Copyright © Paul Livingston and Andrew Cutrofello 2015

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First published in 2015 by Polity Press

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ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-7029-4 (hardback)

ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-7030-0 (paperback)

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

    Cutrofello, Andrew, 1961–

    The problems of contemporary philosophy : a critical guide for the unaffiliated / Andrew Cutrofello, Paul Livingston.

        pages    cm

    Includes bibliographical references and index.

    ISBN 978-0-7456-7029-4 (hardback : alk. paper) – ISBN 978-0-7456-7030-0 (pbk. : alk. paper)    1.  Philosophy.    I.  Title.

    BD21.C885 2015

    190.9'051–dc23

         2015009264

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Many people have contributed, directly or indirectly, to creating the conditions under which this book could be written. We would especially like to thank Jeffrey Librett and John Lysaker for planning and hosting the conference “Between Nature and Culture: After the Analytic–Continental Divide,” at the University of Oregon in April, 2008, at which the authors first met. We would also like to thank Sarah Lambert, Emma Hutchinson, Susan Beer, and Pascal Porcheron at Polity for their hard work and generous assistance in marshalling this project to completion.

In this book we present a systematic overview of the defining problems of contemporary philosophy. The approach we take is critical in the sense that we focus primarily on problems and disputes rather than doctrines, theses, schools, or solutions. Specifically, we present a series of questions with which today's philosophers are occupied and on which they have taken various positions. Our hope is that this overview of some of the main lines of contemporary philosophical discussion will encourage and equip the interested reader to begin to engage with these problems herself, and thereby join the contemporary discussion. Moreover, since we believe the main problems of contemporary philosophy are closely related to the broader problems of contemporary culture and the current conditions of individual, social, and political life, we believe that this overview can provide useful resources for critical consideration and reflection on these contemporary conditions and problems as well.

In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant tells us that one aim of critique is to allow us to step back from a battle and watch it from afar. The aim of such a strategic retreat is not to mock the combatants or to pretend to be able to stand above the fray forever, but rather to understand better the problems to which the rival combatants offer competing approaches, thereby also possibly gaining the ground from which it is possible to see their real sources. Kant believed that his own work in the Critique of Pure Reason, the first edition of which appeared in 1781, would soon make it possible to achieve a perpetual peace in philosophy by putting an end to the empty speculation or unmotivated skepticism that, he thought, largely characterized philosophical debate in his time. Of course, this is not quite how things turned out; the subsequent history of meta-critical and post-critical philosophical battles – including debates over the meaning and legacy of philosophical critique itself – themselves make Kant's hope for an imminent stilling of the philosophical debate seem naive today. Nevertheless it still appears possible and appropriate for contemporary philosophical reflection again to take up the task that Kant, in the Critique, assigned to reason as its “most urgent” one – the task of the attainment of self-knowledge through a critical investigation and pursuit of the problems it poses to itself.

The major philosophical battles of Kant's day were fought between rationalists (or “dogmatists”) and empiricists (or “skeptics”). So entrenched were these battles, and so seemingly unproductive, that Kant took the major danger facing philosophy to be a pretended indifference to its problems in the culture at large. Such indifference could only be pretended, Kant thought, with regard to philosophical problems that are truly of universal concern, such as whether or not there is a God or whether or not we have immortal souls. One outcome of a critical consideration of the shape of the underlying problems would be to show that those who purported indifference in this way in fact could not avoid committing themselves to claims just as dogmatic, or skeptical, as those of the (self-identified) philosophers themselves.

Professed indifference to philosophy in the culture at large is something we practically take for granted today. It may be attributed not only to the perceived interminability of philosophy's battles, but also to the highly technical or otherwise specialized character of many current philosophical debates. The high degree of professionalization that academic philosophy has attained in recent decades has been both a benefit and a curse: a benefit, in that it has allowed problems to be focused and pursued with a high degree of sustained concentration and skill, but also a curse in that it has led to narrowness, intellectual blinders, and divisiveness in their pursuit. By and large, the debates of contemporary philosophy are no longer framed in the language of dogmatism vs. skepticism or rationalism vs. empiricism. Since the last half of the twentieth century, a far more visible disciplinary battle line within European and American academic philosophy has been the “divide” between so-called “analytic” and “continental” philosophers. Despite its relatively recent roots, this divide has become an entrenched, and (we think) problematic “fact of life” for con­temporary academic philosophy, dividing the space of discussion, preventing or obstructing progress on key issues, and isolating philosophers from one another.

Another suggestion of Kant's picture of critique is that the distance that we gain by stepping back from the field of problems to critically survey it may provide the resources for actually transforming this field itself. We believe this is the case with respect to the current discussion as it has been determined by the analytic/continental divide. Presenting the problems that cut across both traditions may provide a new basis for moving forward with the common concerns of both analytic and continental philosophical reflection, explication, and investigation. To this end, we present here a series of questions that have, in each case, been considered both by (self-identified) “analytic” and “continental” philosophers. Our aim is not simply to provide a catalogue of such questions but to illuminate the deeper and unitary problematic structures from which they philosophically arise. In section 5.4 we consider the history and basis of the divide itself. We argue that its philosophical terms and motivations have never been entirely clear, and that a critical consideration leads to the conclusion that it is, rather, largely ideological in character. Here, then, another aspect of Kantian and post-Kantian critique becomes relevant: that of pointing the way to the actual transformation of an existing situation by showing the gap between its real determinants and its falsified or misleading ideological self-representation. If, as we suggest, the lingering twentieth-century divide has artificially segmented problems and often prevented them from being seen in their real significance, then a critical survey of these problems may be the necessary precondition for the development of philosophical reflection in a more unitary mold in the twenty-first. In this spirit we have written this book as a critical guide for the unaffiliated: not simply those who are perplexed, but those who are not content to limit their own philosophical reflection along the largely artificial lines proposed by either of the two traditions.

Throughout the book, we have focused on the most general features of some of the problems of fundamental interest to contemporary philosophers. We do not pretend to offer a completely comprehensive survey of all of them, something well beyond our own critical powers. Another limitation is that we have considered only European and Anglo-American philosophy, unfortunately leaving out of consideration philosophy originating in the many other traditions that we believe are also critical for the future of philosophy. Indeed, we have focused almost exclusively on philosophy written in, or translated into, English, leaving out much non-Anglophone philosophy. We are keenly aware of these, and other, lamentable gaps, and we have no doubt that there are others that have escaped our notice altogether. Within these limits, we have tried to maximize completeness and coherence by proceeding as systematically as possible. Our five chapters treat issues in (1) phenomenology and epistemology; (2) ontology, logic, and philosophy of language; (3) metaphysics; (4) metaethics, ethics, and politics; and (5) metaphilosophy, aesthetics, and critique. Each chapter may be associated, respectively, with an overarching philosophical concept, namely, (1) intuitions, (2) categories, (3) ideas, (4) practices, and (5) critique(s). Each of these concepts has a Kantian provenance, but it is their contemporary significance that has guided our inquiry.