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TALKING TO OURSELVES? ACADEMIC PHILOSOPHY AND THE PUBLIC SPHERE

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 March 2014

Chris Norris
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Abstract

This essay takes a hard look at the current state of much academic (mainly analytic) philosophy and sets out to diagnose where things have gone wrong. It offers a sharply critical assessment of the prevailing narrowness, cliquishness, linguistic inertness, like-mindedness, intellectual caution, misplaced scientism, over-specialisation, guild mentality, lack of creative or inventive flair, and above all the self-perpetuating structures of privilege and patronage that have worked to produce this depressing situation. On the constructive side I suggest how a belated encounter with developments beyond its cultural-professional horizons – including certain aspects of ‘continental’ philosophy – might bring large (and reciprocal) benefits. I also offer some tentative ideas as to what ‘creativity’ could or should mean as applied to philosophical thinking and writing.

Type
Research Article
Information
Think , Volume 13 , Issue 37 , Summer 2014 , pp. 57 - 72
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 2014 

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References

Notes

1 See especially Habermas, Jürgen, The Theory of Communicative Action, 2 vols., trans. McCarthy, Thomas (Boston: Beacon Press, 1984 and 1987).Google Scholar

2 Kuhn, Thomas S., The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970).Google Scholar

3 See for instance – from a range of perspectives – Machery, Edouard, Doing Without Concepts (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009)CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Sosa, Ernest, ‘Experimental Philosophy and Philosophical Intuition’, Philosophical Studies 132 (2007), 99–107CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Stich, Stephen P., From Folk Psychology to Cognitive Science (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003)Google Scholar; Weinberg, Jonathan M., ‘On Doing Better, Experimental-Style’, Philosophical Studies 145:3 (September 2009), 455–64CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Weinberg, Nichols, Shaun and Stich, ‘Normativity and Epistemic Intuitions’, Philosophical Topics, 29: 1–2 (2001), 429–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Williamson, Timothy, The Philosophy of Philosophy (Oxford: Blackwell, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar and ‘Philosophical Expertise and the Burden of Proof’, Metaphilosophy, 42: 3 (April 2011), 215–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 Hawking, Stephen and Mlodinow, Leonard, The Grand Design (New York: Bantam Books, 2010).Google Scholar

5 See Note 1, above.

6 See for instance Rorty, Richard, Consequences of Pragmatism (Brighton: Harvester, 1982)Google Scholar, Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981)Google ScholarPubMed and Objectivity and Truth (Cambridge University Press, 1994).Google ScholarPubMed

7 Kant, Immanuel, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Smith, N. Kemp (London: Macmillan, 1964).Google Scholar

8 Deleuze, Gilles and Guattari, Félix, What Is Philosophy?, trans. Burchell, Graham and Tomlinson, Hugh (London: Verso, 1994).Google Scholar

9 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, Philosophical Investigations, trans. and ed. Anscombe, G.E.M. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1958).Google Scholar

10 Moore, G.E., ‘A Reply to My Critics’, in Schilpp, P.A. (ed.), The Philosophy of G.E. Moore (La Salle: Open Court, 1968), 535–687Google Scholar; also C.H. Langford, ‘The Notion of Analysis in Moore's Philosophy’, ibid, 321–41.

11 See for instance some of the more recent essays collected in Norris and Roden, David (eds), Jacques Derrida, 4 vols. (London: Sage, 2002).Google ScholarPubMed

12 See especially Glendinning, Simon (ed.), Arguing with Derrida (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001)Google Scholar; also Dasenbrock, Reed Way (ed.), Re-Drawing the Lines: analytic philosophy, deconstruction, and literary theory (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989)Google Scholar; Hobson, Marian, Jacques Derrida: opening lines (London: Routledge, 1998)Google Scholar; Norris, Christopher, ‘Derrida on Rousseau: deconstruction as philosophy of logic’, in Roden, Norris and (eds.), Jacques Derrida (op. cit.), Vol. 2, 70–124Google Scholar; Priest, Graham, ‘Derrida and Self-Reference’, Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 72 (1994), 103–111CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Beyond the Limits of Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995)Google Scholar; Wheeler, Samuel C., Deconstruction as Analytic Philosophy. (Stanford, CA.: Stanford University Press, 2000).Google Scholar