What philosophy professors spend their time on is often out of step with what the public feels philosophy ought to be concerned with. Instead of dealing with the big questions of life, pursuing wisdom or providing orientation, many academic philosophers seem to be engaged in strange intellectual rituals that are either unintelligible or irrelevant to ordinary people. What is more, the media and numerous scholars in the humanities (if few philosophers themselves) frequently profess that systematic thinking in pursuit of truth — i.e. philosophy — is a futile remnant of bygone times. It is the noble goal of Brian Leiter's anthology to attempt to repudiate said beliefs and to rehabilitate academic philosophy.

Given Leiter's intent on behalf of a "future for philosophy," his selection of texts is unfortunate.

–          Entire strands of modern philosophy like German Idealism and phenomenology are simply dismissed as "philosophically defunct" (p. 23). This view, especially as it is merely decreed and not argued for, comes as a surprise. In the outreach of philosophy to neighboring disciplines in the humanities and to the public at large, phenomeno­logical studies are central. Additionally, there is currently an increase of studies, from both Continental and analytical philosophers, on German Idealism. Not in small part based upon new research on idealistic and phenome­no­logical thinkers, the old Continental / analytical divide is finally disappearing. Hence, both strands surely merit consideration in a volume that aims at representing everything that has a future in contemporary philosophy.

–          Asian, African, and Latin American philosophy are not at all represented in Leiter's book. This is most regrettable, since the philosophical traditions of Asia, Africa and Latin America have forever stayed in touch with the real-world affairs and with the problems of ordinary people, much more than 20^th century Anglo­Amer­ican philosophy. Having kept the quest for wisdom at the center of their intellectual endeavors, these traditions offer important resources for the very reinvigoration of philosophy to which Leiter aspires.

–          Moreover, of the fourteen articles in Leiter's book, most are on theoretical issues; only four essays deal with practical philosophy, and none with aesthetics. This imbalance is detrimental to the purpose of the book, too, because aesthetical and ethical questions draw many students and the public to philosophy.

Hence, if the future for philosophy is not to be confined to the academic world, why leave out the very traditions that do have a track record in reaching out to audiences outside the ivory tower? The future for philosophy seems bleak if the philosophy of the future should be of relevance only to philosophy professors.

The cultural imbalance is, however, not the only bias of Leiter's selection. Within Anglo-American philosophy his volume leans, token representatives of other strands aside (e.g. Williamson, 106-129), heavily toward philosophers who, like Leiter himself, represent the so-called "naturalist turn" in recent philosophy. Now, some emphasis on the return of "naturalist" philosophy is certainly legitimate. After all, those who subscribe to the notion of "naturalist" philosophy endeavor to overcome the strong "linguistic" focus that dominated much of 20^th century philosophy, often dissociating it from public concerns. However, the book gives the impression of a "naturalist" manifesto moreso than an attempt to represent the scene; less (self-promotion) would have been more.

All of the articles in Leiter's book are written from experts for experts, and most of them are, therefore, intelligible to expert alone. In what follows, I shall focus on contributions that are written in such a way and about such topics that might interest readers outside the narrow circle of professional philosopher.

 

First, Leiter's own contribution, "The Hermeneutics of Suspicion: Recovering Marx, Nietzsche and Freud" (74-106) ought to be mentioned. It is a fine piece of argumentative reconstruction that recovers the original power of Marx's, Nietzsche's, and Freud's ideas from under the cover of recent (moralizing) readings that tend to interpret much of their inquisitive and critical impact away. The theories of Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud are challenging our conventional wisdom only when we take seriously their claims to give us a true account of reality. "What bears emphasizing here is that — the fashions of academic moral and literary theory notwithstanding — the continuing importance of Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud stands (or falls) with their contribution to the causal explanation of the moral and social world we inhabit. The proper task for scholars is not the moralistic reinterpretation of these claims, but their development and evaluation within the actual naturalistitic framework" (105; italics are mine) of contemporary philosophy. Seeing the careful attention that Leiter applies to cast the intentions of his philosophical heroes in the right light, one merely regrets that this dedication to a fair trial does not extend to the entire range of Continental thinkers.

Jaegwon Kim delivers an instructive account of "The Mind-Body Problem at Century's Turn" (129-153). He brings home his message loudly and clearly that "unless we bring the supposed mental causes into the physical world, there is no hope of vindicating their status as causes, and that the reality of mental causation requires reduction of mentality to physical processes, or of minds to brains" (136). Yet, this does not interpret our subjective mental experience away. Everything hinges on the perspective we take on mental activity. The "difference between a friendly adviser and a fortune teller (or a social psychologist doing research on decision-making)" illustrates that aptly. Our friend takes our point of view "whereas a fortune teller takes a third-person predictor's perspective. […] I believe this to be the plausibile intuitive core of the doctrine […] that explanation in the human sciences must be grounded in an empathetic understanding of the agents involved, and that in this respect it is unlike explanation of natural phenomena based on causal/predictive laws" (150). Hence, the qualitative aspects of our mental self-perception are real for us as well as for others, although they do not feature in the approach that the natural sciences take to mental phenomena. This in turn could be made into an argument for phenome­nology, as it is the very discipline that explores the first-person perspective to consciousness.

In both content and style, Kim's article stands in stark contrast with the following annoyingly schematic essay on "The Representational Character of Experience" by David Chalmers (153-182). Jaegwon Kim demonstrates how philosophy, even when entering into highly abstract domains, can be presented in an engaging way. Chalmers, on the contrary, by his use of a needlessly formalistic terminology, makes even the simplest distinctions unintelligible to anyone but the professional reader.

A fascinating contribution comes from Peter Railton. In "Toward an Ethics that Inhabits the World" (265-285) he argues that empirical knowledge and creative imagination play a large part in moral decision-making. Hence he demands that moral philosophy open up to empirical knowledge, proffered by psychological and neuroscientific studies, about what actually undergirds and influences our moral behavior. Furthermore, Railton defends a controlled use of imaginative thinking. "The imagination serves action and deliberation not only by helping us to weigh alternatives and feel their force; it helps us enlarge and elaborate the range itself. Experience, rich as it is, does not typically wear its alternatives on its sleeve. On the contrary, it tends to encourage a settling of the mind into a view of what is, and always will be, the normal course of events — the "natural". Yet to be prudent or moral I must do more than project the familiar and actual — I need to represent to myself an appropriate range of the unfamiliar but possible" (278). Hence, rationality means more than just analytical reasoning.

Philip Pettit concurs. In his "Existentialism, Quietism, and Philosophy" (304-329), he endorses the use of thought experiments and "intuition-pumps" (325) to bridge the gap between our everyday worldview and arcane philosophical thought. The philosophers' attempt to expand our intellectual confines must remain in contact with the conventional beliefs that it challenges. Only then can philosophy reform the lives that are based upon said beliefs. "The interest of philosophy is associated in considerable part with the challenge it poses to let the results of philosophical reflection reverberate in one's day-to-day experience and life. If professional philosophy loses touch with that dimension, then it is in danger of degenerating into a routine scholasticism or of being absorbed into other disciplines […]. Not only that indeed. If professional philosophy loses touch with that dimension, then it will miss out on an important source of confirmation and disconfirmation for philosophical views: the view that cannot be absorbed in any way within ordinary experience and conduct must for that very reason come under serious question" (322).

One must agree. In the return of professional philosophy to tasks that the "love of wisdom" (philo-sophia) would assign, therein indeed will lie the future for philosophy.

 

NB: I am very grateful to my assistant, Tracy Flynn, for smoothing out my Teutonic English.

 

© 2007 Claus Dierksmeier

 

Claus Dierksmeier, Ph.D. is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Stonehill College in Easton (Boston), MA. His specialty is the practical philosophy of the 18^th –21^st century.

Categories: Philosophical