Dans la tradition gréco-latine, le philosophe a souvent été unpersonnage du jeu social, et quelquefois, comme on sait, au péril de sa vie. Il peut done jouer un rôle, assumer des charges, avoir une fonction, comme par exemple, dans nos sociétés contemporaines, une fonction d'enseignant. Mais est-ce bien alors de la pensée proprement philosophique qu'il est pour ainsi dire le bras séculier? Est-ce bien l'exercice de cette pensée même qu'il rendrait ainsi efficace, lui conférant un usage social, une utilité ou une nocivité qu'il faudrait alors attribuer à la philosophie en tant que telle? Je voudrais, à cette question, proposer une réponse négative.

Why is it that philosophers find it so hard to come to agreement? Many disputes that have gone on for centuries or even millennia are still unresolved, even though there has been increased conceptual sophistication on the part of the contending parties. Consider, for example, the question of free will, where libertarians still contest the field with determinists and compatibilists (who need not deny quantum mechanical indeterminism at the micro level).

Near the beginning of this century an episode of note occurred in Vienna. In 1894 the University had commissioned Gustav Klimt to paint a series of panels depicting the triumph of light over darkness. The first panel that Klimt finished, in 1900, represented Philosophy. The Faculty, evidently, had hoped for something like Raphael's depiction of the School of Athens: Plato, Aristotle, perhaps Galileo and Hume and Kant and Mach, would discourse gravely whilst a suitably impressed crowd of bystanders looked on and learned.

In most colleges and universities nowadays we find a group of academics who are officially designated as together constituting a department of philosophy. They teach students who are officially designated as studying philosophy; they write books which are reviewed as being philosophy, which are listed under that head in publisher's catalogues, which are put into that category by librarians. Or they write for journals which are similarly categorized by librarians and which as often as not describe themselves, either in their title or their sub-title, as being devoted to philosophical problems.

Michel Foucault

Hans Blumenberg

I once characterized philosophy as 'deliberative discourse about meanings.' The point was, first, that in philosophy one is concerned to decide not what is the case but what and how one is to think; and second, that differences in philosophical approach and practice can best be construed in terms of disagreements about what can be said to be meaningful and about what it is to have meaning.

Philosophers have been spending a considerable amount of time discussing whether or not they are doing anything of substance. This of course is the 'end of philosophy' debate. I am perverse enough to bring myself out of my dogmatic slumber to join the debate. I am also perverse enough, or at least out of my slumber enough, to join with the nay sayers such as Richard Rorty, Kai Nielsen, and others who declare the end of the tradition, at least with respect to what has been called Metaphysical Realism, or its alter-ego, Idealism. My contribution to the philosophy of philosophy is the observation that at least in some areas philosophy has, and rightly so, lost its subject matter.

How is Richard Rorty's liberal utopia connected to his critique of epistemology and metaphysics? This has, naturally, been a central issue for those in Rorty's audience who are unhappy with what they take to be the socio-political thrust of his writings over the last decade.

There is widespread agreement among critical theorists that reason has to be understood as culturally mediated and interwoven with social practice. The embeddedness and variability of basic categories, principles, standards, and procedures mean that the critique of reason has henceforth to be carried out in conjunction with social, cultural, and historical analysis. We can no longer hope to fathom its 'nature, scope, and limits' through an introspective survey of the contents of consciousness, but have to study the acts and products, utterances and texts, practices and institutions in which it is embodied. That is to say, 'self-reflection' has now to proceed through the interpretation and critique of the socio-historical world.

Attempts to philosophize about human knowledge lead inevitably to skepticism. So Hume taught and so some influential contemporary philosophers would have us believe. But what are we to make of this fact, assuming that it is one? Should we treat it as bad news about our chances of obtaining knowledge? Or should we rather see its importance as primarily meta-philosophical? That is, should we take the real significance of skepticism's seeming inevitability to lie in what it tells us about the idea of understanding knowledge philosophically?

L'activité mathématique peut-elle être réduite à un prolongement de l'expérience sensible? Le peut-elle si l'expérience sensible est elle-même insérée dans le langage naturel? On examinera deux versions de l‘empirisme, l‘empirisme aristotélicien et l‘empirisme logique, qui répondent positivement à ces questions. Aucune des réponses n’étant satisfaisante, on examiner a une troisième version de l‘empirisme, incorporée à l‘expérience spécifique du mathématicien et l‘on en esquissera la portée et les limites.

I have never been shy about admitting to fellow philosophers that I am a Bayesian, but I confess that I have rarely made the admission without discomfort. It is because I know what people usually think. They think I am an orthodox Bayesian. They think I am convinced that everyone (unbeknownst to herself) harbors a real-valued degree of confidence assignment that satisfies the axioms of the probability calculus.

Principles of rationality are invoked for several purposes: they are often deployed in explanation and prediction; they are also used to set standards for rational health for deliberating agents or to furnish blueprints for rational automata; and they are intended as guides to perplexed decision makers seeking to regulate their own attitudes and conduct. These purposes are quite different. It is far from obvious that what serves well in one capacity will do so in another. Indeed, I shall argue later on in this essay that when principles of rationality are intended for use as norms for self-criticism, they cannot also serve as laws in explanation and prediction or as blueprints for rational automata.

En dépit d'une croyance fermement établie en philosophie et ailleurs, selon laquelle les philosophes non seulement ne s’ entendent pas mais traitent de questions indécidables, les auteurs qui ont contribué au présent ouvrage semblent s'entendre sur deux points au moins. Le premier est qu'il est possible de dire ce qu'est la philosophie et le deuxième est qu'il est possible de la montrer du doigt.