Isabelle Thomas-Fogiel
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- November 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780231147781
- eISBN:
- 9780231519632
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231147781.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, General
Philosophers debate the death of philosophy as much as they debate the death of God. Immanuel Kant claimed responsibility for both philosophy’s beginning and end, while Martin Heidegger argued it ...
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Philosophers debate the death of philosophy as much as they debate the death of God. Immanuel Kant claimed responsibility for both philosophy’s beginning and end, while Martin Heidegger argued it concluded with Friedrich Nietzsche. In the twentieth century, figures as diverse as John Austin and Richard Rorty have proclaimed philosophy’s end, with some even calling for the advent of “post-philosophy.” In an effort to make sense of these conflicting positions—which often say as much about the philosopher as his subject—this book undertakes the first systematic treatment of “the end of philosophy,” while also recasting the history of Western thought itself. The book begins with post-philosophical claims such as scientism, which it reveals to be self-refuting, for they subsume philosophy into the branches of the natural sciences. Similar issues are discovered in Rorty’s skepticism and strands of continental thought. Revisiting the work of late-nineteenth and early-twentieth-century philosophers, when the split between analytical and continental philosophy began, the book finds that both traditions followed the same path—the road of reference—which ultimately led to self-contradiction. This phenomenon, whether valorized or condemned, has been understood as the death of philosophy. Tracing this pattern from Willard Van Orman Quine to Rorty, from Heidegger to Emmanuel Levinas and Jürgen Habermas, the book reveals the self-contradiction at the core of their claims while also carving an alternative path through self-reference.Less
Philosophers debate the death of philosophy as much as they debate the death of God. Immanuel Kant claimed responsibility for both philosophy’s beginning and end, while Martin Heidegger argued it concluded with Friedrich Nietzsche. In the twentieth century, figures as diverse as John Austin and Richard Rorty have proclaimed philosophy’s end, with some even calling for the advent of “post-philosophy.” In an effort to make sense of these conflicting positions—which often say as much about the philosopher as his subject—this book undertakes the first systematic treatment of “the end of philosophy,” while also recasting the history of Western thought itself. The book begins with post-philosophical claims such as scientism, which it reveals to be self-refuting, for they subsume philosophy into the branches of the natural sciences. Similar issues are discovered in Rorty’s skepticism and strands of continental thought. Revisiting the work of late-nineteenth and early-twentieth-century philosophers, when the split between analytical and continental philosophy began, the book finds that both traditions followed the same path—the road of reference—which ultimately led to self-contradiction. This phenomenon, whether valorized or condemned, has been understood as the death of philosophy. Tracing this pattern from Willard Van Orman Quine to Rorty, from Heidegger to Emmanuel Levinas and Jürgen Habermas, the book reveals the self-contradiction at the core of their claims while also carving an alternative path through self-reference.
Isabelle Thomas-Fogiel
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- November 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780231147781
- eISBN:
- 9780231519632
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231147781.003.0014
- Subject:
- Philosophy, General
This book has demonstrated that it is possible to understand philosophy without the end of its history and its history without the end of philosophy. To do so, it has analyzed the theme of the end or ...
More
This book has demonstrated that it is possible to understand philosophy without the end of its history and its history without the end of philosophy. To do so, it has analyzed the theme of the end or the death of philosophy: who defends this position, why, and how they are theoretically consistent. Beginning from the most pronounced assertions (calls for “anti-” or “post-philosophy,” or even the wish for philosophy’s dissolution in an empirical science), it has explored this theme in other guises, less provocative than the first but still positing the death of the discipline. It has offered a model that challenges the claim that philosophy is dead as a first, autonomous, and distinct discipline—namely, the “reflexive a priori,” a principle of self-referentiality that makes it possible to show that philosophy is a distinct, first discipline, endowed with a rigorous method—a redefined and revitalized transcendental argument. This challenge to the death of philosophy has put the thesis of the end of the discipline into perspective by looking for its source: the “race to reference”.Less
This book has demonstrated that it is possible to understand philosophy without the end of its history and its history without the end of philosophy. To do so, it has analyzed the theme of the end or the death of philosophy: who defends this position, why, and how they are theoretically consistent. Beginning from the most pronounced assertions (calls for “anti-” or “post-philosophy,” or even the wish for philosophy’s dissolution in an empirical science), it has explored this theme in other guises, less provocative than the first but still positing the death of the discipline. It has offered a model that challenges the claim that philosophy is dead as a first, autonomous, and distinct discipline—namely, the “reflexive a priori,” a principle of self-referentiality that makes it possible to show that philosophy is a distinct, first discipline, endowed with a rigorous method—a redefined and revitalized transcendental argument. This challenge to the death of philosophy has put the thesis of the end of the discipline into perspective by looking for its source: the “race to reference”.
