Slow Philosophy

Metaphilosophy is typically concerned with such questions as the goals of philosophy, the relations between philosophy and the arts and sciences, the methods of argumentation and tools of analysis employed by philosophers, major trends and schools of thought, the prospects for progress and future directions. But one topic that has been consistently overlooked in these discussions is that of the temporality, or pace and tempo, of philosophy. Initially this may seem a relatively insignificant topic and therefore one that has been justifiably passed over. The tempo of philosophy, however, relates in quite direct ways to the nature of philosophical practice and how this has been shaped by wider social currents and changes – matters that are of crucial concern to metaphilosophy. Most of us, for example, are keenly aware that modern life is fast and frenzied, and its busy‐ness appears only to be accelerating. How has this impacted upon the ways in which philosophy is understood and produced? Does the fast pace of contemporary life compel us to reevaluate not only our ways of living but also our ways of thinking as philosophers? In response to such questions, I propose that philosophy is in urgent need of slowing down, and to this end I develop what might be called a ‘Slow Philosophy’.     

分析哲学的兴趣:在哲学与生活之间--从批判理论和生活世界的视角对罗素和维特根斯坦的一个批评解读

分析哲学是有其人文和社会的兴趣与关怀的。本文试图从批判理论的视角．运用哲学与生活世界相关联的解释学方法,分别解读了分析哲学创始人之一的罗素的逻辑分析哲学与他作为一个哲学家的社会批判兴趣之间的关系,以及前期维特根斯坦的逻辑语言分析哲学和后期的日常语言分析哲学与维特根斯坦所属的生活世界的关系。指出分析哲学由于没有建立在对现代性的科学一形而上学思维方式和生活方式的足够反思基础上,所以它对形而上学的批判兴趣最终仍然导致了一种非批判的形而上学。     

On experimental philosophy and the history of philosophy: a reply to Sorell

In this paper, we reply to Tom Sorell’s criticism of our engagement with the history of philosophy in our book, The Theory and Practice of Experimental Philosophy. We explain why our uses of the history of philosophy are not undermined by Sorell’s criticism and why our position is not threatened by the dilemma Sorell advances. We argue that Sorell has mischaracterized the dialectical context of our discussion of the history of philosophy and that he has mistakenly treated our use of the history of philosophy as univocal, when in fact we called on the history of philosophy in several different ways in our text.     

Intuition and the socratic method: Two opposed ways of knowing?

Socratic method and intuition are two ways of knowing commonly thought as opposed. The author shows how both ways of knowing can be linked in an education that has philosophy as its armature.     

‘Strange epoch!’

The present era is one of disarray. The familiar ways of knowing, representing and reading have changed unrecognisably, but there is no agreement as to the new direction in which either Western culture or Western philosophy is heading. A main reason for this situation is Heidegger's criticism of modern philosophy which shatters the very foundations of modern philosophy, without establishing the hoped for continuity. This paper examines Heidegger's critique of modern philosophy and evaluates the rereading of the history of philosophy that he undertakes in developing his critique, showing that it is incomplete in that his reconstruction of traditional philosophy has left some important chapters untouched, and that he has overlooked the ethical realm. Following this, the paper briefly ex-plores Levinas' relation to the tradition and his efforts to fill in the ethical and historical gaps that Heidegger had left.     

On the Nature of Philosophy

This paper claims that what philosophy primarily does is interpret our notions, offer ways of understanding these notions that are not scientific in nature but not contrary to science either. The paper draws a distinction between conceptual analysis, a highly constrained enterprise that is supposed to bring to light what was in the concept all along, and the interpretation of notions, a creative enterprise that offers ways of understanding notions that were not already prefigured by the content of these notions—philosophy consists in the latter, not the former. It explains how these interpretations are justified and what the difference is between better and worse interpretations. The remainder of the paper is organized around three headings: philosophy and science, philosophy and language, and philosophy and progress. It claims that in philosophy there is no real progress, but that philosophy does move forward because the notions at issue are endlessly interpretable.     

Prolegomena to any Future History of Analytic Philosophy

Abstract: The careful historical and metaphilosophical attention recently bestowed upon analytic philosophy has revealed that traditional ways of defining it are inadequate. In the face of this inadequacy, contemporary authors have proposed new definitions that detach analytic philosophy from its turn of the twentieth century origins. I argue that this contemporary trend in defining analytic philosophy is misguided, and that it diminishes the likelihood of our coming to an accurate historical and metaphilosophical understanding of it. This is especially unsatisfactory since such understanding is essential to finding an adequate remedy for the widely perceived ills of contemporary analytic philosophy. I suggest that a more fruitful approach to developing such understanding might begin with treating the unity of analytic philosophy as illusory.     

REFLECTIONS ON THE LEGACY AND FUTURE OF THE CONTINENTAL TRADITION WITH REGARD TO THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY OF RACE

The legacy and future of continental philosophy with regard to the critical philosophy of race can be seen in prominent canonical philosophical figures, the scholarship of contemporary philosophers, and recent edited collections and book series. The following reflections highlight some (though certainly not all) of the contacts and overlaps between a select number of continental philosophers and the critical philosophy of race. In particular, I consider how the continental tradition has contributed to the development of the critical philosophy of race by offering tools from existentialism, phenomenology, and genealogy to emphasize questions of existence, facticity, lived experience, and historicity as they relate to analyses of race, racism, slavery, and colonialism. 1 I argue that these tools have been used both implicitly and explicitly in the writings of contemporary continental philosophers who theorize about race and that the critical philosophy of race has impacted and expanded continental philosophy in significant ways.     

Analytic philosophy challenged. Scepticism and arguing transcendentally

Analytic philosophy has recently been challenged from a perspective advocated by Richard Rorty: this favours edifying philosophy against systematic philosophy comprising also analytic philosophy. In Rorty's presentation analytic philosophy is one more variant of the Cartesian—Kantian epistemology which, being committed to a permanent framework of inquiry rooted in our human subjectivity, implies the uniqueness of one conceptual scheme.Against this tenet I argue in two ways. First, I show that analytic philosophy of mind and language with the Fregean background and possible world semantics implies the pluralism of conceptual schemes on logical-conventionalist grounds. Secondly, I show that although analytic philosophy shares the claim for legitimation of a conceptual scheme with Kantian epistemology, it is critical of the latter in that the uniqueness-claim is refuted.In connection with legitimation the relation of analytic philosophy to scepticism is also discussed.     

Feminist Philosophy of Disability: A Genealogical Intervention

This article is a feminist intervention into the ways that disability is researched and represented in philosophy at present. Nevertheless, some of the claims that I make over the course of the article are also pertinent to the marginalization in philosophy of other areas of inquiry, including philosophy of race, feminist philosophy more broadly, indigenous philosophies, and LGBTQI philosophy. Although the discipline of philosophy largely continues to operate under the guise of neutrality, rationality, and objectivity, the institutionalized structure of the discipline implicitly and explicitly promotes certain ontologies, epistemologies, and methodologies as bona fide philosophy, while casting the ontologies, epistemologies, and methodologies of marginalized philosophies as mere simulacra of allegedly fundamental ways of knowing and doing philosophy and thus rendering these marginalized philosophies more or less expendable. This article is designed to show that legitimized philosophical discourses are vital mechanisms in the problematization of disability.     

Revival and significance of political philosophy at present time

Taking a panoramic view on the history of modern philosophy, we can learn that political philosophy, a new arena for modern philosophy, has become an important field in philosophical studies since the later half of the 20th century. As far as the problem domain of political philosophy is concerned, political philosophy is only a special form of philosophy. The revival of political philosophy, however, indicates that philosophical inspection of political matters has regained legitimacy, and also means the restaging of philosophy as a knowledge type at modern times. In one sense, we can view the newly-revived political philosophy as typical modern philosophy, because its problem domain, its unique angle of looking into the life world and its ideal concern about the actual world make it one of the best ways in which we can reflect the existence of mankind in modern times. __________ Translated from Zhexue Yanjiu 哲学研究 (Philosophical Studies), 2005 (6) by Teng Jianhui     

What is General Philosophy of Science?

The very idea of a general philosophy of science relies on the assumption that there is this thing called science??as opposed to the various individual sciences. In this programmatic piece I make a case for the claim that general philosophy of science is the philosophy of science in general or science as such. Part of my narrative makes use of history, for two reasons. First, general philosophy of science is itself characterised by an intellectual tradition which aimed to develop a coherent philosophical view of science, qua a part of culture with distinctive epistemic features and a distinctive relation to reality. But, second, this tradition went through some important conceptual shifts which re-oriented it and made it more sensitive to the actual development of science itself. The historical narrative focuses on three such moments: the defining moment, associated with Aristotle, and two major conceptual turns, related to Kant and Duhem. The pressures on the very idea of a general philosophy of science that followed the collapse of the macro-models of science that became popular in the 1960s, the pressures that lay all of the emphasis on fragmentation and not on integration, can be dealt with by a new synthesis within general philosophy of science of the constitutive and the historical, in light of the intellectual tradition that has defined it.     

Kant and The Marriage Right*

Abstract: The provision of a marriage right is a distinctive aspect of Kant's political philosophy and seems, initially, difficult to reconcile with the general concern with ensuring external freedom of action apparent in the universal principle of Right and the sole innate right said to follow from this principle. I claim that this provision can be regarded as consistent with this general focus and that Kant's treatment of issue suggests an interesting secular argument for the institution of marriage.     

Catholic Head Teachers: The importance of culture building in approaches to spiritual and moral development and the transmission of faith tradition

Voluntary aided Catholic schools form 10% of the state education provision. Within the state system, voluntary aided schools maintain a particular educational philosophy and the head teachers of these schools play an important role in maintaining and developing this philosophy. This paper explores the role of the head teacher of the Catholic school in developing a school culture that seeks to make a positive contribution to children's spiritual and moral development.     

Adolescent acting out when a parent has cancer

The psychological stresses which cancer exerts on a family system can be immense, both situationally and developmentally. These stresses can be unusually intense for the adolescent who has a parent ill with cancer. They can impact upon the adolescent in overt ways, such as increased household or child care duties, or in more covert ways such as in subtle role shifts in the relationship between the adolescent and both the ill and the well parent. The covert role shifts are especially thought to promote acting out and potential decompensation on the part of the adolescent. The acting out can have system-defecting and system-unifying properties, with the decompensation secondary to unbearable role shifts that reintensify the adolescent emotional contact with parents in the midst of a developmental process of separation. General clinical intervention points are suggested to reduce the crisis and ameliorate the negative developmental potential.1979, Fall     

Meditations on the Origin of Philosophy

Wittgenstein in his later writing often remarked on the negative influence of language on philosophy. Here, I call attention to a previously unnoticed but significant way that language has influenced philosophy: we use the very same vocabulary in two different ways, in philosophical talk and in our everyday interactive speaking‐situations. Our propensity for using this double talk has prevented us from resolving most philosophical problems. Is our attraction to philosophical talk the result of our learning to use a phonetic alphabet, so that words can be used outside of interactive situations?     

Adolescent acting out when a parent has cancer

The psychological stresses which cancer exerts on a family system can be immense, both situationally and developmentally. These stresses can be unusually intense for the adolescent who has a parent ill with cancer. They can impact upon the adolescent in overt ways, such as increased household or child care duties, or in more covert ways such as in subtle role shifts in the relationship between the adolescent and both the ill and the well parent. The covert role shifts are especially thought to promote acting out and potential decompensation on the part of the adolescent. The acting out can have system-defecting and sytem-unifying properties, with the decompensation secondary to unbearable role shifts that reintensify the adolescent emotional contact with parents in the midst of a developmental process of separation. General clinical intervention points are suggested to reduce the crisis and ameliorate the negative developmental potential.     

The Convergent Conceptions of Being in Mainstream Analytic and Postmodern Continental Philosophy

This article argues that there is ultimately a very close convergence between prominent conceptions of being in mainstream Anglo‐American philosophy and mainstream postmodern Continental philosophy. One characteristic idea in Anglo‐American or analytic philosophy is that we establish what is meaningful and so what we can say about what is, by making evident the limits of sense or what simply cannot be meant. A characteristic idea in Continental philosophy of being is that being emerges through contrast and interplay with what it is not, with what has no being at all and so is beyond sense. The two traditions consequently conceive being in significantly related ways. As a result, what the Continental tradition gets at with “the meaning of being as such and in general,” and how it gets at it, has much in common with what the Anglo‐American tradition gets at, and how it gets at it, by establishing “what can be meaningfully said.”     

D. Z. Phillips on Christian immortality

D. Z. Phillips is widely assumed to have held that Christian immortality has no reality outside of language. The author challenges that assumption, demonstrating that Phillips wished to show that contemporary analytic philosophy distorts the reality that immortality has for believers. While most philosophical accounts of Christian immortality depend upon terms that have little religious significance, Phillips offered accounts that stress the centrality of that significance. The author gives an account of the sort of philosophical attention that Phillips gave to Christian immortality and demonstrates Phillips’ lament for both the lack of this sort of attention in contemporary philosophy as well as the loss of certain ways of living that exemplify a belief in eternal life with God.