This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Overview of Twentieth‐century Analytic Philosophy of Social Science Behind the Scenes of Prepostpositivist Analytic Philosophy of Social Science Conclusion Notes.

The fifth of the five volumes in our History of Western Philosophy of Religion. This volume deals with Western philosophy of religion in the twentieth century. It contains chapters on: James; Bergson; Whitehead; Hartshorne; Dewey; Russell; Scheler; Buber; Maritain; Jaspers; Tillich; Barth; Wittgenstein; Heidegger; Levinas; Weil; Ayer; Alston; Hick; Daly; Derrida; Plantinga; and Swinburne.

From Simon & Schuster and edited by Morris Weitz, 20th Century Philosophy: The Analytic Tradition is a collection of readings in the history of philosophy. The full scope and impact of Western philosophy from the Presocratics to the important thinkers of the twentieth century are presented in this original paperback series.

pt. I. Ethics, by J. H. Tufts. Aesthetics, by D. H. Parker. Axiology, by W. M. Urban. Philosophy of law, by Roscoe Pound. Philosophy of history, by J. E. Boodin. Philosophy of science, by V. F. Lenzen. Philosophy of life, by A. N. Whitehead. Metaphysics, by E. W. Hall. Theology and metaphysics, by D. C. Mackintosh.--pt. II. Philosophy of the twentieth century, by Bertrand Russell. Kantianism, by A. C. Ewing. Philosophy of Hegelianism, (...) by Richard Hoenigswald. The humanism of St. Thomas Aquinas, by Jacques Maritain. Transcendental absolutism, by George Santayana. (shrink)

It makes sense to ask from time to time where we are in the philosophical discussion. This article reviews the debate in the twentieth century. Michael Friedman has recently argued that the split between Continental and analytic philosophy is due to the inability, because of war, to carry forward a genuine debate begun by Heidegger and Carnap around the time of Heidegger's public controversy with Cassirer at Davos in 1929. I, however, argue that there was not even (...) the beginning of a genuine debate between Heidegger and Carnap. I argue further that the split between analytic and Continental philosophy originated earlier, in the analytic attack on idealism at the beginning of the century. And finally, I argue that the differences among analytic philosophy, Continental philosophy, and pragmatism, the third main current of twentieth-century philosophy, can be traced to differing reactions to Kant. (shrink)

The twentieth century was one of the most significant and exciting periods ever witnessed in philosophy, characterized by intellectual change and development on a massive scale. _The Routledge Companion to Twentieth Century Philosophy_ is an outstanding authoritative survey and assessment of the century as a whole. Featuring twenty-two chapters written by leading international scholars, this collection is divided into five clear parts and presents a comprehensive picture of the period for the first time: major (...) themes and movements logic, language, knowledge and metaphysics philosophy of mind, psychology and science phenomenology, hermeneutics, existentialism, and critical theory politics, ethics, aesthetics. Featuring annotated further reading and a comprehensive glossary, _The Routledge Companion to Twentieth Century Philosophy_ is indispensable for anyone interested in philosophy over the last one hundred years, suitable for both expert and novice alike. (shrink)

This collection features eleven original essays, divided into three thematic sections, which explore the work of Wilfrid Sellars in relation to other twentieth-century thinkers. Section I analyzes Sellars’s thought in light of some of his influential predecessors, specifically Ludwig Wittgenstein, Rudolf Carnap, John Cook Wilson, and Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz. The second group of essays explores from different perspectives Sellars’s place within the analytic tradition, including his relation with analytic Kantianism and analytic pragmatism. The book’s final section extracts some of (...) the most significant lessons Sellars’s work has to offer for contemporary philosophy. These chapters address his views on inference, his views on truth and its connection to recent discussions about truth-relativism and truth-pluralism, his conception of self-knowledge, and his theory of perceptual experience. (shrink)

The topic of the presented study consists of prominent issues characterizing philosophy during the period of its transition from the philosophy of the twentieth century to that of the twenty first century; reflections on those questions have been based upon a number of essential premises. Both components can be summarized in the following points: (1) the title of the article inquires about the most important achievements of twentieth-century philosophy, which comprise the eventual (...) heritage bequeathed to the philosophy of the twenty first century; (2) speaking about the accomplishments of philosophy the author has in mind the fulfillment of critical-demystification tasks, which consist of branding evil, disclosing illusions, dispelling myths and revealing untruth (appearances), etc.; (3) the preparation of answers to the titular question was based on the premise, which comprised a point of departure and the leitmotif of the whole article, maintaining that the achievements of twentieth-century philosophy and the legacy to be utilized by the philosophy of the following century within the above-mentioned range, consists primarily of the problems of being, reason and human. The author formulates a thesis claiming that twentieth-century philosophy possesses three characteristic features, namely: a) anti-metaphysical attitude, b) anti-rationalism and c) anti-humanism. The above mentioned philosophical problems together with the most frequently accepted manners of thinking about them—within the framework of assorted philosophical trends—are excellent examples of the critical function fulfilled by philosophy, which, apparently, will constitute the most valuable cultural potential also in the century which has just started. (shrink)

This work is a two-division study of twentieth century philosophies of history in Europe. Fields engaged in the study are transcendental philosophy, speculative metaphysics, theology, historiographical theory, and intellectual history. The main question concerns the historical finitude of History and its temporal horizon. The work explores the unsolved consequences of G.W.F. Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit and Martin Heidegger's Being and Time in twentieth-century German and French philosophies of History.

_Columbia Companion to Twentieth-Century Philosophies_ is the first guide to cover both the Anglo-American analytic and European continental traditions. Organized thematically, the volume thoroughly discusses the major movements and fields of each tradition and features the contributions of highly distinguished specialists in their fields. This book is divided into three sections. The first is devoted to highlighting the multidimensional work of philosophers identified with the analytic tradition, with Nicholas Rescher writing on neoidealism, Josephine Donovan commenting on feminist (...) class='Hi'>philosophy, Tyler Burge discussing the philosophy of language and mind, and Robert Hanna reflecting on Kant's legacy. The second section presents the thought of those who identified themselves with the continental tradition, featuring Jean Grondin on hermeneutics, Leonard Lawlor on phenomenology, Charles Scott on postmodernism, and Babette Babich on the philosophy of science. This volume also covers logical positivism, naturalism, pragmatism, aesthetics, existentialism, Marxism, the Frankfurt School, structuralism, psychoanalysis, political philosophy, ethics, and the philosophy of religion. The final section addresses concurrent trends in Indian, Chinese, Japanese, and African philosophy, and a comprehensive introduction by the editor not only provides a thorough outline of the problems and issues of the analytic and continental traditions but also boldly challenges the conviction that the two approaches must be rivals. _Columbia Companion to Twentieth-Century Philosophies_ is an invaluable overview of the ideas that have shaped a monumentally important century in the history of philosophy, offering an unusually panoramic perspective that allows readers to form their own interpretations of original materials. (shrink)

Medieval theology had an important influence on later philosophy which is visible in the empiricisms of Russell, Carnap, and Quine. Other thinkers, including McDowell, Kripke, and Dennett, show how we can overcome the distorting effects of that theological ecosystem on our accounts of the nature of reality and our relationship to it. In a different philosophical tradition, Hegel uses a secularized version of Christianity to argue for a kind of human knowledge that overcomes the influences of late-medieval voluntarism, and (...) some twentieth-century thinkers, including Benjamin and Derrida, instead defend a Jewish-influenced notion of the religious sublime. Frank B. Farrell analyzes and connects philosophers of different eras and traditions to show that modern philosophy has developed its practices on a terrain marked out by earlier theological and religious ideas, and considers how different philosophers have both embraced, and tried to escape from, those deep-seated patterns of thought. (shrink)

Hermann Lotze was a key figure in the philosophy of the second half of the 19th century, influencing practically all leading philosophical schools of the late 19th and the early 20th century: (i) the neo-Kantians; (ii) Brentano and his school of descriptive psychology; (iii) the British idealists; (iv) Husserl’s phenomenology; (v) Dilthey’s philosophy of life; (vi) Frege’s new logic; (vii) the early Cambridge analytic philosophy; (viii) William James’s pragmatism. The book first presents the main ideas (...) of Hermann Lotze’s philosophy (Part I), and then traces his influence on the descriptive psychology of Franz Brentano and Carl Stumpf (Part 2) and Cambridge analytic philosophy (Part 3). In addition, the book includes Bertrand Russell’s conspectus of J. E. McTaggart’s 1898 lectures on Lotze. (shrink)

This work is a two-division study of twentieth century philosophies of history in Europe. Fields engaged in the study are transcendental philosophy, speculative metaphysics, theology, historiographical theory, and intellectual history. The main question concerns the historical finitude of History and its temporal horizon. The work explores the unsolved consequences of G.W.F. Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit and Martin Heidegger's Being and Time in twentieth-century German and French philosophies of History.

In the early twentieth century an apparently obscure philosophical debate took place between F. H. Bradley and Bertrand Russell. The historical outcome was momentous: the demise of the movement known as British Idealism, and its eventual replacement by the various forms of analytic philosophy. Since then, a conception of this debate and its rights and wrongs has become entrenched in English-language philosophy. Stewart Candlish examines afresh the events of this formative period in twentieth-century thought (...) and comes to some surprising conclusions. (shrink)

The prelims comprise: Is Kant the Background of Twentieth—Century Philosophy? What was Accomplished in Twentieth—Century Philosophy? Hegel, the Kantian Aftermath, and Twentieth—Century Philosophy.

Poincaré’s conventionalism has thoroughly transformed both the philosophy of science and the philosophy of mathematics. In the former it gave rise to new insights into the complexities of scientific method, in the latter to a new account of the nature of (so-called) necessary truth. Not only proponents of conventionalism, such as the logical positivists, were influenced by Poincaré, but also outspoken critics of conventionalism, such as Quine, Putnam, and (as I will argue) Wittgenstein, were deeply inspired by conventionalist (...) ideas. Indeed, during the twentieth century, most philosophers of science and mathematics engaged in dialogue with conventionalism. As is often the case with complex ideas, there is no consensus about the meaning of conventionalism in general and Poincaré’s original version of it in particular. Nonetheless, notions such as underdetermination (of theory), empirical equivalence (of incompatible theories), implicit definition, holism, and conceptual relativity, all of which can be linked to Poincaré’s writings, have become central to philosophy. In tracing the flow of Poincaré’s ideas through the philosophical space of the twentieth century, this article emphasizes not only the stimulus provided by his actual views but also the effects of misreading and unjustified appropriation. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 39.1 (2001) 161-163 [Access article in PDF] Avrum Stroll. Twentieth Century Analytic Philosophy. New York: Columbia University Press, 2000. Pp. ii + 302. Cloth, $32.50. Analytic philosophy has entered the history of philosophy since the greatest twentieth-century philosophers of that tradition are dead or retired. It is appropriate then to have a book that clearly (...) and accurately explains the main theories and identifies its character. Avrum Stroll has written such a book, and more. He explains and evaluates where analytic philosophy is today and speculates about where it might go from here.Reserving the first and last chapters for discussion later, I will begin with the seven intervening ones: 2. "Philosophical Logic," 3. "Logical Positivism and the Tractatus," 4. "G. E. Moore: A Ton of Bricks," 5. "Wittgenstein's Later Philosophy: 'The Stream of Life,'" 6. "Ryle and Austin: the Golden Age of Oxford Philosophy," 7. "W. V. O. Quine," and 8."Direct Reference Theories." Chapter 2 deals mostly with Frege and Russell, and Chapter 8 deals mostly with Kripke and Putnam. As the titles and contents indicate, Stroll inclines to a great man understanding of philosophical history, a sensible [End Page 161] approach given the consensus that four or five philosophers have dominated analytic philosophy in the last century, with another four or five being especially talented.Among his expositions of the various philosophical "isms," such as logical atomism and positivism, Stroll intersperses biographical matters that give the book rhythm—he demolishes the widespread idea popularized by Ray Monk that Wittgenstein was anti-Semitic—and charm—he quotes a letter that Wittgenstein wrote to Moore shortly after learning that a certain piece of work could not count as his bachelor's thesis at Cambridge: Dear Moore: Your letter annoyed me. When I wrote Logik I didn't consult the Regulations, and therefore I think it would only be fair if you gave me my degree without consulting them so much either!... If I am not worth you making an exception for me even in some STUPID details then I may as well go to HELL directly... (pp. 91-2). In Chapter One, "The Solera System," Stroll lays out the controlling analogy of his book. The system refers to a way of making sherry. A quantity of wine, drawn from the oldest and best barrel, is replaced by the same quantity drawn from the next oldest, and so one for each successive barrel. The old wine improves the new, and the new refreshes the old. Likewise, "old philosophy has the power to educate and improve new philosophy," according to Stroll. He then continues: "And new philosophy not only preserves the quality and character of old philosophy but has the capacity to refresh it" (246).Also in Chapter One, Stroll observes that "philosophy is essentially a humanistic activity" (3). As such philosophy is tied to its history in a way that science is not. I would put his underlying point differently. Philosophy is humanistic because its problems are timeless and universal; these include what it is to exist, what it is to be conscious, what causation is, and what is the good life. Further, its solutions rarely hang on technical devices.But something has been amiss. Most of the theories distinctive of analytic philosophy, from the theory of descriptions, to modal logic, the causal theory of names, and functionalism, seem to approach these problems obliquely. Also, some of the most respected analytic theories are 'evasion' theories. Eschewing the need to give a substantive account of relations, analytic philosophers hold that relations are n-tuples of objects, which themselves are reducible to unordered sets of objects. Notwithstanding its formal adequacy, the substantive issue seems to be left begging. Loving, causing, being taller than, and being the square of are all relations, but is it illuminating to treat all of them in the same way? Moderating his normal optimism, Stroll says, "I wonder whether the very conception of the role of philosophy has not changed recently. It strikes me that the classical problems that the solera model presupposes are... (shrink)

What is Albert Einstein’s place in the history of twentieth-century philosophy of science? Were one to consult the histories produced at mid-century from within the Vienna Circle and allied movements (e.g., von Mises 1938, 1939, Kraft 1950, Reichenbach 1951), then one would find, for the most part, two points of emphasis. First, Einstein was rightly remembered as the developer of the special and general theories of relativity, theories which, through their challenge to both scientific and philosophical (...) orthodoxy made vivid the need for a new kind of empiricism (Schlick 1921) whereby one could defend the empirical integrity of the theory of relativity against challenges 1 coming mainly from the defenders of Kant. Second, the special and general theories of relativity were wrongly cited as straightforwardly validating central tenets of the logical empiricist program, such as verificationism, and Einstein was wrongly represented as having, himself, explicitly endorsed those same philosophical principles. As we now know, logical empiricism was not the monolithic philosophical movement it was once taken to have been. Those associated with the movement disagreed deeply about fundamental issues concerning the structure and interpretation of scientific theories, as in the protocol sentence debate, and about the overall aims of the movement, as in the debate between the left and right wings 2 of the Vienna Circle over the role of politics in science and philosophy. Along with such differences went subtle differences in the assessment of Einstein’s legacy to logical empiricism. Philipp Frank–himself a dissenter from central points of right-wing Vienna Circle doctrine–deserves.. (shrink)

In this book, ten essays examine the contributions made to the issue of the philosophical significance of grammar by Frege, Russell, Bradley, Husserl, Wittgenstein, Carnap and Heidegger.

The Companion is organized into two sections, each one of which reflects the developments of the Anglo-American Analytic and the Continental European philosophical traditions respectively. An appendix presents the main accomplishments of non-Western philosophies in the same time frame. Each section discusses the main movements and fields of the discipline throughout the century. The authors have maintained a balance between the historian's commitment to breadth and accuracy with the commitment of the systematic philosopher to the engaged point of view (...) and to critical reflection. The result is a distinctive reference book made up of a series of philosophical studies -an invaluable companion to anyone who is searching for a panoramic but also reliable and challenging presentation of the philosophical ideas which shaped the last century. (shrink)

R. G. Collingwood saw one of the main tasks of philosophers and of historians of human thought in uncovering what he called the ultimate presuppositions of different thinkers, of different philosophical movements and of entire eras of intellectual history. He also noted that such ultimate presuppositions usually remain tacit at first, and are discovered only by subsequent reflection. Collingwood would have been delighted by the contrast that constitutes the overall theme of the essays collected in this volume. Not only has (...) this dichotomy ofviews been one ofthe mostcrucial watersheds in the entire twentieth-century philosophical thought. Not only has it remained largely implicit in the writings of the philosophers for whom it mattered most. It is a truly Collingwoodian presupposition also in that it is not apremise assumed by different thinkers in their argumentation. It is the presupposition of a question, an assumption to the effect that a certain general question can be raised and answered. Its role is not belied by the fact that several philosophers who answered it one way or the other seem to be largely unaware that the other answer also makes sense - if it does. This Collingwoodian question can be formulated in a first rough approximation by asking whether language - our actual working language, Tarski's "colloquiallanguage" - is universal in the sense of being inescapable. This formulation needs all sorts of explanations, however. (shrink)

Philosophy plays an integral role in French society, affecting its art, drama, politics, and culture. In this accessible, chronological survey, Matthews offers some explanations for the enduring popularity of the subject and traces the developments that French philosophy has taken in the twentieth century, from its roots in the thought of Descartes to key figures such as Bergson, Sartre, Marcel, Merleau-Ponty, Foucault, Derrida, and the recent French Feminists.

This chapter contains sections titled: The eighteenth‐century legacy Idealism and nature philosophy Mud and gold Evolution and naturalism Sociology, organicism, and anarchism The city and the country Wilderness and the loss of Being.