Floyd, Juliet (Editor), Associate Professor of Philosophy, Boston University
Shieh, Sanford (Editor), Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Wesleyan University
Future Pasts
The Analytic Tradition in Twentieth Century Philosophy
Publication date 2001 (this edition)
Print ISBN-10: 0-19-513916-X
Print ISBN-13: 978-0-19-513916-7
doi:10.1093/019513916X.001.0001
Abstract: Among contemporary philosophers there is a growing interest in recounting the history of philosophy in the twentieth century. Those who discuss what is more or less loosely called analytic philosophyamong them some who reject the methods of analysis outrightare increasingly engaged in attempting to delineate the origins and significance of the analytic tradition. This collection of essays is meant to be a contribution to the growing historical consciousness of contemporary Anglo-American philosophy. More than that, however, the decision to bring together these particular essays stems from the editorsconception of present difficulties facing the historiography of recent philosophy. Both partisans and critics of what is called "analytic philosophy" assume that it is definable by a small number of questions, theories, principles, or concepts. This volume calls into doubt these often unquestioned, even unconscious, assumptions about the history of recent philosophy. Containing 21 previously unpublished articles by such luminaries as W.V. Quine, John Rawls, Stanley Cavell, Warren Goldfarb, Hilary Putnam, and others, this volume represents a new approach to the history of philosophy as well as a novel portrait of 20th-century analytic philosophy.
Keywords: History of analytic philosophy,historiography of philosophy,new history of philosophy,early analytic philosophy,analytic philosophy,20th-century philosophy
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Future pasts : the analytic tradition in twentieth-century
philosophy / edited by Juliet Floyd and Sanford Shieh.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-19-513916-X
1. Analysis (Philosophy) I. Floyd, Juliet, 1960-II. Shieh, Sanford, 1962
B808.5 .F88 2000
146.4dc21 00-035622
end p.iv
Dedication
The authors wish jointly to dedicate this volume to Burton Dreben (1927-1999), Edgar Pierce Professor of Philosophy, Emeritus, Harvard University, and Professor of Philosophy, Boston University. Dreben exercised a profound influence on American analytic philosophy over the last thirty-five years, especially through his teachings on the significance and nature of the history of the analytic tradition. Every contributor to this volume has been either a colleague or a doctoral student of Dreben and each has written at least partly in reaction to Dreben's views, especially his insistence that the evolution of the analytic tradition represents a failed but noble effort to achieve scientific clarity about the nature of philosophy, and that precisely because of its failures, it is the most profound of twentieth-century philosophical traditions. Dreben took the analytic tradition to have begun with Frege and Russell, and to have been ended by Quine and Wittgenstein (from thoroughly different perspectives), hoist on the petard of its own aspirations to achieve the rigor and clarity of science. His pessimism about the rationality and progress of philosophy, and his simultaneous insistence on the importance of its history, stimulated students and colleagues from many different walks of philosophy over several generations. Some of Dreben's views are discussed in detail in John Rawls's afterword. Rawls speaks for all of us in expressing our gratitude for Dreben's teaching and scholarship. Here we wish to record our collective debt to his colleagueship and constructive criticisms of our work over many years.
end p.vii
Acknowledgments
We are greatly indebted to our contributors for their patience, support, and intellectual stimulation in helping us bring out this volume. Without them the project would have been impossible.
Bernard Prusak's copyediting has improved nearly every page of the manuscript, and we thank him for his help. Several of the contributionsincluding our ownbenefited from his comments. Mihaela Fistioc and Akihiro Kanamori provided us with most helpful feedback on our introduction draft, while Anat Biletzki encouraged and aided our efforts to organize the volume as a whole. We also gladly acknowledge the assistance of Nicolas de Warren in translating several difficult passages from Husserl.
Most of all we thank Burton Dreben, whose thought and teaching inspired so many.
J. F.
S. S.
Boston, Massachusetts
New Haven, Connecticut
June 2000
end p.ix