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Moral Issues and Social Problems: The Moral Relevance of Moral Philosophy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2009

Marcus G. Singer
Marcus G. Singer
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin–Madison
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Extract

At the beginning of one of his inimitable discourses William James once said, ‘I am only a philosopher, and there is only one thing that a philosopher can be relied on to do, and that is, to contradict other philosophers’.1 In his succeeding discourse James himself departed from this theme. And so shall I. I shall not be contradicting other philosophers—at least not very often. What I aim to do is to take a fresh look at one of the main traditions in American philosophy for insight and illumination on a way of dealing with some of the most serious issues of our time. But before I turn to that, my main theme, I want to pursue for a bit some variations on another, the cultural relevance of philosophy, for, as I view the matter, they are related.

Type
Articles
Information
Philosophy , Volume 60 , Issue 231 , January 1985 , pp. 5 - 26
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1985

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References

1 William, James, Remarks at the Peace Banquet, Memories and Studies (New York:Longmans Green and Co., 1911), 299.Google Scholar

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