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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
The Death of Philosophy: Reference and Self-Reference in Contemporary Thought

The Death of Philosophy: Reference and Self-Reference in Contemporary Thought

Thomas-Fogiel, Isabelle
Lynch, Richard A.

Hardcover

Philosophy

ISBN10: 0231147783
ISBN13: 9780231147781
Publisher: Columbia Univ Pr
Published: May 24 2011
Pages: 360
Weight: 1.40
Height: 1.30 Width: 6.30 Depth: 9.10
Language: English

Philosophers debate the death of philosophy as much as they debate the death of God. Kant claimed responsibility for both philosophy's beginning and end, while Heidegger argued it concluded with Nietzsche. In the twentieth century, figures as diverse as John Austin and Richard Rorty have proclaimed philosophy's end, with some even calling for the advent of postphilosophy. In an effort to make sense of these conflicting positions--which often say as much about the philosopher as his subject--Isabelle Thomas-Fogiel undertakes the first systematic treatment of the end of philosophy, while also recasting the history of western thought itself.

Thomas-Fogiel begins with postphilosophical claims such as scientism, which she reveals to be self-refuting, for they subsume philosophy into the branches of the natural sciences. She discovers similar issues in Rorty's skepticism and strands of continental thought. Revisiting the work of late-nineteenth and early-twentieth-century philosophers, when the split between analytical and continental philosophy began, Thomas-Fogiel finds both traditions followed the same path--the road of reference--which ultimately led to self-contradiction. This phenomenon, whether valorized or condemned, has been understood as the death of philosophy. Tracing this pattern from Quine to Rorty, from Heidegger to Levinas and Habermas, Thomas-Fogiel reveals the self-contradiction at the core of their claims while also carving an alternative path through self-reference. Trained under the French philosopher Bernard Bourgeois, she remakes philosophy in exciting new ways for the twenty-first century.

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