- called ordinary language philosophers agreed that philosophy centrally involved the analysis of propositions, but, and this recalls a third Analytic pioneer, namely Moore, their analyses remained at the level of natural language as against logic. The later Wittgenstein has an affinity with ordinary language philosophy. For Wittgenstein had come to hold that philosophy should protect us against dangerous illusions by being a kind of therapy for what normally passes for philosophy. Metaphilosophical views held by later Analytic philosophers include the idea that philosophy can be pursued as a descriptive but not a revisionary metaphysics and that philosophy is continuous with science. The pragmatists, like those Analytic philosophers who work in practical or applied ethics, believed that philosophy should treat . The neopragmatist Rorty goes so far as to say the philosopher should fashion her philosophy so as to promote her cultural, social, and political goals. So- called post- Analytic philosophy is much influenced by pragmatism. Like the pragmatists, the post- Analyticals tend (1) to favor a broad construal of the philosophical enterprise and (2) to aim at dissolving rather than solving traditional or narrow philosophical problems. Contemporary Metaphilosophy. What is philosophy? What is philosophy for? How should philosophy be done? These are metaphilosophical questions, metaphilosophy being. ![]() ![]()
The first Continental position considered herein is Husserl’s phenomenology. Husserl believed that his phenomenological method would enable philosophy to become a rigorous and foundational science. Still, on Husserl’s conception, philosophy is both a personal affair and something that is vital to realizing the humanitarian hopes of the Enlightenment. Husserl’s existential successors modified his method in various ways and stressed, and refashioned, the ideal of authenticity presented by his writings. Another major Continental tradition, namely Critical Theory, makes of philosophy a contributor to emancipatory social theory; and the version of Critical Theory pursued by J. The later thought of Heidegger advocates a postmetaphysical thinking too, albeit a very different one; and Heidegger associates metaphysics with the ills of modernity. Heidegger strongly influenced Derrida’s metaphilosophy. Derrida’s deconstructive approach to philosophy (1) aims at clarifying, and loosening the grip of, the assumptions of previous, metaphysical philosophy, and (2) means to have an ethical and political import. Table of Contents. Introduction Some Pre- Twentieth Century Metaphilosophy. Defining Metaphilosophy. Explicit and Implicit Metaphilosophy. The Classification of Metaphilosophies – and the Treatment that Follows. Analytic Metaphilosophy. The Analytic Pioneers: Russell, the Early Wittgenstein, and Moore. Logical Positivism. Ordinary Language Philosophy and the Later Wittgenstein. Three Revivals. Normative Philosophy including Rawls and Practical Ethics. History of Philosophy. Metaphysics: Strawson, Quine, Kripke Naturalism including Experimentalism and Its Challenge to Intuitions Pragmatism, Neopragmatism, and Post- Analytic Philosophy Pragmatism. Neopragmatism: Rorty. Post- Analytic Philosophy. Continental Metaphilosophy. Phenomenology and Related Currents. Husserl’s Phenomenology. Existential Phenomenology, Hermeneutics, Existentialism. Critical Theory. Critical Theory and the Critique of Instrumental Reason. Habermas. The Later Heidegger. Derrida's Post- Structuralism References and Further Reading. Explicit Metaphilosophy and Works about Philosophical Movements or Traditions. Analytic Philosophy including Wittgenstein, Post- Analytic Philosophy, and Logical Pragmatism. Pragmatism and Neopragmatism Continental Philosophy. Other. 1. Introduction. The main topic of the article is the Western metaphilosophy of the last hundred years or so. But that topic is broached via a sketch of some earlier Western metaphilosophies. In the remainder of the article, . On Eastern meta. Then there is a consideration of how metaphilosophies might be categorized and an outline of the course of the remainder of the article. Some Pre- Twentieth Century Metaphilosophy. Socrates believed that the unexamined life – the unphilosophical life – was not worth living (Plato, Apology, 3. Indeed, Socrates saw his role as helping to rouse people from unreflective lives. He did this by showing them, through his famous . Socrates’ use of that method contributed to his being condemned to death by the Athenian state. But Socrates’ politics contributed too; and here one can note that, according to the Republic (4. It is notable too that, in Plato’s Phaedo, Socrates presents death as liberation of the soul from the tomb of the body. According to Aristotle, philosophy begins in wonder, seeks the most fundamental causes or principles of things, and is the least necessary but thereby the most divine of sciences (Metaphysics, book alpha, sections 1–3). Despite the point about necessity, Aristotle taught ethics, a subject he conceived as . Later philosophers continued and even intensified the stress on philosophical practicality. According to the Hellenistic philosophers – the Cynics, Sceptics, Epicureans and Stoics - philosophy revealed (1) what was valuable and what was not, and (2) how one could achieve the former and protect oneself against longing for the latter. The Roman Cicero held that to study philosophy is to prepare oneself for death. The later and neoplatonic thinker Plotinus asked, . Aquinas resumed the project of synthesizing Christianity with Greek philosophy - a project that had been pursued already by various thinkers including Augustine, Anselm, and Boethius. In those respects he resembles the earlier Seneca. And, like Seneca, Boethius wrote of the consolations of philosophy.). Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding (bk. Kant held that . According to Hegel, the point of philosophy – or of . Marx’s famous eleventh . Defining Metaphilosophy. As the foregoing sketch begins to suggest, three very general metaphilosophical questions are (1) What is philosophy? Those questions resolve into a host of more specific meta. Is philosophy a process or a product? What kind of knowledge can philosophy attain? How should one understand philosophical disagreement? Is philosophy historical in some special or deep way? Should philosophy make us better people? Happier people? Is philosophy political? What method(s) and types of evidence suit philosophy? How should philosophy be written (presuming it should be written at all)? Is philosophy, in some sense, over – or should it be? But how might one define metaphilosophy? One definition owes to Morris Lazerowitz. But some foreign- language equivalents of the term . Note further that, in various languages including English, sometimes the term takes a hyphen before the . Still: there are other definitions of metaphilosophy; and while Lazerowitz’s definition will prove best for our purposes, one needs – in order to appreciate that fact, and in order to give the definition a suitable (further) gloss – to survey the alternatives. One alternative definition construes metaphilosophy as the philosophy of philosophy. Sometimes that definition intends this idea: metaphilosophy applies the method(s) of philosophy to philosophy itself. That idea itself comes in two versions. The thought here is this. Metaphilosophy, as the application of philosophy to philosophy itself, is simply one more instance of philosophy (Wittgenstein 2. Williamson 2. 00. The other version – the . Metaphilosophy stands to philosophy as philosophy stands to its subject matter or to other disciplines (Rescher 2. Williamson puts it (loc. For he thinks that . On this definition, metaphilosophy is post- philosophy. Sometimes Lazerowitz himself used . What he had in mind here, more particularly, is the . Some French philosophers have used the term similarly, though with reference to Heidegger and/or Marx rather than to Wittgenstein (Elden 2. What then commends Lazerowitz’s (original) definition – the definition whereby metaphilosophy is investigation of the nature (and point) of philosophy? Indeed, those construals have little content until after one has a considerable idea of what philosophy is. Still: Lazerowitz’s definition does require qualification, since there is a sense in which it is too broad. We might want to deny the title . On the other hand, we are inclined to count as meta. Explicit and Implicit Metaphilosophy. Explicit metaphilosophy is metaphilosophy pursued as a subfield of, or attendant field to, philosophy. Metaphilosophy so conceived has waxed and waned. In the early twenty- first century, it has waxed in Europe and in the Anglophone (English- speaking) world. Probable causes of the increasing interest include Analytic philosophy having become more aware of itself as a tradition, the rise of philosophizing of a more empirical sort, and a softening of the divide between . Certainly the philosophical scene contains few book- length pieces of metaphilosophy. Books such as Williamson’s The Philosophy of Philosophy, Rescher’s Essay on Metaphilosophy, and What is Philosophy? For there is also implicit metaphilosophy.
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