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Philosophical Amnesia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 December 2009

Extract

Many Individuals currently identified within the academic world as ‘“professional” philosophers’ spend a great deal of time arguing about the meaning of their discipline. The situation has recently become so critical that the Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, for example, self-consciously excludes the term ‘philosophy’ from its list of entries. An outsider might get the impression that members of the profession suffer from a recurrent kind of intellectual amnesia and need constantly to be reminded about who they are and what their function is.

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Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy and the contributors 2009

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References

1 This is a reflection of the fact that ‘philosophy’ is now identified with an academic department in the modern university and that these academics belong to academic associations. This has important consequences that we shall discuss below.

2 See Audi, Robert (ed.), The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy (Cambridge: 1995), preface, xxvxxviGoogle Scholar. Audi believes that the meaning of the term will emerge from consideration of the particular entries. In effect, this privileges one of the alternatives I discuss below: the notion that the whole becomes intelligible by accumulated knowledge of the parts is a specifically Aristotelian (to be defined below) inductivist assumption. The Blackwell Companion to Philosophy (1996) has two entries on contemporary Philosophy but none on ‘philosophy’ per se. The online Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy also lacks an entry on ‘philosophy’. The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy has no entry. The Oxford Companion to Philosophy (1995) has a substantial entry by Antony Quinton which acknowledges the controversy surrounding the term. The older (1967) Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Paul Edwards, has a long and useful entry by John Passmore, but it too acknowledges controversy.

3 In less charitable moments I am inclined to identify the intellectual malady as a form of ‘Alzheimer's disease’ since many of those afflicted occasionally seem to regain a sense of personal identity, sometimes brilliantly so. Seriously, this is a helpful metaphor in that I do believe there is a common ground that is occasionally recaptured and then lost again.

4 Eric Hoffer, ‘Men of Words,’ 130–142 in The True Believer (2002); Shils, E., ‘The Traditions of Intellectuals,’ in Huszar, (ed.) The Intellectuals (The Free Press 1960)Google Scholar; Kolakowski, Leszek, ‘The Intellectuals’ in Modernity on Endless Trial (University of Chicago Press 1997)Google Scholar; Julien Benda, The Betrayal of the Intellectuals (2007); Raymond Aron, The Opium of the Intellectuals (2006).

5 We shall identify these perspectives below.

6 The term ‘conversation’ is borrowed from Michael Oakeshott, whose views have profoundly influenced this essay.

7 Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (1979) and Consequences of Pragmatism (1982); A. MacIntyre, Three Rival Versions of Moral Inquiry (1981); – Jean-Francois Lyotard, ‘Introduction: The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge,’ 1979: xxiv–xxv. ‘Simplifying to the extreme, I define postmodern as incredulity toward metanarratives. This incredulity is undoubtedly a product of progress in the sciences: but that progress in turn presupposes it. To the obsolescence of the metanarrative apparatus of legitimation corresponds, most notably, the crisis of metaphysical philosophy and of the university institution which in the past relied on it. The narrative function is losing its functors, its great hero, its great dangers, its great voyages, its great goal. It is being dispersed in clouds of narrative language elements–narrative, but also denotative, prescriptive, descriptive, and so on […] Where, after the metanarratives, can legitimacy reside?’

8 Tris Engelhardt has made the following powerful case against the possibility of a philosophical resolution of moral diversity. It applies as well to why there is no resolution of the conflict among rival versions of philosophy. It is not simply the case that there are significant moral disagreements about substantive issues. Many if not most of these controversies do not appear to be resolvable through sound rational argument. On the one hand, many of the controversies depend upon different foundational metaphysical commitments. As with most metaphysical controversies resolution is possible only through the granting of particular initial premises and rules of evidence. On the other hand, even when foundational metaphysical issues do not appear to be at stake, the debates turn on different rankings of the good. Again, resolution does not appear to be feasible without begging the question, arguing in a circle, or engaging in infinite regress. One cannot appeal to consequences without knowing how to rank the impact of different approaches with regard to different moral interests (liberty, equality, prosperity, security, etc). Nor can one without controversy appeal to preference satisfaction unless one already grants how one will correct preferences and compare rational versus impassioned preferences, as well as calculate the discount rate for preferences over time. Appeals to disinterested observers, hypothetical choosers, or hypothetical contractors will not avail either. If such decision makers are truly disinterested, they will choose nothing. To choose in a particular way, they must be fitted out with a particular moral sense or thin theory of the good. Intuitions can be met with contrary intuitions. Any particular balancing of claims can be countered with a different approach to achieving a balance. In order to appeal for guidance to any account of moral rationality one must already have secured content for that moral rationality. See The Foundations of Christian Bioethics (2000).

Not only is there a strident moral diversity defining debates regarding all substantive issues, but there is in principle good reason to hold that these debates cannot be brought to closure in a principled fashion through sound rational argument. There does not seem to be a rational way of securing moral agreement in our culture. The partisans of each and every position find themselves embedded within their own discourse so that they are unable to step outside of their own respective hermeneutic circles without embracing new and divergent premises and rules of inferences. Many traditional thinkers find themselves in precisely this position. They are so enmeshed in their own metaphysics and epistemology, so convinced that they are committed to ‘reason’ when what they are committed to is a particular set of premises and rules, so able to see the ‘flaws’ in the positions of others who do not accept the same rules, that they quite literally do not understand the alternative positions or even how there can be other positions. More important, they fail to understand the character of contemporary moral debate. What is peculiar about contemporary moral debate is not just the incessant controversy but the absence of any basis for bringing the controversies to a conclusion in a principled fashion. Philosophy has gone into a deep coma, or a state of clinical death.

9 It is the Copernican perspective to be addressed below. This entire essay is self-consciously Copernican. Hence, it follows the dictum that philosophy ‘leads to no conclusions which we did not in some sense know already.’ (Collingwood, Philosophical Method, 161). Note Macintyre's observation that ‘A tradition then not only embodies the narrative of an argument, but is only to be recovered by an argumentative retelling of that narrative which will itself be in conflict with other argumentative retellings’ The Tasks of Philosophy Cambridge, 2006), 12.

10 The following account and categorization is historical. While I do attempt to draw some generalizations from the historical record, all such generalizations reflect the past and make no claim to any other status. The charge that this is merely a set of historical observations and of no philosophical significance is itself an expression of the Aristotelian perspective.

11 ‘Philosophy…has this peculiarity, that reflection upon it is part of itself.’ Collingwood, Philosophical Method (1933), 1.

12 Recall Whitehead's remark that all philosophy is a footnote to Plato. The pre-Socratics including Pythagoras did not work out fully formed views but they anticipated and inspired both Plato and Aristotle.

13 There is no explanation for why deduction from first principles is the standard model of explanation in philosophy other than the historical fact that Plato took Pythagoras and geometry so seriously. See Toulmin, Human Understanding (1972).

14Platonic Metaphysics: In the Platonic tradition (e.g. Plato, Plotinus, Porphyry, Augustine, Descartes, Leibniz, Berkeley, and Frege, to mention just a few) … the world of everyday experience cannot be understood on its own terms. As a consequence, a distinction is introduced between the world of appearance (or everyday experience) and ultimate reality. Platonic metaphysics is marked by a series of derivative dualisms. In its modern form, it is claimed within Platonism that although science can account for the world of appearance, science cannot account either for itself or for ultimate reality. Hence, metaphysics is a kind of non-empirical pre-science. Ultimate reality is conceptual or logical, (consisting of forms, ideas, or universals, etc.), not a system of physical objects. The conceptual entities that comprise ultimate reality are related to each other in logical fashion. Platonism, moreover, rejects any distinction between a thing and its properties. A thing is a particular set of properties (ideas, forms, etc). Platonists do distinguish between essence (meaning) and existence (reference) as well as insist upon the irreducible and fundamental nature of meaning. The distinction between meaning and reference is derivative from the distinction between ultimate reality (which is conceptual) and the world of everyday experience. Finally, Platonists insist upon the dualism of subject and object, a dualism in which the subject's knowledge of itself is more fundamental than the subject's knowledge of objects.’ Capaldi, The Enlightenment Project in the Analytic Conversation (1998), 112–113. See also Weinberg, Steven, ‘Nature, as we observe it, is but an imperfect representation of its own underlying laws.New York Times, May 10th, 1974, 56Google Scholar.

15 Platonists see history as a series of events that imperfectly manifest an ideal. Moreover, since values are a priori, Platonists can dispense with a separate conception of empirical social science or history. This allowed thinkers to harmonize traditional values with their other intellectual pursuits. Think here of Augustine and Descartes, for example. The closest that Plato comes to an historical account is the logic of decay: Philosopher kings → timocracy → oligarchy → democracy → tyranny.

16 Platonists (e.g. Rousseau) are rarely advocates of revolution in the modern sense since they do not believe in actualizing the ideal. Aristotelians (e.g. Marx), on the other hand, do believe that the ‘form’ is ‘in' ‘matter’ and hence that ideals can be actualized in practice.

17 My teacher in the history of philosophy, John Herman Randall, Jr. argued strenuously that Aristotle was a kind of methodological pluralist and that only later (medieval) thought turned Aristotle into a rigid system. This is a plausible reading of Aristotle, but it does not belie the point that others have found enough in Aristotle to turn him into a rigid system.

18 Taking the pre-Socratics as the earliest philosophers, it is plausible to argue that naturalism is the oldest version of philosophy. The entire subsequent history of philosophy can then be viewed as a dialogue between naturalism and it critics. Think here of Raphael's painting The School of Athens.

19 Naturalistic Aristotelian philosophy can be contrasted with religion. Religion's narrative is dualistic (we can only make sense of the world by appeal to something supernatural); mysterious (there is an ultimate mystery at the heart of the universe, a pre-conceptual domain that is not itself conceptualizable); personal (the supernatural pre-conceptual ground of our own existence is a person who cares for us); and involves grace (humanity needs divine aid in order to deal with the human predicament).

20 Aristotle survives in a distinct version when supplemented by Christianity; what is said about ‘Aristotelianism’ does not always apply to this Christian version. The Christianized version, in fact, is closer to ‘Platonism’. Critics would argue that it survives the criticism made of purely naturalistic Aristotelianism by appeal to the ‘deux ex machina’. To my mind, the Christianized Aristotelianism is an indirect acknowledgement of the shortcomings of the purely naturalistic Aristotle. See previous note.

21 A clear case can be made that each major philosophical perspective takes as its paradigm the most extensive and coherent body of knowledge available to it at the time of its articulation. Despite its claim to be premeditated, the content of a philosophical perspective is always drawn from a previous practice. This lends weight to the Copernican position outlined below.

22 Toulmin, S.E. (1972). Human Understanding.

23Aristotelian Metaphysics: In Aristotelianism (e.g. Aristotle, the Stoics, Aquinas, Spinoza, Locke, Hegel, Russell, etc), we understand both ourselves and the world in the same way. Hence, Aristotelianism is monistic. For Aristotelianism in its secular variants, the everyday world of experience is self-explanatory. As a substantive view, this kind of metaphysics is known as naturalism. Metaphysics is thus no more than the most comprehensive and most general characterization of existent things. As a form of knowledge, Aristotelian metaphysics is arrived at by abstraction from the specialized sciences. Hence, metaphysics is a kind of empirical super-science. One consequence of this naturalism is that modern secular Aristotelians do not speak so much of metaphysics but prefer to speak about ontology. The question of ontology, namely what constitutes the most general features of reality, is tied in Aristotelianism to epistemology, understood as the study of the basic categories or concepts used for describing and explaining the everyday world. Reality is said to consist of individual or particular things or substances. A substance (thing) is something more than its properties, and it is ultimately, though problematically, identified grammatically as the subject matter of discourse. In Aristotelian metaphysics there is a tendency to reduce meaning to reference. It is in this sense that Aristotelians approach their metaphysics through epistemology.’ Capaldi, op. cit., 113.

24 There are intimations in Aristotle himself of the importance of the individual, but ultimately Aristotle cannot adequately clarify the relationship between the good man and the good citizen.

25 All theorists who deny the intrinsic importance of time, supplement their timeless accounts with an historical narrative of one or more of the following kinds: an historical account of why earlier thinkers failed to grasp the alleged timeless truths; a speculative history of how we are marching toward that timeless account; a progressive account up to the work of one's favorite author who offers the final and definitive articulation; the latter is followed by an account of decline, that is, an historical account of how once the timeless insights have been articulated later thinkers have allowed those insights to degenerate. ‘Degeneration’ is integral to the account because the timeless truths are understood in an Aristotelian organic-cyclical-teleological sense. What's wrong with all this? It falsifies the historical account; it fails to recognize that the history of a concept is integral to the meaning of the concept; it encourages the habit of ‘finding’ everything in one's favorite author(s); it is unable to see or accommodate later insights; it does not appreciate how later authors help us to gain new insights into earlier authors.

26 Classical conservatism quickly gives way to radicalism when the whole of history is seen as one teleological (and progressive) process rather than as a cyclical process. History becomes progressive with the dominance of Newtonian physics and the view that motion is in a straight line rather than circular (cyclical). An evolutionary (i.e. non-teleological) view of history, which is reflected in this essay, is not to be confused with a progressive view of history.

27 There is a serious literature (Fred Miller, Douglas Den Uyl, Douglas B. Rasmussen, Tibor Machan, and Elaine Sternberg are excellent examples) that sees Aristotle as permitting a kind of individualism. I would maintain that (a) in Aristotle the teleology of the individual can only be realized in the larger community and (b) Aristotle never fully worked out the relation between the individual and the community, hence his ambiguity about whether the good man and the good citizen are the same, as well as the interminable arguments about the relation of the Ethics to the Politics. During the medieval period, Christians debated whether the soul that survived was individual or communal, and both sides drew upon Aristotle for support. Modern day communitarians (e.g. A. MacIntyre, Charles Taylor) can lay claim to Aristotle as easily if not better than those advocating individualism.

28 Simon Blackburn, in the Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy (2005), in his entry on ‘philosophy’, asserts that ‘the conduct of a discipline may be swayed by philosophical reflection’ (277a). He goes on to criticize Hegel for neglecting ‘the fact that self-consciousness and reflection co-exist with activity. For example, an active social and political movement will co-exist with reflection on the categories within which it frames its position.’ (265a).

29 Copernicanism as a separate philosophical perspective is entirely lost on MacIntyre. He completely fails to see the difference between Hume and Kant on the one hand and the French philosophes and later positivists on the other. In After Virtue (1981), MacIntyre argued that we in the Western World have lost our way in morality. We are besieged with a cacophonous pluralism wherein no common understanding of morality is ever possible. There can be so single impartial justification for our moral judgments. Why has this occurred, according to MacIntyre? The Enlightenment epistemological and moral theories of Bacon, Hume, and Kant, not to forget Diderot, by default lead to logical positivism and its offsprings, emotivism and post-modernism. We now recognize the failure of the Enlightenment. The failure puts us in the perplexing position of having to choose between Nietzsche or Aristotle – either moral relativism or a radical conservatism in which humans are seen as having an essence, as social beings who need friendship and who work out over time traditions which give structure to their lives and call forth a set of virtues. Nietzsche's thought is incoherent, so only a return to Aristotle can save us.

30 One can profitably view Copernicanism as, in part, the development of Aristotle's conception of practical reason as opposed to the primacy of theoretical reason.

31 Gaukroger, , Stephen, . The Emergence of a Scientific Culture; Science and the Shaping of Modernity 1210–1685. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2006.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

32 There are no hidden rigid substructures to social practice such that once one knows that substructure one can predict (or normatively require) future permutations of that practice (there are no rules for the application of rules) and no structures that would show the ‘secret’ logic of a practice. Hence the application of an understanding of a practice to a novel set of circumstances requires judgment and imagination. No culture dictates its own future. Human beings are always free to accept, reject, or redeploy their inheritance.

The notion of ‘verstehen’ as developed by neo-Kantians such as Dilthey and Weber, historian-philosophers such as Collingwood, or philosophers such as Wittgenstein, Heidegger, Oakeshott and Gadamer, makes clear that all understanding, even science, is interpretation.

33 ‘Almost all modern writing about moral conduct begins with the hypothesis of an individual human being choosing and pursuing his own directions of activity.’ M. Oakeshott, ‘The Masses in Representative Democracy,’ 367 in Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays, (ed.) Fuller (1991). Autonomy entails some version of the freedom of the will. Autonomy leads in politics to classical liberalism, wherein individuals set their own goals and require liberty as a means to freedom. ‘Moral philosophy’ as opposed to ‘ethics’ comes into being in the 17th century. It reflects the recognition that there is no natural teleology (as in Aristotle) so that the question of how the interests of the individual are related to the interests of others or to society as a whole (i.e. our moral obligations) becomes a real issue. Aristotle would never have raised such an issue because he saw a seamless web of the individual and society.

34 When liberalism is fully ‘Aristotelianized’ (in the sense I have defined) it becomes communitarian or modern liberal as opposed to classical liberal. Communitarians postulate a social good that takes precedence over the good of individuals. Aristotelian naturalists, as I have contended above, do not take internal freedom (i.e. autonomy) seriously. As a result, they are apt to see individuals as constrained by circumstances rather than as choosing how to respond to circumstances. As a further consequence, they are likely to see socials problems like poverty as something that requires redistribution.

Classical liberalism is also conceptualized in Aristotelian terms by philosophers such as Hobbes and Locke (Natural law versions). I would argue that this is another version of pouring the new wine into old bottles. The consequences of doing so are (1) endless confusion and debate, (2) reading Hobbes as a covert authoritarian, and (3) attempts to use Locke to derive communitarian versions of liberalism.

One can, of course, defend a version of classical liberalism (or any political philosophy) using ‘some’ of the philosophical vocabulary derived from Aristotle (or almost any philosopher). The adoption of a vocabulary is not to be confused with adopting a system or conceptual framework such as I have described.

35 These views are clearly expressed by R. G. Collingwood in his works Philosophical Method (1933) and an Essay on Metaphysics (1940).

36 Philosophy awakens ‘our sensitivity to realities which underpin our ordinary lives and activities … things which are usually just out of sight of unreflective consciousness, but they are things which we all know, but darkly.’ O'Hear, Anthony, Philosophy in the New Century (London: Continuum, 2001), 191Google Scholar.

37 This permits us to see that the alternative philosophical perspectives do achieve a kind of consensus on the procedural norms of discourse (analysis proper) within the larger cultural context; where disagreement exists is in speculative thinking or synthesis.

38 Philosophers may, of course, be advocates in other contexts but not as part of their professional activity. Philosophers can, in their professional capacity, point out with regard to social practices when others have asked irrelevant questions or spoken inappropriately.

39 These alternative views may be profitably seen as Weberian ideal types; they may also be seen as Kuhnian paradigms. It is remarkable to note the extent to which one position will accuse a second position of not answering a question when the point of the second position is to delegitimate that question.

40 Rousseau's account of the original contract is Platonic. Note Rawls' Aristotelian critique of Hume's Copernican critique of the idea of an original contract.

41 Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Section V, Part I.

42 See the qualifications in the Treatise, Appendix: ‘…all my hopes vanish, when I come to explain the principles, that unite our successive perceptions in our thought or consciousness. I cannot discover ant theory which gives me satisfaction on this head.’

43 Hegel's teleology allows him both to answer the Kantian (Platoniz) question of the conditions of human knowledge and to provide an account of the developing self-consciousness of God.

44 The quote is from C.S. Peirce. For the failure to prove that science progresses see Kuhn's critique of Popper and Feyerabend's critique of Lakatos. There is an additional respect in which Analytic philosophers (who are Aristotelian) appeal to teleology. They frequently present a two tier view of human nature in which everything is mechanistic on the physiological level but miraculously and unaccountably there is a parallel level of human consciousness in which we act teleologically. See Capaldi, op. cit., 14.

45 Von Wright (1971), 9–10: ‘It would be quite wrong to label analytical philosophy as a whole a brand of positivism. But it is true to say that the contributions of analytical philosophy to methodology and philosophy of science have, until recently, been predominantly in the spirit of positivism … It also largely shares with nineteenth-century positivism an implicit trust in progress through the advancement of science and the cultivation of a rationalist social-engineering attitude to human affairs.’

46 ‘The Dominant mode of philosophizing in the United States is called “analytic philosophy”. Without exception, the best philosophy departments in the United States are dominated by analytic philosophy, and among the leading philosophers in the United States, all but a tiny handful would be classified as analytic philosophers. Practitioners of types of philosophizing that are not in the analytic tradition … feel it necessary to define their position in relation to analytic philosophy. Indeed, analytic philosophy is the dominant mode of philosophizing not only in the United States, but throughout the entire English-speaking world.’ Searle (1996), 1–2.

47 Capaldi (1998), op. cit.

48 Capaldi, N., ‘Analytic Philosophy and Language,’ in Linguistics and Philosophy, The Controversial Interface, (ed.) Harre, Rom and Harris, Roy (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1993Google Scholar; Language & Communication Library series), 45–107.

49 Collingwood, Philosophical Method (7) and (147).

50 In Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry (1991), MacIntyre backed away from claiming that you could prove the superiority of one version. He contrasts the ninth edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, the idea of pure unencumbered rationality, Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morals, the idea that such rationality is simply another expression of the will to power, and Pope Leo XIII's Aeterni patris, which sought to establish Thomism as the official doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church. Each of these traditions has irresolvable internal problems. Specifically, Leo XIII misunderstood Thomism by building in a modernist program – of treating Thomism as an epistemological theory like Encyclopedia rather than as a coherent metaphysical and moral system. MacIntyre reject's any God's eye neutral nonpartisan interpretation as an illusion. Genuine rational inquiry requires membership in a particular type of moral community.

51 I would argue that Copernicanism is Newtonianism writ large: motion, not rest is fundamental (action not contemplation is basic); motion is in a straight line, not cyclical (history does not repeat itself endlessly); every entity interacts with and influences every other entity (we cannot talk about things in themselves – only in relation to us); first principles cannot be explained – theory can only be the explication of ongoing practice. An organic (Aristotelian) universe and social world would see individuals as derivative from their communal roles; an atomistic universe would see individuals as primordial and the community as an historical construct. Individuals are not simply ‘atoms’, rather they are atoms with a history of past interaction. The historical relation, however, is not an organic relation.

Although atomism has an ancient lineage (Democritus, Epicurus), I would suggest that modern atomism was embraced as much if not more so for its social implications. Gassendi gave both ontological and theological significance to monads as endowed with original motion by God; Bacon and Hobbes were atomists; atomism appealed to the practical success of seeing mechanical objects from an atomistic point of view; Newton's first law of motion, I suggest, has a theological origin, certainly not an empirical origin; it is, so to speak, a projection from the human and social realm onto nature. In this it bears a striking similarity to the later doctrine of evolution, which originated in history and was then projected onto biology. See N. Capaldi, David Hume: The Newtonian Philosopher (1975).

52 Recall Locke's claim that space is a simple idea given in sensation as well as his defense of the existence of a vacuum (empty space) as opposed to Descartes' pleonasm.

53 For Descartes physics is founded on a dualistic metaphysics; first principles are clearly a priori; he distinguishes between the order of knowing and the order of being; there is a clear dualism between finite human reason and infinite will, and error is the result of the exercise of the freedom of the will. See n. 14.

54 Nothing could be more Aristotelian than Locke's critique of innate (a priori) ideas and his insistence on the distinction between primary qualities (in the object) and secondary qualities.

55 Like Descartes, Spinoza rejects Aristotelian teleology (no final causes) in favor of determinism.

56 See Berkeley's De Motu (1721) for his analysis of Newton and Leibniz.

57 For Spinoza, God = Nature; one substance, no dualism; his epistemology is an empiricist-physiological account; freedom consists of knowledge of causes over which we have no control. See n. 23.

58 Berkeley's praise of Platonists can be found in Siris (1744) on Tar Water; in addition he is an immaterialist who believes that things are collections of ideas not something independent of them; he supports a dualism that distinguished between ideas in God's mind and ideas in human minds; epistemologically, he is the foremost critic of Locke's Aristotelian idea ‘abstraction’; finally, he believes that we have direct intuitive knowledge of ourselves.

59 Space and time are relative ideas not entities as in Cartesian physics. Leibniz worked out the calculus independently of but at the same time as Newton; the calculus enables us to deal with matter in motion, matter that is not reducible to space.

60 See N. Capaldi, David Hume: Newtonian Philosopher.

61 Leibniz's model is the calculus instead of geometry; in his epistemology, he criticizes Locke for arguing against the existence of innate (a priori) ideas; his dualism, like Berkeley's, distinguishes between God as infinite monad and humans as created finite monads; monads ‘mirror’ and essentially act like Platonic forms; his God reminds us of the Timaeus because ‘HE’ is persuaded to act in accordance with the ultimate essences; finally, human beings always act for the seeming best and err only out of ignorance.

62 Hume was never a simple minded empiricist: all of our most important ideas are complex ideas involves the structuring activity of the mind. In the Abstract he cites this as his most revolutionary idea.

63 ‘The Copernican Revolution in Hume and Kant,’ Proceedings of the Third International Kant Congress, ed. Lewis White Beck (Dordrecht, Holland: Reidel, 1972), 234–40.

64 ‘The present is a time of crisis and chaos in philosophy.’ Collingwood, op. cit., 6.

65 The utilitarian model by itself was originally intended to promote agricultural and technological development. The German Research model originally on its own was committed to the pursuit of truth and not any particular social agenda. The combination of the two has led to what we now describe as ‘political correctness’.

66 The larger cultural context has embraced an uncritical and unreflective commitment to scientism. This has reinforced the perception that we do not need anything other than the sciences.

67 Deconstruction is the, among other things, the latest incarnation of so-called continental philosophy as opposed to Anglo-American philosophy.

68 Few new colleges and universities (e.g. Cal State Monterey Bay, UC Merced), have a philosophy department or even offer a philosophy major or minor. In most cases, a token philosopher is hired into a general humanities department and pressed into service teaching composition or rhetoric to round out a teaching load that cannot be filled by the few philosophy courses (usually applied ethics and logic/critical thinking) offered.

69 It would be easy enough to point out that the academic world in general is going through an economic downward spiral. But this in itself does not explain why when asked to cut the budget, Deans immediately think of eliminating programs and positions in philosophy.

70 Oakeshott, Michael, ‘Education: The Engagement and Its Frustration,’ in The Vocie of Liberal Learning (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, Inc. 2001) 83Google Scholar.

71 The German research model pursuit of knowledge is disinterested (i.e. apolitical); when it combines with the utilitarian model it is transformed into the Enlightenment Project; that is, it acquires a social agenda.

72 Platonists and Copernicans have become the marginalized within the marginalized. For the latter raising the issue of competing conceptions of philosophy is both about (a) one's role in the profession and (b) the role of the discipline in the larger cultural context.

73 See Capaldi, N., ‘Scientism, Deconstruction, and Nihilism,’ in Argumentation, 9: (1995), 563575CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

74 This turns analytic philosophy into an ideology, the advocacy of scientism without subscription to realism.

75 Cohen (1986), 138–39.

76 Capaldi, op. cit., 454.

77 Rawls is not simply providing an account; he is providing an exploration; this is a special kind of explanation that ultimately masks a private political agenda. Rawls, to his credit, went on to modify his account in later wirings, but it is the earlier work that is taken seriously and has become canonical for those working in axiology.

78 ‘This [Rawls' book] is certainly the model of social justice that has governed the advocacy of R.H. Tawney and Richard Titmus and that holds the Labour Party together,’ (Stuart Hampshire in his review of the book in the New York Review of Books, 1972). Rawls's conclusions have ‘enormous intuitive appeal to people of good will,’ Ronald Dworkin in Magee (1982), 213. Nozick, by the way, does exactly the same thing but ends with a different agenda.

79 See Solomon, D., ‘Domestic Disarray and Imperial Ambition,’ in Engelhardt, T. (ed.), Global Bioethics (Scrivener, 2006), 335361Google Scholar. ‘The principal irony of the turn to the ethical in the 1960s was that the academic disciplines of theology and philosophy were called on for help at precisely the moment in their history when they were least able to provide it.’ (345).

80 ‘Deconstruction’ is a controversial term coined by Derrida in the 1960's but never defined. It is not an alternative view of philosophy. I understand deconstruction to be a method, a form of exploration.

81 I do not deny the potential value of reading texts in a novel fashion; what I do challenge is the view that human beings can be understood in terms of hidden (social) structures.

82 See Rorty, 's critique of Derrida in ‘Deconstruction and Circumvention’ Essays on Heidegger and Others (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999)Google Scholar.

83 For MacIntyre's critique of Foucault see Alasdair MacIntyre, Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry (Notre Dame, 2006).

84 This is always pretense and not a claim since we can identify the particular historical practice that is privileged with elevation (‘Euclidean’ geometry, teleological biology, computer technology, etc.).

85 Whenever academic philosophers are at a loss to justify their professional existence they always fall back on the value of identifying the procedural norms, that is, logic.

86 To identify these norms is not the same thing as saying that you must agree with them. Different individuals will have different narrative accounts of their own engagement with those norms.

87 The Aristotle who performed this task did not appeal to or believe in hidden social structures.

88 We may characterize the differences among the three philosophical perspectives when they engage in synthesis as follows: Platonists see current practice as an imperfect copy of the ideal which if actualized would render perfect coherence; Aristotelians see current practice as aiming, albeit imperfectly, at achieving its built-in end; Copernicans see the on-going evolution of a series of practices which creates periodic tensions requiring further explication.

89 Traditions are fertile sources of adaptation. The development of a tradition or inheritance is not a philosophical act; it may be either legal or political.

90 This is where I think the Sheffer stroke (|) is illuminating. Sheffer showed (and so did Peirce, independently) that all logical operators of the first order predicate calculus can be reduced to a single operator meaning ‘is incompatible with’ (or ‘not and’). In furtherance of my point, all (logical) argumentation is about identifying (and avoiding) incoherence.

The question then becomes: Coherence with, between, or among what and what? For the analytic philosopher, what counts is coherence between extant practices or institutions and the hidden structure (e.g. Rawls's reflective equilibrium). For the Copernican, what counts is coherence among the elements of extant practices or institutions. Another way to say this is that what H.L.A. Hart in The Concept of Law calls the ‘internal point of view’ on a practice is the only point of view – or at least, the only alternatives to it are other ‘internal’ points of view. His student, Raz, goes on to argue that all normative statements about the law are statements from a point of view – the point of view of one who accepts the law. My response to Raz, then, would be something like: ‘And what normative statements do you suppose are not like that?’

91 One is reminded here of Hume's critique of Locke's attempt to justify revolution. Hume argues that you cannot have a theory of revolution since this presupposes an authoritative reference point. The whole point of revolution is to reject a specific authority. Situations may in the minds of some call for revolution, but it is philosophically absurd to provide a justification. Ritual appeals to those who already agree with you are not justifications.

92 What is wrong with academic business ethics? – it is wholly adversarial to its subject matter. Indeed, to its practitioners and to many others, the whole point and purpose of the business ethics course is to be ‘equal time’ for the critics of business – as if the FCC's long defunct Fairness Doctrine somehow applied to b-school curricula.

93 This is why it was impossible to get a straight answer from Derrida on the status of his pronouncements.

94 Questions can certainly be raised about the detrimental effect on philosophy of being situated within the present day academy.

95 An individual thinker may choose to do both. However, the legitimacy of the policies derived from the vision in no way follow from the value of the vision. Others can in retrospect appreciate the value and importance and influence of the vision without endorsing the derived policies. We value Aristotle's analysis of the polis, but most of us would choose not to live in one.

96 For those not familiar with Oakeshott, an enterprise association has a collective goal to which everything and everyone is subordinated; a civil association has no such goal, rather it is characterized by procedural norms within which individuals pursue their personal goals.

97 Richard Rorty, who has influenced my thought in many positive ways, is an example of a peculiar sort of failure. In the end he found no special role for philosophy, but his professed skepticism was a claim to exempt from criticism political principles which he held (and inherited) but could not make into a coherent narrative, specifically, ‘the demands of self-creation and of human solidarity,’ which he asserted were ‘equally valid yet forever incommensurable.’ Rorty, , Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (Cambridge, 1989), 15CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

98 Joseph Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy (1975); de Jouvenel, Bertrand, ‘The Treatment of Capitalism by Continental Intellectuals,’ in Capitalism and the Historians, ed. Hayek, F. A. (1974)Google Scholar; Ludwig von Mises, The Anti-Capitalist Mentality (1975); Peter Klein, ‘Why Economists Still Support Socialism,’ Mises Daily Article (11/15/06); Robert Nozick, ‘Why Do Intellectuals Oppose Capitalism?’ Cato Policy Report (1998).

99 See Paul Hollander, Political Pilgrims: Western Intellectuals in Search of the Good Society (1997). Philosophy, for many, is the articulation of a moral vision for those hostile to substantive religious communities.

100 These observations were suggested by Jaroslav Pelikan, but I do not recall the specific writings.

101 ‘The idea of system is inevitable in philosophy, and…no attempt to deny it can succeed unless it is pushed to the point of denying that the word philosophy has any meaning whatever.’ Collingwood, Philosophical Method, op. cit., 186.