Preface

Summary

This is not the overview of his philosophy that Sellars would have written. His own summary of his philosophy would have been more complex, deeper in insight, more profound, but it would also have been difficult, dialectical and in need itself of an interpretation. Sellars's works are subtle, nuanced and incredibly rich, but initially so forbidding that many are discouraged and turn away. The purpose of this book is to overcome that initial barrier by providing a reliable and intelligible map of the logical space of Sellars's reasoning that can be used until one feels enough at home to begin to explore in detail its native expression in his own works.

Even so, I have not been able to explore everything in his philosophy in detail. For instance, Sellars developed a complex and subtle treatment of freedom and determinism that I have not had space to examine. Sellars's historical essays are both valuable interpretations of the philosophical tradition, and philosophically rich in their own right; I have not touched them. Nor have I been able to treat all the details of his nominalism, his philosophy of science or his theory of practical reason, even though there are chapters devoted to those topics.