What Philosophers Know: Case Studies in Recent Analytic Philosophy - Softcover

Gary Gutting

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0521672228 ISBN 13: 9780521672221

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2009

Synopsis

Philosophy has never delivered on its promise to settle the great moral and religious questions of human existence, and even most philosophers conclude that it does not offer an established body of disciplinary knowledge. Gary Gutting challenges this view by examining detailed case studies of recent achievements by analytic philosophers such as Quine, Kripke, Gettier, Lewis, Chalmers, Plantinga, Kuhn, Rawls, and Rorty. He shows that these philosophers have indeed produced a substantial body of disciplinary knowledge, but he challenges many common views about what philosophers have achieved. Topics discussed include the role of argument in philosophy, naturalist and experimentalist challenges to the status of philosophical intuitions, the importance of pre-philosophical convictions, Rawls' method of reflective equilibrium, and Rorty's challenge to the idea of objective philosophical truth. The book offers a lucid survey of recent analytic work and presents a new understanding of philosophy as an important source of knowledge.

About this title

About the Author

Gary Gutting holds the Notre Dame Chair in Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame. His most recent publications include The Cambridge Companion to Foucault, 2nd Edition (2005), Foucault: A Very Short Introduction (2005) and French Philosophy in the Twentieth Century (2001).

Edition details

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 2009
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0521672228
• ISBN 13: 9780521672221
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 264