Revolution in Philosophy
Danielle Macbeth
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Abstract
In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, mathematics, physics, and philosophy all were fundamentally transformed. In the nineteenth century mathematics was again transformed and in the twentieth century physics was as well. Philosophy has not been similarly transformed but has remained deeply Kantian, as is shown in particular for the case of mathematical logic. We need a revolution in philosophy.
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I will not wax millenial. But we are nearing the end of a century. It is conceivable that its most important philosophical event will take place between now and December 31. But it is unlikely. So we are at a point where we can, not unreasonably, look back and assess the philosophical events of our century. Any philosophically respectable century has its moments; a point, or points, at which ways of thinking about problems, and about philosophy itself, change radically. Such a moment might fairly be called revolutionary, if one does not puff up that term unduly. Two revolutions in a century would be a lot. I will describe what I think is the crucial revolutionary moment in our century. I need to acknowledge that the view I will present is personal, or at least far from received wisdom. Some of you may find it biased. First, I do not think that the revolution means that philosophy is, or should be, at an end, that we are somehow in a period of 'post-philosophy', or that the idea of a philosophical problem is somehow passé. The revolution I am going to describe left us with some genuine, and severe, philosophical problems. At the end of my talk I will describe them, and hint, but no more, at a way with them-a way I do not know to be adequate, since it has not yet been tried fully. Second, it will occur to some of you that my revolution is suspiciously Anglophone, so, perhaps, parochial. If 'Anglophone' includes enough of Vienna and Berlin, and enough work written in German, then my revolution is, indeed, Anglophone. Given the political events of our century, it is not surprising that that should be so. In any event, such is life. If I thought the action were elsewhere, I would be there. The revolution I have in mind can be dated as occurring between 1930 and 1960 (interrupted by the war). That is a period that opened with the start of Wittgenstein's lecturing at Cambridge (roughly coincident with his new approach to philosophy), and ending with J. L. Austin's deatha period I am construing as broad enough to capture two other key revolutionary figures, Hilary Putnam and Noam Chomsky. (Stuart Hampshire, in his memoriam, said of Austin, "He could not have adopted a special tone of voice, or attitude of mind, for philosophical questions." That attitude encapsulates the revolution.) A more serious worry for me than those mentioned above is that some of my colleagues may think that the real important revolution in the twentieth century happened somewhat earlier than that. And they would be apt to mention Russell, and Wittgenstein before his change of approach, as at its centre. Now, I agree that those figures were at the centre of an important revolution. I will say a few more words about it later. But, as I see things, that was a nineteenth century revolution-indeed, that century's most important one-begun by Frege in 1879. My twentieth century revolution is, in large part, though not just, a reaction against just the features of this earlier one that most exercised Russell and early Wittgenstein. Some, of course, will find that reaction unfounded. That is a controversy into which I plan to enter in what follows.
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Revolution and the Return of Metaphysics
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What is the relationship between metaphysics and political revolution? Despite being two of the most widely discredited concepts in contemporary European philosophy, this chapter argues that we are witnessing the return of both in the work of French philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Alain Badiou. Their return, however, is no mere repetition of the previous forms of classical metaphysics and modern revolution- defined by totality and the state. Rather, it is a differen- tial return: a return that changes something fundamental about these concepts and breathes into them a desperately needed new life. Many contemporary Eu- ropean philosophers have announced the "end of metaphysics" and the "death of philosophy." They have buried the ideas of metaphysics and revolution many years ago, but continue to pursue the endless task of vilifYing them- Jest their specters return from the grave.
Kelly Becker and Iain Thomson, eds, The Cambridge History of Philosophy, 1945–2015 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020), front matter.
The Cambridge History of Philosophy, 1945–2015 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020)., 2020
This landmark achievement in philosophical scholarship brings together leading experts from the diverse traditions of Western philosophy in a common quest to illuminate and explain the most important philosophical developments since the Second World War. Focusing particularly (but not exclusively) on those insights and movements that most profoundly shaped the English-speaking philosophical world, this volume bridges the traditional divide between "analytic" and "Continental" philosophy while also reaching beyond it. The result is an authoritative guide to the most important advances and transformations that shaped philosophy during this tumultuous and fascinating period of history, developments that continue to shape the field today. It will be of interest to students and scholars of contemporary philosophy of all levels and will prove indispensable for any serious philosophical collection.
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Towards a Mathematical Revolution
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Our national life will benefit immeasurably from a fresh approach to mathematical education. This is true not just economically and socially. For mathematics, properly approached, is a tonic for the brain and a gymnasium for the mind, and possesses an unrivalled capacity for teaching us how to Think.
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Philosophy: Accident, Epiphenomenon Or Contributory Cause of the Changing Trends of Mathematics: a Sketch of the Development from the Twelfth Through …
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The poets, Priscian's grammar, the rhetors, and even Aristotle's discussion of sophisms, belong to the traditional realm of the trivium; Justinian's Roman Law must also be understood as an extension of the study of dialectical Canon Law and theology, and hence as a traditional subject which aroused a sudden vigorous interest to the dismay of Bernard of Clairvaux and his companions-inarms. The really new learning is represented, we see, by Euclid, Ptolemy, Galen, and possibly (but probably not) by the »philosophical opinions«. Broader interest in theoretical mathematics and in high-level astronomy (not necessarily followed 11 An illustrative example is Gherardo di Cremona himself. In one of his translations from the Arabic, a Liber mensurationum edited by Busard (1968), Roman numerals, Hindu numerals and number words written in full are mixed up completely; even though the Arabic treatise is lost it is fairly certain that all its numbers were written as full words. 12 Non enim in figmentis poeticis, non in opinionibus phylosophicis, in regulis Prisciani, in legibus Iustiniani, in doctrina Galieni, in oribus rhetoricis, in perplexionibus Aristotelis, in teorematibus Euclidis, in conjecturis Tolomei, summan studiorum suorum ponere et tempus suum conterere debet christianus, multominus monachus et canonicus. Et quidem artes, quas liberales vocant ad acuendum ingenium et intelligentiam Scripturarum multum valent, sed, iuxta philosophum, salutande sunt a limine. Quoted from Grabmann 1941: 61 (my translation).
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From Little Philosophy to Big Philosophy. Some problems in the application of traditional historical-philosophical notions to the evolution of contemporary philosophy. - GENEVA 15-17/9/2016
In the last seventy years, the philosophical community, i.e the people professionally engaged in philosophy, has faced an immense growth, due to huge public investments in universities and research after the Second World War in Western countries [Rescher 2005, Marconi 2014]. We can say that in no other period of the history of philosophy there were so many professional philosophers as in the last fifty years, as there were not so many scientists [Price 1963]. This quantitative increase questions the historian of contemporary philosophy in multiple ways. In the present paper I would like to address the methodological issues in historiography of philosophy related to this increase. Therefore I will ask which are the concepts and methods that we should use in order to understand properly the new situation of contemporary philosophical research. In particular, I will argue that traditional concepts and assumption used in writing the history of philosophy are today just partially fit to describe the contemporary evolution of philosophy. The historical object they aim to describe is transforming in such a way that they are more an obstacle than a help to its comprehension. In order to reach this conclusion, my contribution is structured in the following way. In the first part I will provide some quantitative data about the growth of philosophical enterprise in the second half of twentieth century; secondly, I will sketch an analysis of the key notions used in the traditional everyday work of the historian of philosophy. I will focus on the very workaday " toolkit " , which comprehend notions such as " author " , " text " , " tradition " , " philosophical school " and so on. In the third part, I will present some tensions to which these very commonplace notions are subject due to the quantitative growth of philosophy. In particular, I will attempt to show how the traditional notion of " author " as the central unit of history of philosophy is partially inadequate to describe contemporary philosophy. Hence, I will suggest that quantitative methods used in contemporary studies of science, such as scientometrics and science-mapping, can in part supply this inadequacy, opening at the same time new perspectives on the development of contemporary philosophy. Finally, in the light of the previous considerations, I will reflect upon the role of this non-standard history of philosophy in contemporary philosophical research, situating my view in the debate started with the collection of essays about historiography of philosophy edited by Rorty, Schneewind and Skinner in 1984 [Rorty-Schneewind-Skinner 1984].
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