The twenty-sixth volume in the highly acclaimed Library of Living Philosophers series is devoted to the work of British philosopher of logic and metaphysician, P. F. Strawson. Following the Library of Living Philosophers series format, the volume contains an intellectual autobiography, twenty critical and descriptive essays by leading philosophers from around the world, Strawson's replies to the essays, and a bibliography of Strawson's works.
Born in 1919, Strawson was a leading proponent of ordinary language philosophy. He is the author of the early and extremely influential paper "On Referring" in which he criticized Russell's theory of definite descriptions. His most influential book, Individuals, helped to raise the status of metaphysics as a philosophical enterprise. Themes first addressed in this book continued to be of concern to him in his later work, including the possibility of objective knowledge, the subject-predicate distinction, the ontological status of persons, and the problem of individuation.
Contributors to the book include: Ruth Garrett Millikan, Susan Haack, E. M. Adams, Panayot Butchvarov, Richard Behling, John McDowell, Simon Blackburn, Tadeusz Szubka, David Frederick Haight, Joseph S. Wu, Andrew G. Black, David Pears, Robert Boyd, Hilary Putnam, Paul F. Snowdon, Arindam Chakrabarti, Wenceslao J. Gonzalez, Ernest Sosa, Chung-M. Tse, John R. Searle, P. F. Strawson.
This book has four parts: a brief intellectual autobiography of Strawson; 20 essays on main aspects of his philosophy, each followed by his reply to the author; a bibliography of works by and about him; and partial lists of his academic appointments and of honors awarded him. The essays cover his views on subjects like the nature of philosophy, reconciling apparently incompatible philosophical views, skepticism, the relationship between intention and speech acts, formal logic vis-a-vis semantic/pragmatic logic, reference and predication, determinism and responsibility, self-identity, perception, epistemology, induction, and truth. The essays are solid and the replies attentive and elegant. A valuable contribution to contemporary philosophy.?Robert Hoffman, York Coll., CUNY
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