Towards an Analytic Pragmatism. Workshop on Bob Brandom's Recent Philosophy of Language (
2009)
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Abstract
Abstract. Focusing on part one of Tales of the Mighty Dead and on its relation to the afterword to Between Saying and Doing, I illustrate what reconstructive methodology is and argue
that theoretical thinking is one of its instances. I then show that the historical understanding
involved in telling the story of a philosophical tradition is another case of reconstruction: one
that deepens our understanding of the retrospective character of reconstruction itself, adding
something new to our conception of rationality. I then explore a further instance of reconstructive rationality, that is what Brandom calls “reconstructive metaphysics”, i.e. a reconstructive
theory whose aspiration is global rather than local. Finally, I argue that Brandom’s reconstructive metaphysics is basically a pragmatist metaphysics