The Nature and Future of Philosophy
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- USD 22.99
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- USD 22.99
Descripción editorial
Philosophy is a discipline that makes no observations, conducts no experiments, and needs no input from experience. It is an armchair subject, requiring only thought. Yet that thought can advance knowledge in unexpected directions, not only through the discovery of new facts but also through the enhancement of what we already know. Philosophy can clarify our vision of the world and provide exciting ways to interpret it.
Of course, philosophy's unified purpose hasn't kept the discipline from splintering into warring camps. Departments all over the world are divided among analytical and continental schools, Heidegger, Hegel, and other major thinkers, challenging the growth of the discipline and obscuring its relevance and intent. Having spent decades teaching in American, Asian, African, and European universities, Michael Dummett has felt firsthand the fractured state of contemporary practice and the urgent need for reconciliation. Setting forth a proposal for renewal and reengagement, Dummett begins with the nature of philosophical inquiry as it has developed for centuries, especially its exceptional openness and perspective-which has, ironically, led to our present crisis. He discusses philosophy in relation to science, religion, morality, language, and meaning and recommends avenues for healing around a renewed investigation of mind, language, and thought. Employing his trademark frankness and accessibility, Dummett asks philosophers to resolve theoretical difference and reclaim the vital work of their practice.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A concise yet wide-ranging examination of the scope and limits of philosophy by one of the analytical tradition's most articulate and significant living figures. Dummett (The Origins of Analytical Philosophy) defends a vision of philosophy as the analysis and clarification of our everyday concepts, thereby carving out a unique position for the discipline as distinct from scientific enquiry, psychology, and religion. He fleshes out this vision in broad strokes, rooting what he calls a notion of philosophy as the grammar of thought in Gottlob Frege's groundbreaking work in logic, in particular his analysis of sentences and his theory of meaning, based on the distinction between sense and reference. While the author does profess a desire for reconciliation between the analytical and continental schools of philosophy, his choice and consideration of Hans Georg Gadamer as representative of the continental approach to questions about language, to the exclusion of figures like Saussure, Ricoeur, and Derrida, is perplexing. Nonetheless, Dummett's passionate advocacy for philosophy's continuing relevance and his defense of the field against the encroaching tendencies of physics and neurological science are never less than compelling.
