Abstract

In Reflexivity and the Crisis of Western Reason Barry Sandywell outlined and defended a central place for reflexivity in the human sciences. In this second equally outstanding and challenging volume of Logological Investigations, he reconstructs the origins of "European" reflection. The author's central claim is that the world does not exist independently of us, but that it is constituted through the terms of our discursive categories. Rather than research being a triumphant exploration, it is more fully understood as agonized self-reflection on the grounds of knowledge production. Sandywell argues that this approach has been inherent throughout Western philosophy and in so doing, he shows that the reflexive character of human experience in Western Culture can be traced through the desire for intelligibility that animated Greek drama, poetry, philosophy and science as explorations of the cosmos, body-politics and the soul.