The Crisis of Philosophy: Emerson in the Twenty-first Century

Front Cover
SUNY Press, Jan 1, 1990 - Philosophy - 383 pages
This book presents a sympathetic yet critical treatment of the major philosophical attempts to define a viable project for philosophy in the face of historical changes. McCarthy, then, proposes a comprehensive, critical, and methodological strategy of epistemic integration that fully respects the progressive and pluralistic character of contemporary science and common sense.

The programs of Frege, Husserl, Wittgenstein, Carnap, Sellers, Dewey, Quine, and Rorty are carefully presented and an assessment is made of their merits and limitations. This assessment results in a defense of Lonergan's integrative strategy -- a nuanced philosophical strategy around which a gathering center could be built. McCarthy presents Lonergan's work as containing the firm outline and partial execution of a philosophical project continuous with philosophy's historic purposes and equal to the exigences of the present.

The book examines a broad range of seminal topics and, after extended dialectical treatment of them, develops a coherent account of their interdependence. These topics include psychologism, intentionality, the limits of naturalism, semantical and epistemic realism, historical belonging, epistemic invariance, foundational analysis, the limitation of logic and of the linguistic turn, generalized empirical method, the interdependence of mind and language, the interplay of nature and history, and the critical appropriation of tradition.
 

Contents

The Primacy of LogicA Case Study
41
Principles of Philosophical Analysis
49
F A Common Stock of Thoughts
55
The Genesis of Husserls Phenomenology
67
The Refutation of Psychologism
74
E The Clarification of Pure Logic
83
F The Identification and Suspension
93
Wittgensteins Linguistic Turns
103
from Captivity
136
Philosophy of Language
166
The Need for Cognitive Integration
227
and the Knowledge of Being
283
Philosophical and Cultural Conflict
291
Notes
339
Index
371
Copyright

Their Unique Status
115

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

About the author (1990)

Michael H. McCarthy is Professor of Philosophy at Vassar College.

Bibliographic information