Metaphilosophy

Extract

The basic reason why it is so difficult in practice to give an account of philosophy’s aims and method is undoubtedly that there is no agreement among philosophers themselves about what they are trying to do and how; and this means that they often find it as difficult to explain themselves to each other as to those whose home is in other disciplines. This is especially so when the philosophers in question belong to different traditions. It is well known that philosophers today fall broadly into two camps, those who belong to the Englishspeaking tradition of analytic philosophy which was born of a reaction against Hegel at the beginning of this century, and those who remain if not in the Hegelian, then at least in the Cartesian tradition and who are now represented primarily in France and Germany. I suppose that we may add as a third group the neoScholastic philosophers of the seminaries and Catholic universities, who at least until recently represented a revival of the medieval tradition, but are now being more or less absorbed by the first two groups (and especially the second) according to their physical location and that of the universities in which their staff are trained.

To each of these traditions there corresponds an attitude towards philosophical aims and methodology which may be associated with a turning-point in the history of philosophy.