New British Philosophy: The interviews edited by Julian Baggini and Jeremy Stangroom, Routledge, ÂŁ9.99, ISBN 0415243467 Reviewed by Mike Holderness
DO YOU ever wonder what philosophers do, or why? They seem to make such grand claims for the scope of their subject â as grand as scienceâs â but where do they come from?
Why not ask some philosophers? Thatâs what Julian Baggini and Jeremy Stangroom, editors of The Philosophersâ Magazine, did. They interviewed 16 plausibly up-and-coming philosophers working in Britain, starting with the question: why? Many only realised the subject existed when they realised theyâd chosen the wrong degree. Some began with focused youthful enthusiasm for the Big Questions about the nature of existence and knowledge, before encountering actual philosophy and having their views turned around.
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And the results are weird stylistic hybrids, chopping between plain speaking and philosophersâ urges to talk shop to other philosophers. You may have to glide over clauses like âthe kind of criticism Kierkegaard makes of the Hegelian tradition as he inherited itâ. But if youâre a zoologist reading about quantum mechanics you probably glide over âthe Hamiltonianâ, no? And, just as one day you may get around to reading up Bill Hamiltonâs use of matrices, you could do worse for intellectual stimulation than read up what Hegel meant by âthe dialecticâ. Later.
What you wonât get here is much thatâs explicitly about the âphilosophy of scienceâ. You will get a partial view of the breadth of the subject âphilosophyâ â from unfashionable subjects such as aesthetics to crunchy stuff right on the border with mathematics. In particular, youâll get several perspectives on the gulf between âAnglo-Saxonâ philosophy and that which it derides as âcontinentalâ.
The latter group, stereotyped as woolly and âpretentious and portentousâ doesnât actually exist â it is simply the âOtherâ that Anglo-Saxon analytic philosophy needs to define itself as a coherent movement.
Analytic philosophy, by contrast, drew dry inspiration from the heroic effort by philosophers Bertrand Russell and Alfred Whitehead to put mathematics on a complete and consistent logical footing. No oneâs come up with an unwoolly way to deal with the crisp proof by the mathematician Kurt Gödel, back in 1931, that it canât be done. And, as the pro-continentals gently point out, the Anglo-Saxon project also self-destructs when confronted by the perennial question: âWhat do you mean by âknowâ, or by âyouâ?â
Such thoughts are extremely useful when you come to wonder what scientists do, and why. So do read this, then do that.
