Quintessence: Basic Readings from the Philosophy of W. V. Quine - Softcover

Quine, Willard Van Orman

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0674027558 ISBN 13: 9780674027558

Publisher: Belknap Press, 2008

Synopsis

Through the first half of the twentieth century, analytic philosophy was dominated by Russell, Wittgenstein, and Carnap. Influenced by Russell and especially by Carnap, another towering figure, Willard Van Orman Quine (1908–2000) emerged as the most important proponent of analytic philosophy during the second half of the century. Yet with twenty-three books and countless articles to his credit―including, most famously, Word and Object and "Two Dogmas of Empiricism"―Quine remained a philosopher's philosopher, largely unknown to the general public.

Quintessence for the first time collects Quine's classic essays (such as "Two Dogmas" and "On What There Is") in one volume―and thus offers readers a much-needed introduction to his general philosophy. Divided into six parts, the thirty-five selections take up analyticity and reductionism; the indeterminacy of translation of theoretical sentences and the inscrutability of reference; ontology; naturalized epistemology; philosophy of mind; and extensionalism. Representative of Quine at his best, these readings are fundamental not only to an appreciation of the philosopher and his work, but also to an understanding of the philosophical tradition that he so materially advanced.

About this title

About the Author:

W. V. Quine was Edgar Pierce Professor of Philosophy, Harvard University. He wrote twenty-one books, thirteen of them published by Harvard University Press.

Roger F. Gibson, Jr., is Professor of Philosophy at Washington University in St. Louis. He is the editor of The Cambridge Companion to Quine and coeditor of Perspectives on Quine.

Review:

“Specialists...will be grateful for this well-modulated selection of Quine's most important essays and articles, which reflect his thinking up to the end of his life.”―Leon H. Brody, Library Journal

“This new collection of published essays by Willard van Orman Quine (1908-2000) is presented by its editor, Roger F. Gibson (following a suggestion of Nelson Goodman's) as a "meta-anthology" or "anthology of anthologies," that is to say, an anthology of previously anthologized material. It contains twenty-five original essays by Quine that were published, in various venues, over a span of over sixty years in Quine's career...Quine's sharpness and lucidity, the depth of his confrontation with the empiricist tradition, as well as the strength of his alternative (physicalist and extensionalist) form of empiricism, come across very clearly...A heart-warming feature of this collection (one which is likely to help the beginner) is the coupling of some of the classical essays of Quine with all their polemical sharpness, to retrospective essays in which a much older (and kinder) Quine reflects on his past accomplishments, sometimes modifying the sharp edges of his polemical arguments, sometimes taking back excessive formulations, and often acknowledging the strength of his one-time opponents' views or offering words of self-criticism...Although this collections contains materials that are already well anthologized and collected, its distinctiveness and value lies in its bringing together two distinct voices of Quine's. In so doing it enriches our perspective on one of the most impressive philosophical oeuvres of the twentieth century.”―Isaac Nevo, APA Newsletter on Teaching Philosophy

About this edition

• Publisher: Belknap Press
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0674027558
• ISBN 13: 9780674027558
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 432