Why?
The Philosophy Behind the Question
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- USD 14.99
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- USD 14.99
Publisher Description
A philosopher explores the many dimensions of a beguilingly simple question.
Why did triceratops have horns? Why did World War I occur? Why does Romeo love Juliet? And, most importantly, why ask why? Through an analysis of these questions and others, philosopher Philippe Huneman describes the different meanings of "why," and how those meanings can, and should (or should not), be conflated.
As Huneman outlines, there are three basic meanings of why: the cause of an event, the reason of a belief, and the reason why I do what I do (the purpose). Each of these meanings, in turn, impacts how we approach knowledge in a wide array of disciplines: science, history, psychology, and metaphysics. Exhibiting a rare combination of conversational ease and intellectual rigor, Huneman teases out the hidden dimensions of questions as seemingly simple as "Why did Mickey Mouse open the refrigerator?" or as seemingly unanswerable as "Why am I me?" In doing so, he provides an extraordinary tour of canonical and contemporary philosophical thought, from Plato and Aristotle, through Descartes and Spinoza, to Elizabeth Anscombe and Ruth Millikan, and beyond.
Of course, no proper reckoning with the question "why?" can afford not to acknowledge its limits, which are the limits, and the ends, of reason itself. Huneman thus concludes with a provocative elaboration of what Kant called the "natural need for metaphysics," the unallayed instinct we have to ask the question even when we know there can be no unequivocal answer.
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Philosopher Huneman (Death) muses in this esoteric outing on "what the question ‘why?' is actually asking." Grappling with different meanings of the interrogative, Huneman suggests that answers to "why" usually assert causality, describe the justification of a belief, or explain motivation. It's often unclear which of these three a query intends to solicit, a point Huneman illustrates by positing that the hypothetical question "why is Pistorius guilty?" (in reference to the South African Paralympic runner convicted in 2015 of murdering his fiancée) might entreat an imagined interlocutor to justify their belief in his guilt or to speculate on his motive. The arguments are straightforward enough, but they're needlessly complicated by rambling digressions. For example, Huneman points out that a typical answer to "why do triceratops have horns?" ("to defend themselves from the T. Rex") conflates causes with intentions because triceratops didn't choose to grow horns, but the subsequent extended discussion of René Descartes's understanding of animals as machines adds little. General readers will want to take Huneman's advice to "skip more technical sections," which get into the weeds of such topics as the equation biologists employ to express cooperation, and those without a background in the philosophies of Kant, Leibniz, and Nietzsche will find the ruminations on their ideas inscrutable. It's hard to get into this.
