Abstract

Especially in recent works, Raymond Geuss has expressed an unabashedly bleak view of the practice of philosophy and what we can expect to gain from it. In his latest collection of essays, A World Without Why, Geuss continues to write in this vein. Although he characteristically addresses an impressive variety of topics, the book is held together by a general engagement with the question of authority and by Geuss’s ongoing effort to philosophize outside the bounds of contemporary philosophy. Indeed, one of the forms of authority with which he most takes issue is that of philosophy itself. Nonetheless, Geuss has a favorite cast of philosophers who he frequently enlists in his unique brand of philosophically informed...