Related items in the news

 This thread is for links to items in the news that are related in some way to the subject matter or content of False Wisdom.

Highlights of False Wisdom

Here is a list of  “highlights” — or features of False Wisdom —  that are of particular interest and that distinguish it from other books on philosophical methodology and the natures of philosophy and pseudo-philosophy:

Inside False Wisdom: Postscript

A Concluding Metaphilosophical Postscript

It is not enough to know, we must also apply; it is not enough to will, we must also do.

Johannes Goethe, Maxim #324

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For centuries (indeed for millennia) philosophers have complained about pseudo-philosophy being practiced by others claiming to be philosophers — and about people being taken in and suffering in one way or another from the mimicry, exploitation, and fakery of the pseudo-philosophers. But no attempt at a careful, comprehensive, and useful characterization of pseudo-philosophy has emerged. I suspect this is because most philosophers simply don’t see pseudo-philosophy as presenting a philosophical problem or a philosophically interesting target for thought and investigation. Pseudo-philosophy, after all, is not philosophy.

Inside False Wisdom: Preface

Preface

This book is a comprehensive historical, theoretical, and practical treatment of pseudo-philosophy — a concept often encountered in both formal and popular philosophy, but rarely with any degree of seriousness and precision. It presents a theory of pseudo-philosophy through the use of models of the genuine philosopher and pseudo-philosopher, and then applies that theory to specific real-world cases.

Rand's work: style and quality

 

 This is the entire text of my 1993 Usenet posting (with minor typographical corrections) — for historical perspective and comparison to Chapter 11 of False Wisdom, which is a much more complete and somewhat more sympathetic account of Rand, at least in certain ways.  It appears that the “separate posting” I refer to in the final paragraph is False Wisdom -- some 28 years later.

Why this book was written

The original motivation

In the summer of 1993 I'd been away from academic philosophy for eleven years, having left my tenured Associate Professor post at Loyola University of Chicago at the end of the second semester in