Rationalism

In epistemology and in its modern sense, rationalism is "any view appealing to reason as a source
of knowledge or justification". In more technical terms, it is method or a theory "in which the criteria of
the truth is not sensory but intellectual and deductive". Different degrees of emphases of this method or
theory lead to a range of rationalist standpoints, from the moderate position that reason has precedence
over other ways ot acquiring knowledge to the more extreme position that reason is "the unique part to
knowledge". Given a pre-modern understanding of reason, rationalism is identical to philosophy, the
Socratic life of inquiry, or the zetetic (skeptical) clear interpretation of authority (open to the underlying
or essential cause of things as they appear to our sense of certainty). In recent decades, Leo Strauss sought
to revive "Classical Political Rationalism" as a discipline that understands the task of reasoning, not as
foundational, but as maieutic. Rationalism should not be confused to rationality, nor with rationalization.

In politics, rationalism is a development of Enlightenment that emphasizes a "politics of reason"

centered upon support of the concepts of rational choice, utilitarianism, secularism, and irreligion; this
has especially been promoted by liberalism.

Background of Rationalism

Since the Enlightenment, rationalism is usually associated with the introduction of mathematical
method to philosophy, as in Descartes, Leibniz, and Spinoza. This is commonly called continental
rationalism, because it was predominant in the continental schools of Europe, whereas in Britain
empiricism dominated.

Rationalism is often contrasted with empiricism. Taken very broadly these views are not mutually
exclusive, since a philosopher can be both rationalist and empiricist. Taken to extremes the empiricist
view holds that all ideas come to us through experience, either through the external senses or through
such inner sensation as pain and gratification, and thus that knowledge 1s essentially based on or derived
from experience. At issues the fundamental source of human knowledge, and the proper techniques for
verifying that we think we know.

Proponents of some varieties of rationalism argue that, starting with fundamental basic
principles, like the axioms of geometry, one could deductively derive the rest of all possible knowledge.
The philosopher who held this view most clearly we Baruch Spinoza and Gottfried Leibniz, whose attempts
to grapple with the epistemological and Metaphysical problems raised Descartes led to a development of
the fundamental approach of rationalism. Both Spinoza and Leibniz, asserted that in Principle assorted
that, in principle, all knowledge, including scientific knowledge, could be gain through the use of reason
alone; though they both observed that this was not possible in practice for human being except in specific
areas such as mathematics. On the other hand, Leibniz admitted in his book Monad ology that "we all
mere Empires in three forth of our actions." Rationalism is predicting and explaining behavior based on
logic

Philosophical usage

The distinction between rationalists and empiricists was drawn at a later period, and would have
been recognized by the philosophers involved. Also the distinction was not as clear cut as is sometime
suggested; for example, Descartes and Locke have similar views about the nature of human ideas. The
three main rationalists were all committed to the importance of empirical science, and in many respects
the empiricists were closer to Descartes in their methods and metaphysical theories that were Spinoza
and Leibniz.
History of Rationalism

Rene Descartes (1596-1650)

Descartes thought that the only knowledge of eternal truths- including the truths of mathematics,
and the epistemological and metaphysical foundations of the sciences could be attained by reason alone;
other knowledge, the knowledge of physics required experience of the world, aided by the scientific
method. He also argued that although dreams appear as real as sense experience, these dreams cannot
provide persons with knowledge. Also, since conscious sense experience can be the cause of illusions, and
then sense experience itself can be doubtable. As a result, Descartes deduced that a rational pursuit of
truth should doubt every belief about reality. He elaborated these beliefs in such works as Discourse on
Method, Meditations on first Philosophy, and Principles of Philosophy. Descartes developed a method to
attain truths according to which nothing that cannot be recognized by the intellect (or reason) can be
classified as knowledge. These truths are gain "without any sensory experience", according to Descartes.
Truths that are attained by reason are broken down into elements that intuition can grasp, which, through
a purely deductive process. Will result in clear truths about reality.

Descartes therefore argued, as a result of his method, that reason alone determined knowledge
and that this could be done independently of the senses. For instance, his famous dictum, and cogito ergo
sum, is a conclusion reached a priori i.e. not through an inference from experience. This was, for
Descartes, an irrefutable principle upon which to ground all forms of other knowledge. Descartes posited
a metaphysical dualism, distinguishing between the substances of the Human body ("res extensa") and
the mind or soul ("res cogitans"). This crucial distinction would be let unresolved and lead to what is
known as the mind-body problem, since the two substances in the Cartesian system are independent of
each other irreducible.

Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677)

The philosophy of Baruch Spinoza is a systematic, logical, rational philosophy developed in

seventeenth-century Europe. Spinoza's philosophy is a system of ideas constructed upon basic building
blocks with an internal consistency with which Spinoza tried to answer life's major questions and in which
he proposed that "God exits only philosophically." He was heavily influenced by thinkers such as
Descartes, Euclid and Thomas Hobbes, as well as theologians in

 G.W.F. Hegel who introduced temporality into philosophy (Pinkard in Misak 2007)
 J.S. Mill for his nominalism and empiricism
 George Barkeley for his project to eliminate all unclear concepts from philosophy (Peirce 8:33)

Primacy of practice

Pragmatism is based on the premise that the human capability to theorize is necessary for intelligent
practice. Theory and practice are not separate spheres, rather, theories and distinction are tools or maps
for finding our way in the world. As John Dewey put it, there is no question of theory versus practice but
rather intelligent practice versus uninformed practice.

Anti-reification of concepts and theories

Dewey, in The Quest for Certainty, criticized what he called "the philosophical fallacy";
philosophers often take categories (such as the mental and the physical) for granted because they don't
realize that these are merely nominal concepts that were invented to help solve specific problems. This
causes metaphysical and conceptual confusion. Various examples are the "ultimate Being" of Hegelian
philosophers, the belief in a "realm of value", the idea that logic, because it is an abstraction from concrete
thought, has nothing to do with the act of concrete thinking, and so on. David L. Hildebrand sums up the
problem: "Perceptual intention to the specific functions comprising inquiry led realists and idealists alike
to formulate accounts of knowledge that projects the products of extensive abstraction back into
experience". (Hildebrand 2003)

A summary of which can conclude that pragmatism is subjugated by perception.

Naturalism and anti-Cartesianism

From the outset, pragmatists wanted to reform philosophy and bring it more in line with the
scientific method as they understood it. They argued that idealist and realist’s philosophy had a tendency
to present human knowledge as something beyond what science could grasp. These philosophies then
resorted either to a phenomenology inspired by Kant or to correspondence theories of knowledge and
the truth. Pragmatists criticized the former for it's a priorism and the tatter because it takes
correspondence as an as an unanalyzable fact. Pragmatism instead tried to explain, psychologically and
biologically, how the relation between knower and known "works in the world.

In 1868, C.s. Peirce argued that there is no power of intuition in the sense of cognition
unconditioned by interence, and no power of introspection, intuitive or otherwise, and that awareness of
an internal world is by hypothetical inference from external facts. Introspection and intuition were staple
philosophical tool at least since Descartes. He argued that there is no absolutely first cognition in a
cognitive process; such a process has its beginning but can always

from what is true. Here knowledge and action are portrayed as two separate spheres with an absolute or
transcendental truth above and beyond any sort of inquiry organisms use to cope with life. Pragmatism
challenges this idealism by providing an "ecological" account of knowledge: inquiry is how organisms can
get a grip on their environment. Real and true are functional labels in inquiry and cannot be understood
outside of this context. It is not realist in a traditionally robust sense of realism (what Hilary Putnam would
later call metaphysical realism), but it is realist in how it acknowledges an external world which must be
dealt with.

Many of James' best-turned phrases-truth's cash value (James 1907, p. 200) and the true is only
the expedient in our way of thinking (James 1907, p. 222)-were where any idea with practical utility is true
William James wrote:

It is high time to urge the use of a little imagination in philosophy. The unwillingness of some of our cities
to read any but the silliest of possible meanings into our statement 1s as discreditable to their
imaginations as anything I know in recent philosophic history. Schiller says the truth is that which 'works.'
Thereupon he is treated as one who limits verification to the lowest material utilities. Dewey says truth is
what gives "satisfaction'! He is treated as one who believes in calling everything true which, if it were true,
would be pleasant. (James 1907, p. 90)

In reality, James asserts, the theory is a great deal more subtle.

The role of belief in representing reality is widely debated in pragmatism. Is a belief valid when it
represents reality? Copying in one (and only one) genuine mode of knowing. (James 1907, p. 90). Are
beliefs dispositions which qualify as true or false depending on how helpful they prove in inquiry and in
action? Is it only in the struggle of intelligent organisms with the surrounding environment that beliefs
acquire meanings? Does a belief only become true when it succeeds in this struggle? In Pragmatism
nothing practical or useful is held to be necessarily true, nor is anything which helps to survive merely in
the short term. For example, to believe my cheating spouse is faithful may help me feel better now, but
it is certainly not useful from a more long-term perspective because it does not accord with the facts (and
is therefore not true).

Pragmatism in other fields of philosophy

While pragmatism started out simple as a criterion of meaning, It quickly expanded to become a
full-fledged epistemology with wide-ranging implications for the entire philosophical field. Pragmatists
who work in these field share a common inspiration, but there work is diverse and there are no received
views.

Logic.

Later in his life Schiller become famous for his attacks on logic in his textbook "Formal Logic." By
then, Schiller's pragmatism had become the nearest of any of the classical pragmatists to an ordinary
language philosophy. Schiller sought to undermine the very

These two explanatory schemes there are comparable to what William James called tough-minded
empiricism and tender-minded rationalism, Schiller, contends, is that mechanistic naturalism cannot
make the sense of the "higher" aspects of our world (freewill, consciousness, purpose, universals and
some would add God), while abstract metaphysics cannot make the sense of the "lower" aspects of our
world (the imperfect, change, physicality). While Schiller is vague about the exact sort of middle ground
he is trying to establish, he suggests that metaphysics is a tool that can add inquiry, but that is valuable
only insofar as it actually does help in explanation.

In the second half of the twentieth century, Stephen Toulmin argued that the need to distinguish
between reality and appearance only arises within an explanatory scheme and therefore that there is no
point in asking what 'ultimate reality consists of. More recent, a similar idea has been suggested by the
post analytical philosopher. Daniel Dennett, who argues that anyone who wants to understand the world
has to adopt the intentional stance and acknowledge both the 'syntactical' aspects of reality (i.e. whizzing
atoms) and its emergent or 'semantic' properties (1.e. meaning and value).

Radial Empiricism gives interesting answers to questions about the limits of science if there are
any, the nature of meaning and value and the workability of reductionism. These questions feature
prominently in current debates about relationship between religion and science, where it is often
assumed - most pragmatists would disagree - that science degrades everything that is meaningful into
'merely" physical phenomena.

Philosophy of mind

Both John Dewey in Experience and Nature (1929) and half a century later Richard Rorty in his
monumental Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (1979) argued that much of the debate about the
relation of the mind to the body results from conceptual confusions. They argue instead that there 1s no
need to posit the mind or mind stuff as an ontological category.

Pragmatists disagree over whether philosophers ought to adopt a quietist or a naturalist stance
toward the mind-body problem. The former (Rorty among them) want to do away with the problem
because they believe it's a pseudo-problem, whereas the later believe that it is a meaningful empirical
question.
Ethics

Pragmatism sees no fundamental difference between practical and theoretical reason, nor any
ontological difference between the facts and values. Both facts and values have cognitive content:
knowledge is that what we believe; values are hypotheses about what is good in action. Pragmatist ethics
is broadly humanist because it sees no ultimate test of morality beyond what matter for us as humans.
Good values are those for which we have good reasons, vi1z. The Good Reasons approach. The pragmatist
formulation pre-dates those of other philosophers who have

Pragmatism has ties to process philosophy. Much of their work developed in dialogue with
process philosophers like Henry Bergson and Alfred North Whitehead, who aren't usually considered
pragmatists because they differ so much on other points. (Douglas Browning et al. 1998; Rescher, SEP)

Behaviorism and functionalism in psychology and sociology also have ties to pragmatism, which
is not surprising considering that James and Dewey were both scholars of psychology and that Mead
became a sociologist.

Utilitarianism has some significant parallels to pragmatism and John Stuart Mill espoused similar values.

Influence of pragmatism in social sciences

Symbolic interactionism, a major perspective within sociological social psychology, was derived
from pragmatism in the early 20 century, especially the work of George Herbert Mead and Charles Cooley,
as well as that of Pierce and William James.

Increasing attention is being given to pragmatist epistemology in other branches of the social
science, which have struggled with divisive debates over the status of social scientific knowledge

Enthusiasts suggest that pragmatism offers an approach which 1s both pluralist and practical.

Influence of pragmatism in public administration

The classical pragmatism of John Dewey, William James and Charles Sanders Pierce has influenced
research in the field of Public Administration. Scholars claim classical pragmatism has a profound influence
on the origin of the field of Public administration. At the most basic level, public administrators are
responsible for making programs "work" in a pluralistic, problems-oriented environment. Public
administrators are also responsible for the day-to-day work with citizens. Dewey's participatory
democracy can be applied in this environment. Dewey and James notion of theory as a tool, helps
administrator craft theories to resolve policy and administrative problems. Further, the birth of American
administration coincides closely with the period of greatest influence with the classical pragmatists.

Which pragmatism (classical pragmatism or neo-pragmatism) makes the most sense in public
administration has been the source of debate. The debate began when Patricia M. Shields introduced
Dewey's nation of the community of Inquiry. Hugh Miller objected to one element of the community of
inquiry (problematic situation, scientific attitude. participatory democracy) - Scientific attitude. A debate
that included responses from a practitioner, an economist, a planner, other Public Administration
Scholars, and noted philosophers followed. Miller and Shields also responded.

Experienced different levels of modifications. Those changes are very relevant to the development of
cities and basic themes, such as anti-foundationalism, fallibilism, community as inquirers, questioning the
sharp distinction between theory and practice, pluralism and democracy, of pragmatism can be applied
to the urbanism even more strongly.
 Vincent di Norcia argues that a pragmatic approach it is suitable regarding social issues because
it requires a conduct that resolves problems as it continuously assesses the practical consequences of a
project. This secures the interest for the stakeholders and Norcia Stresses the importance of social and
cognitive pluralism. Social pluralism means that we should recognize all stake holder's interest that are
affected by a certain decision, without putting weight on elite political or economic group's interests. As
a complement Norcia also stresses cognitive pluralism, which indicates that one should include all kinds
of knowledge that are relevant to a problem.

Criticisms

Arthur Oncken Lovejoy criticized pragmatism in his 1908 essay "The Thirteen Pragmatisms'"
where he identifies thirteen different philosophical positions that were each labeled pragmatism. Lovejoy
argues that there is significant ambiguity in the notion of the consequences of the truth of a preposition
and those of belief in a preposition in order to highlight that many pragmatists had failed to recognize
that distinction.

Neopragmatism as represented by Richard Rorty has been criticized as relativistic both by

neoclassical pragmatists such as Susan Haack (Haack 1997) and by many analytic philosophers (Dennett
1998). Rorty's early analytical work, however, differs notably from his later work which some, including
Rort himself, consider to be closer to literary criticism then to philosophy, and which attracts the brunt of
criticism from his distractors.

A list of Pragmatists

Classical pragmatists (1850-1950)

Name Lifetime Notes

Charles 1839-1914 Was the founder of American pragmatism (later called by Peirce
Sanders pragmaticism). He wrote on a wide range of topics, from
Peirce mathematical logic and semiotics to psychology.

William 1842-1910 Influential psychologist and theorist of religion, as well as

James philosopher
First to be widely associated with the term "pragmatism" due to
Peirce lifelong unpopularity.
Joseph 1924- Cultural Realism as extending and deepening their insights,
Margolis especially the contribution of Peirce and Dewey; in the context
of a rapprochement with Continental philosophy.

Hilary 1926- In many ways the opposite of Rorty and thinks classical
Putnam pragmatism was too permissive a theory.

Richard 1931- Famous author of Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature.

Rorty 2007

Willard 1908-

Van Orman 2000 Pragmatist philosopher, concerned with language, logic, and
Quine philosophy of mathematics.
 In The Self Awakened: Pragmatism Unbound, advocates for a
Roberto 1947- "radical pragmatism," one that "de-naturalizes society and
Unger culture, and thus insists that we can "transform the character of
our relation to social and cultural worlds we inhabit rather than
just to change, little by little, the content of the arrangements
and beliefs that comprise them."

Mike 1961- Applied Rorty's neopragmatism to media studies and developed

Sandbothe a new branch that he called Media Philosophy. Together with
authors like Juergen Habermas, Hans Pape he belongs to a group
of European Pragmatists who make use of Peirce, James, Dewey,
Rorty, Brandom, Putnam and other representatives of American
pragmatism in continental philosophy.
Richard Philosopher of art.
Shusterman
Jason 1969- Defends a pragmatist form of contextualism against semantic
Stanley varieties of contextualism in his Knowledge and Practical
Interest.
Robert B. 1970 Defends an epistemological conception of democratic politics
Talisse that is explicitly opposed to Deweyan democracy and yet rooted
in a conception of social epistemology that derives from the
pragmatism of Charles Peirce. His work in argumentation theory
and informal logic also demonstrates pragmatist leanings.

Stephen 1922-2009 Student of Wittgenstein, known especially for his The Uses of
Toulmin Arguments.

Can also be promoted in an unqualified sense, in which case it asserts the mind-independent existence of
a visible world, as opposed to idealism, skepticism, and solipsism. Philosophers who profess realism state
that truth consist in the mind's correspondence to reality.

Realist tend to believe that whatever we believe is now and only an approximation of reality and
that every new observation brings us to closer to understanding reality. In its Kantian sense, realism is
contrasted with idealism. In a contemporary sense, realism is contrasted with anti-realism, primarily in
the philosophy of science.

History of realism

The oldest use of the term "realism" appears in medieval scholastic interpretations and
adaptations of Greek philosophy. Here, however, it is a Platonic realism developed out of debates over
the problem of universals. Universals are terms or properties that can be applied to many things, such as
"red", "beauty", "tive", or "dog". Realism in this context, contrasted with conceptualism and nominalism,
holds that such universals really exist, but only insofar as they are instatiated in specitic things; they dont
exist separately trom the specific thing Conceptualism holds that they exist, but only in the mind, while
nominalism holds that universal do not "exist" at all but are no more than words (1latus voci) that describe
specific objects.
Platonie realism

Platonic realism is a philosophical term usually used to refer to the idea of realism regarding the existence
of universals or abstract after the Greek philosopher by Plato to the ideal forms, this stance is confusingly
also called Platonic idealism. This should not be confused with idealism, as presented by philosophers
such as George Barkeley: as Platonic abstractions are not spatial, temporal, or mental they are not
compatible with the later idealism's emphasis on mental existence. Plato's Forms include numbers and
geometrical figures, making them a theory of mathematical realism; they also include the Form of the
God, making them in addition a theory of ethical realism.

The Scottish School of Common Sense Realism

Scottish Common Sense Realism is a school of philosophy that sought to defend naïve realism
against philosophical paradox and skepticism, arguing that matters of common sense are within the reach
of common understanding and that common-sense beliefs even given the lives and thoughts of those who
hold non-commonsensical beliefs. It Originated in the ideas of the most prominent members of the
Scottish School of Common Sense, Thomas Reid, Adam Ferguson and Dugald Stewart, during the 18th
century Scottish Enlightenment and flourished in the late 18" and early 19" centuries in Scotland and
America.

Its roots can be found in responses to such philosophers as John Locke, George Berkeley and David
Hume: The approach was a response to the "ideal system that began with Descartes

John 1859-1952 Prominent philosopher of education, referred to his brand of

Dewey pragmatism as instrumentalism.

F.C.S. 1864-1937 One of the most important pragmatists of his time, Schiller is largely
Schiller forgotten today

Important protopragmatists or related thinkers

Names Lifetime Notes

George 1863-1931 Philosopher and sociological social psychologist.
Herbert
Mead
Ralph 1803-1882 The American protopragmatist, Transcendentalists, and noted
Waldo Rhetorician.
Emerson
Josiah 1855-1916 Colleague of James at Harvard who employed pragmatism in an idealist
Royce metaphysical framework, he was particularly interested in the
philosophy of religion and community; his work is often associated with
neo-Hegelianism.
George 1863-1952 Often not consider to be a canonical pragmatist, he applied pragmatist
Santayana methodologies to naturalism, exemplified in his early master work. The
Life Of Reason.
W. E. B 1868- 1963 Student of James at Harvard who applied pragmatist principles to his
Du Bots sociological work, especially in The Philadelphia Negro and Atlanta
 Name Lifetime Notes
Giovanni 1881-1956 Italian essayist, mostly known because James occasionally mentioned
Papini him.

Giovanni 1865-1909 Italian analytic and pragmatist philosopher.

Vailati

Hu Shi 1891-1962 Chinese intellectual and reformer, student and translator of Dewey's
and advocate of pragmatism in China.

Reinhold 1892-1971 American philosopher and Theologian, inserted pragmatism into his
Niebuhr theory of Christian Realism.

Camus an atheist, are credited for their works and writing about existentialism. Sartre is noted for bringing
the most international attention to existentialism in the 20" century.

Each basically agrees that human life is in no way complete and fully satisfying because of
suffering and losses that occur when considering the lack of perfection, power, and control one has over
their life. Even though they do agree that life is not optimally satisfying, nonetheless has meaning.
Existentialism is the search and journey for true self and true personal meaning in life

Most importantly, it 1s arbitrary act that existentialism finds most objectionable-that 1s, when
someone or society tries to impose or demand that their beliefs, values, or rules be faithfully accepted
and obeyed. Existentialists believe this destroys individualism and makes a person become whatever the
people in power desire thus they are dehumanized and reduced to being an object. Existentialism then
stresses that a person's judgment is the determining factor for what is to be believed rather than by
arbitrary religious or secular world values.

Contemporary philosophy

Contemporary philosophy is the present period in the history of Western philosophy beginning at
the end of the 19 century with the professionalization of the discipline and the rise of analytic and
continental philosophy.

The phrase "contemporary philosophy'" is a piece of technical terminology in philosophy that

refers to a specific period in the history of Western philosophy. However, the phrase is often confused
with modern philosophy (which refers to an earlier period in Western philosophy). Postmodern
philosophy (which refers to continental philosophers criticisms of modern philosophy), and with a non-
technical use of the phrase referring to any recent philosophic work.

The analytic-continental divide

The beginning of the divide

Contemporary continental philosophy began with the work of Franz Brentano, Edmund Husserl,
Adolf Reinach, and Martin Heidegger and the development of the philosophical method of
phenomenology. This development was roughly contemporaneous with work by Gottlob Frege and
Bertrand Russel inaugurating a new philosophical method based on the analysis of language via modern
logic (hence the term "analytic philosophy").
 Analytic and continental philosophers often hold a disparaging view of each other's respective
approach to philosophy and as a result work largely independent of each other. While analytic philosophy
is the dominant approach in most philosophy departments found in English- speaking countries (e.g.
United Kingdom, United States, Canada, Australia), as well as Scandinavia, continental philosophy is
prevalent throughout the rest of the world (e.g. France,

Different formulations are treated as though they were cquivalent, examples are under-described
arguments are gestured at rather than properly made, their form is lett unexplained, and so on.
Philosophy has never been done for an extended period according to standards as high as those that are
now already available, if only the profession will take them seriously to heart.

The "crude stereotypes" that Williamson refers to in the above passage are these: that analytic
philosophers produce carefully argued and rigorous analyses of trivially small philosophic puzzles, while
continental philosophers produce profound and substantial results but only by deducing them from broad
philosophical systems which themselves lack supporting arguments or clarity in their expression.
Williamson himself seems to here distance himself from these stereotypes, but does accuse analytic
philosophers of too often fitting the critical stereotype of continental philosophers by moving "too fast"
to reach substantial results via poor arguments.

Existentialism is an important school in the continental philosophical tradition. Four key

existentialists pictured from top-left clockwise: Kierkegaard, Nietzsche kafka Dostoevskyl29

The history of continental philosophy is taken to being in the early 1900s because it’s institutional
roots descent directly from those of phenomenology. As a result, Edmund Husserl has often been credited
as the founding figure in continental philosophy. Although, since analytic and continental philosophy have
such starkly different views of philosophy. After kant, continental philosophy is also often understood in
an extended sense to include any post-Kant, philosophers or movements important to continental
philosophy but not analytic philosophy.

The term "*continental philosophy, like "analytic philosophy", marks a broad range of
philosophical views and approaches not easily captured in a definition. It has even been suggested that
the term may be more pejorative than descriptive, functioning as a label for types of westerm philosophy
rejected or disliked by analytical philosophers. Indeed, continental philosophy is often characterized by
its critics as philosophy that lacks the rigor of analytic philosophy. Nonetheless, certain descriptive rather
than merely pejorative features have been seen to typically characterize continental philosophy:

 First, continental philosophers generally reject scientism, the view that the natural sciences are
the best or most accurate way of understanding all phenomena.
 Second, continental philosophy usually consider experience as determined at least partly by factor
such as context, space and time, language, culture, or history. Thus continental philosophy leads
towards historicism, where analytic philosophy tends to treat philosophy in terms of discrete
problems, capable of being analyzed a part from their historical origins.
 Third, continental philosophers tend to take a strong interest in the unity of theory and practice,
and tend to see their philosophical inquiries as closely related to personal, moral, or political
transformation.

The Jewish Philosophical tradition such as Maimonides. But his work was in many respects a departure
from the Judeo-Christian tradition. Many of Spinoza's ideas continue to vex thinkers today and many of
his principles, particularly regarding the emotions have implications for modern approaches to
psychology. Even top thinkers have found Spinoza's "geometrical method" difficult to comprehend:
Goethe admitted that he “could not really understand what Spinoza was an about most of the time." His
magnum opus, Ethics contains unresolved obscurities and has a forbidding mathematical structure
modeled on Euclid's contains unresolved philosophy attracted believers such as Albert Einstein and much
intellection attention.

Gottfried Leibniz (1646-1716)

Leibniz was the last of the great Rationalists who contributed heavily to other fields such as
mathematics. He did not develop his system, however, independently of these advances. Leibniz rejected
Cartesian dualism and denied the existence of a material world. In Leibniz's view there are infinitely many
simple substances, which he called "monads" (possibly taking the term from the work of Anne Conway).

Leibniz developed his theory of monads in response to both Descartes and Spinoza. In rejecting
his response he was forced to arrive at his own solution. Monads are the fundamental unit of reality,
according to Leibniz, constituting both inanimate and animate things. These units of reality represent the
universe, though they are not subject to the laws of causality or space (which he called "well founded
phenomena"). Leibniz, therefore, introduced his principle of pre- established harmony to account for
apparent causality in the world.

Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)

Immanuel Kant started as a traditional rationalist, having studied the rationalists Leibniz and
Wolff, but after studying David Hume's works, which "awoke [him] from [his] dogmatic slumbers", he
developed a distinctive and very influential rationalism of his own, which attempted to synthesize the
traditional rationalist and empiricist traditions.

Kant named his branch of epistemology Transcendental Idealism, and he first laid out these views
in his famous work The Critique of Pure Reason. In it he argued that there were fundamental problems
with both rationalist and empiricist dogma. To the rationalists he argued, broadly, that pure reason is
flawed when it goes beyond its limits and claims to know those things that are necessarily beyond the
realm of all possible experience: the existence of God, free will, and the immortality of the human soul.
Kant referred to these objects as "The Thing in Itself and goes on to argue that their status as objects
beyond all possible experience by definition means we cannot know them. To the empiricist he argued
that while it is correct that is fundamentally necessary for human knowledge, reason is necessary for
processing that experience into coherent thought. He therefore concludes that both reason and
experience are necessary for human knowledge.

PRAGMATISM

Pragmatism is a philosophical tradition centered on the linking of practice and theory. It describes
a process where theory is extracted from practice, and applied back to practice to from what is called
intelligent practice. Important positions characteristics of pragmatism include instrumentalism, radical
empiricism, verificationism, conceptual relativity, and fallibilism.

There is general consensus among pragmatists that philosophy should take the method and
insights of modern science into account. Charles Sanders Peirce (and his pragmatic maxim) deserves most
of the credit for pragmatism, along with later twentieth century contributors William James and John
Dewey.

Pragmatism enjoyed renewed attention after w. V. O. Quine and Wilfrid Sellars used a revised
pragmatism to criticize logical positivism in the 1960s. Another brand of pragmatism, influential of the
late 20-century pragmatists. Contemporary pragmatism may be broadly divided into strict analytic
tradition and a "neo-classical" pragmatism (such as Susan Haack) that adheres to the work of Peirce,
James, and Dewey. The word pragmatism derives from Greek tpayua (pragma), "deed, act, which comes
from tpudGo (prassö), "to pass over, to practice, to achieve".

Pragmatism as a philosophical movement began in the United States in the 1870s. Its direction
was determined by The Metaphysical Club members Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, and Chauncey
Wright, as well as John Dewey and George Herbert Mead.

The first use in print of the name pragmatism was in 1898 by James, who credited Peirce with
coining the term during the early 1870s. James regarded Peirce’s 1877-8 *lustrations of the Logic of
Science" series (including "The Fixation of Belief", 1877 and especially "How to Make our deals Clear",
1878) as the foundation of pragmatism. Peirce n turn wrote in 1906 that Nicholas St. John Green had been
instrumental by emphasizing the importance of applying Alexander Bain's definition of belief, which was
"that upon which a man is prepared to act. Peirce wrote that "from this definition, pragmatism is scarce
more than a corollary; so that I am disposed to think of him as the grandfather of pragmatism." John
Shook has said, "Chauncey Wright also deserves considerable credit, for as both Peirce and James recall,
it was Wright who demanded a phenomena list and fallibility empiricism as an alternative to rationalistic
speculation."

Inspiration for the various pragmatists included:

 Francis Bacon who coined the saying ipsa scientia potestas est ("knowledge itself is power)
 David Hume for his naturalistic account of knowledge and action
 Thomas Reid, for his direct realism
 Immanuel Kant, for his idealism and from whom Peirce derives the name "pragmatism"

Be analyzed into finer cognitive stages. That which we call introspection does not given privileged access
to knowledge about the mind the self is a concept that is derived from our interaction with the external
world and not the other way around (De Waal 2005, pp. 7-10). At the same time he held persistently that
pragmatism and epistemology in general could not be derived from principles of psychology understood
as a special science: what we do think is too different from what we should think; in his "Illustrations of
the Logic of Science" series, Peirce formulated both pragmatism and principles of statistics as aspects of
scientific method in general. This is an important point of disagreement with most other pragmatists, who
advocate a more thorough naturalism and psychologism.

Richard Roty expanded on these and other arguments in Philosophy and the Mirror of

Nature in which he criticized attempts by many philosophers of science to carve out a space for
epistemology that is entirely unrelated to - and sometimes thought of as superior to - the empirical
science. W. V. Quine, instrumental in bringing naturalized epistemology back into favor with his essay
Epistemology Naturalized (Quine 1969), also criticized "traditional epistemology and its Cartesian dream
of absolute certainty. The dream, he argued, was impossible in practice as well as misguided in theory
because it separates epistemology from scientific inquiry.

Reconciliation of anti-skepticism and fallibilism

Hilary Putnam has suggested that the reconciliation of anti-skepticism and fallibilism is the central
goal of American pragmatism. Although all human knowledge is partial, with no ability to take a *God's-
eye-view, this does not necessitate a globalized skeptical attitude, a radical philosophical skepticism (as
distinguished from that which is called scientific skepticism). Peirce insisted that (1) in reasoning, there is
the presupposition, and at least the hope, that truth and the real are discoverable and would be
discovered, sooner or later but still inevitably, investigation taken far enough, and (2) contrary to
Descartes' famous and influential methodology in the Meditations on First Philosophy, doubt cannot be
feigned or created by verbal fiat so as to motivate fruitful inquiry, and much less can philosophy began in
universal doubt. Doubt, like belief, requires justification. Genuine doubt irritates and inhibits, in the sense
that belief is that upon which one is prepared to act. It arises from confrontation with some specific
recalcitrant matter of fact (which Dewey called a 'situation'), which unsettles our belief in some specific
proposition. Inquiry is then the rationally self-controlled process of attempting to return a settled state of
belief about the matter. Note that anti-skepticism is a reaction to modern academic skepticism in the
wake of Descartes. The pragmatist insistence that all knowledge is tentative is actually quite congenial to
the older skeptical tradition.

Pragmatist theory of truth and epistemology

Pragmatism was not the first to apply evaluation to theories of knowledge: Schopenhauer advocated a
biological idealism as what's useful to an organism to believe might differ wildly

Possibility of formal logic, by showing that words only had meaning when used in an actual context. The
least famous of Schiller's main works was the constructive sequel to his destructive book "Formal Logic."
In this sequel, "Logic for Use," Schiller attempted to construct a new logic to replace the formal logic that
he had criticized in "Formal Logic." What he offers is something philosophers would recognize today as a
logic covering the context of discovery and the hypothetico-deductive method.

Whereas F.cS. Schiller actually dismissed the possibility of formal logic, most pragmatists are
critical rather of its pretension to ultimate validity and see logic as one logical tool among others or
perhaps, considering the multitude of formal logics, one set of tools among others. This is the view of C.I.
Lewis. C.s. Peirce developed multiple methods for doing formal logic.

Stephen Toulmin's The Uses of Argument inspired scholars in informal logic and rhetoric studies
(although it is actually an epistemological work).

Metaphysics

James and Dewey were empirical thinkers in the most straightforward fashion: experience is the
ultimate test and experience is what needs to be explained. They were dissatisfied with ordinary
empiricism because in the tradition dating from Hume, empiricists had a tendency to think of experience
as nothing more than individual sensations. To the pragmatists, this went against the spirit of empiricism:
we should try to explain all that is given in experience including connections and meaning, instead of
explaining them away and positing sense data as the ultimate reality. Radical empiricism, or Immediate
Empiricism in Dewey's words, wants to give a place to meaning and value instead of explaining them away
subjective additions to a world of whizzing atoms.

William James gives an interesting example of this philosophical shortcoming:

A young graduate began by saying that he had always taken for granted that when you entered a
philosophic classroom you had to open relations with a universe entirely distinct from the one you let
behind you in the street. The two were supposed; he sad, to have so little to do with each other, that you
could not possibly occupy your mind with them at the same time. The world of concrete personal
experiences to which the street belongs is multitudinous beyond imagination, tangled, muddy, painful
and perplexed. The world to which your philosophy- professor introduces you is simple, clean and noble.
The contradictions of real life are absent from it. [...] In point of fact it is far less an account of this actual
world than a clear addition build upon it [...] It is no explanation of our concrete universe (James 1907,
pp. 8-9)

F.C.S. Schiller's first book, "Riddles of the Sphinx", was published before he became aware of the
growing pragmatist movement taking place in America. In it, Schiller argues for a middle ground between
materialism and absolute metaphysics. The result of the split between.

Stressed important similarities between values and facts such as Jerome Schneewind and John Searle.

William James' contribution to ethics, as laid out in his essay The Will to Believe has often been
misunderstood as a plea for relativism or irrationality. On its own terms it argues that ethics always
involves a certain degree of trust or faith and that we cannot always wait for adequate proof when making
moral decisions.

Moral questions immediately presents themselves as questions whose solution cannot wait for
sensible proof. A moral question is a question not of what sensibly exist, but of what is good, or would be
good if it did exist. [...] A social organism of any sort whatever, large or small, is what is because each
member proceeds to his own duty with a trust that the other members will simultaneously do theirs.
Whatever a desired result is achieved by the co-operation of many independent persons, its existence as
a fact is a pure consequence of the percussive faith in one another of those immediately concerned. A
government, an army, a commercial system, a ship, a college, an athletic team, all exist on this condition,
without which not only is nothing achieved, but nothing is even attempted. (James 1896)

Of the classical pragmatists, John Dewey wrote most extensively about morality and democracy.
(Edel 1993) In his classic article Three Independent Factors in Morals (Dewey 1930), he tried to integrate
three basic philosophical perspectives on morality: the right, the virtuous and the good. He held that while
all three provide meaningful ways to think about moral questions, the possibility of conflict among the
three elements cannot always be easily solved. (Anderson, SEP)

Dewey also criticized the dichotomy between means and ends which he saw as responsible for
the degradation of our everyday working lives and education, both conceived as merely a means to an
end. He stressed the need for meaningful labor and a conception of education that viewed it not as a
preparation for life but as life itself. (Dewey 2004[1910] ch. 7; Dewey 1997 [1938], P. 47)

Dewey was opposed to other ethical philosophies of his time, notably the emotivism of Alfred
Ayer. Dewey envisioned the possibility of ethics as an experimental discipline, and thought values could
best be characterized not as feeling or imperatives, but as hypothesis about what actions will lead to
satisfactory results or what he termed consummatory experience. Further implication of this view is that
ethics is a fallible undertaking, since human beings are frequently unable to know what would satisfy
them.

A recent pragmatist contribution to meta-ethics is Todd Lekan's "Making Morality"(Lekan 2003).

Lekan argues that morality is a fallible but rational practice and that is has traditionally been misconceived
as based on theory principles. Instead, he argues, theory and rules arise as tools to make practice more
intelligent.

naturalizes' society and culture, and thus insists that we can "transform the character of our relation to
our social and cultural world we inhabit rather than just to change, little by little, the content of the
arrangements and beliefs that comprise them." Stanley Fish, the later Rorty and Jurgen Habermas are
closer to continental thought.
 Neoclassical pragmatism denotes those thinkers who consider themselves inheritors of the
project of the classical pragmatists. Sidney Hook and Susan Haack (Know for the theory of found here
ntism) are well-known examples. Many pragmatist ideas (especially those of Peirce) find a natural
expression in the decision-theoretic reconstruction of epistemology pursued in the work of Issac Levi.
Nicholas Reschar advocates his version of "methodical pragmatism" based on construing pragmatic
efficacy not as a replacement of truths but as a means to its evidentiation.

Not all pragmatists are easily characterized. It is probable, considering the advent of post analytic
philosophy and the diversification of Anglo-American philosophy, that more philosophers will be
influenced by pragmatist thought without necessarily publicly committing themselves to that
philosophical school. Daniel Dennett, a student of Quine's falls into this category, as does Stephen
Toulmin, who arrives at his philosophical position via Wittgenstein, whom he calls "a pragmatist of a
sophisticated kind'" (foreword for Dewey 1929 in the 1988 edition, p. xii). Another example is Mark
Johnson whose embodied philosophy (lakoof and Johnson 1999) shares its psychologism, direct realism
and anti-cartesianism with pragmatism. Conceptual pragmatism is a theory of knowledge originating with
the work of the philosopher and logician Clarence Irving Lewis. The epistemology of conceptual
pragmatism was first formulated in the 1929 book Mind and the World Order: Outline of a Theory of
Knowledge.

French Pragmatism' is attended with theorists like Bruno Latour, Michel Crozier and Luc Boltanski
and Laurant Thevenot. It is often seen as opposed to structural problems connected to the French Critical
Theory of Pierce Bourdieu.

Legacy and contemporary relevance

In the twentieth century, the movements of logical positivism and ordinary language philosophy
have similarities with pragmatism. Like pragmatism, logical positivism provides a verification criterion of
meaning that is supposed to rid us of nonsense metaphysics. However, logical positivism does not stress
action like pragmatism does. Furthermore, the pragmatists rarely used their maxim of meaning to rule
out all metaphysics as nonsense. Usually, pragmatism was put forth to correct metaphysical doctrines or
to construct empirically verifiable ones rather than to provide a wholesale rejection.

Ordinary language philosophy is closer to pragmatism than other philosophy of language because
of its nominalist character and because it takes the broader functioning of language in an environment as
its focus instead of investigating abstract relations between language and world.

In addition, applied scholarship of public administration that assesses charter schools, contracting
out or outsourcing, financial management, performance measurement, urban quality of life initiatives,
and urban planning in part draws on the ideas of classical pragmatism in the development of the
conceptual framework and focus of analysis.

However, the public administrators' use of pragmatism, especially in the field of health, has been
criticized as incomplete in its pragmatism. According to the classical pragmatists, knowledge is always
shaped by human interests, and the administrators focus on 'outcomes simply advances their own
interest, but that this focus on outcomes often undermines their citizen's interests which are often more
concerned with process.
Pragmatism and feminism

Since the mid-1990s, feminist philosophers have re-discovered classical pragmatism as a source
of feminist theories. Works by Seigfried, Duran, Keith, and Whipps explore the historic and philosophic
links between feminism and pragmatism. The connection between pragmatism and feminism took so long
to be discovered because pragmatism itself was eclipsed by logical positivism during the middle decades
of the 20" century. As a result it was lost from feminine discourse. The very features of pragmatism that
leads to its decline are the characteristics that feminist now consider its greatest strength. These are
"persistent and early criticisms of positivist interpretations of scientific methodology; disclosure of value
dimension of factual claims"; viewing aesthetics as informing everyday experience; subordinating logical
analysis to political, cultural and social issues; linking the dominant discourses with domination;
"realigning theory With praxis; and resisting the turn to epistemology and instead emphasizing concrete
experience". These feminist philosophers point to Jane Addams as a founder of classical pragmatism. In
addition, the ideas of Dewey, Mead and James are consistent with many feminist tenets. Jane Addams,
John Dewey & George Herbert Mead developed their philosophies as all three became friends, influenced
each other and were engaged in the Hull-House experience women's right causes.

Pragmatism and urbanism

One application of pragmatism that is being developed, is the one between pragmatism and
urbanism/urban transformation. A pragmatic approach to urban transformation values and evaluates the
consequences of a design, rather than only considering the initial intentions. According to the pragmatic
maxim, an object or conception can only be fully understood through its practical consequences. In an
urban context this signifies hoe the implementation (and its effects) of a concept or design alters the
overall understanding of the concept. Richard Rorty mentions that "a sea change" is occurring in recent
philosophical thought "a change so profound that we may not recognize that is occurring." While the
world that the movement is rooted in has had many changes, as a frame to perceive the world,
pragmatism also has.

Neoclassical pragmatists (1950-)

Neoclassical pragmatists stay closer to the project of the classical pragmatists then neopragmatists do.

Name Lifetime Notes

Sidney 1902-1989 A prominent New York intellectual and philosopher, a student of Dewey
Hook at Columbia.

Isaac 1930- Seeks to apply pragmatist thinking in a decision- theoretic perspective.

Levi
Susan 1945- Teaches at the university of Miami, sometimes called the intellectual
Haack granddaughter of C.S Peirce, known chiefly for foundherentism.

Nicholas 1928 Advocates a methodological pragmatism seems functional efficacy as

Rescher evidentiating validity
Analytical, neo- and other pragmatists (1950-)

(Often labeled neopragmatism as well)

Names Lifetime Notes

Richard J. 1932- Author of Beyond Objectivism and Relativism: Science, Hermeneutics,
Bernnstein and Praxis, The New Constellation: The Ethical- Political Horizons of
Modernity/Postmodernity, The Pragmatic Turn
Arthur Fine 1937- Philosopher of science who proposed the Natural Ontological Attitude to
the debate of scientific realism.

Stanley 1938- Literary and Legal Studies pragmatist. Criticizes Rorty's and Posner's lagal
Fish theories as "almost pragmatism" and authored the afterword in the
collection The Revival of Pragmatism.
John Defends a pragmatist form of contextualism to deal with the lottery
Hawthome paradox in his Knowledge and Lotteries

Clarence 1883- Still proudly defends the original pragmatists and sees his recent works
Irving 1964
Lewis

Other pragmatists

Legal pragmatists

Names Lifetime Notes

Oliver 1841-1935 Justice of the Supreme Court to the United States.
Wendell
Holmes,
Jr

Stephen 1938- U.S Supreme Court Associate Justice.

Breyer

Richard 1939- Judge on U.S Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.
Posner

Pragmatists in the extended sense.

Names Lifetime Notes

Comel 1953 Thinker on race , politics and religion; operates under the sign of
West "prophetic pragmatism"

Wilfrid 1912- Broad thinker, attacked foundationalism in the analytic tradition.

Sellars 1989

Frank 1903-
Ramsey 1930
 Karl-Otto 1922-
Apel
Randolph 1886-
Bourne 1918

Robert 1947- Author of communication theory as a Field.

Craig

C. Wright 1916- Author of Sociology and Pragmatism: the Height learning in America and
Mills 1962 was a commentator on Dewey.

Jurgen 1929-
Habermas

Philosophical Realism

Contemporary philosophical realism is the belief that our reality, or some aspect of it, is
ontologically independent of our conceptual schemes, linguistic practices, beliefs, etc. Realism may be
spoken of with respect to other minds, the past, the future, universal, mathematical, entities (such as
natural numbers), moral categories, the material world, and thought. Realism

Concept of the limitations of sense experience and led Locke and Hume to a skepticism that called religion
and the evidence of the sense equally into question. The common sense realists found skepticism to be
absurd and so contrary to common experience that it had to be rejected. They taught that ordinary
experiences provide intuitively certain assurance of the existence of the self, of real objects that could be
seen and felt and of certain "first principals" upon which sound morality and religious belief could be
established. its basic principle was enunciated by its founder and greatest figure. Thomas Reid:

"If there are certain principles, as I think there are, which the constitution of our nature leads us
to believe, and which we are under a necessity to take for granted in the common concerns of life, without
being able to give a reason for them these are what we call the principles of common sense; and what is
manifestly contrary to them, is what we called absurd".

Native realism

Native realism, also known as direct realism is a philosophy of mind rooted in a common sense
theory of perception that claims that the senses provide us with direct awareness of the external world.
In contrast, some forms of idealism assert that no world exists apart from mind- dependent ideas and
some forms of skepticism say we cannot trust our senses. The realist view is that objects are composed
to matter, occupy space and have properties, such as Size, shape, texture, smell, taste and color that are
usually perceived correctly. We perceive them as they really are. Objects obey the laws of physics and
retain all their properties whether or not there is anyone to observe them.

Scientific realism

Scientific realism is at the most general level, the view that the world described by science is the
real world, as it is, independent of what we might take it to be. Within philosophy of science, it is often
framed as an answer to the question "how is the success of science to be explained? The debate over
what the success of science involves centers primarily on the status of unobservable entities apparently
talked about by scientific theories. Generally, those who are scientific realists assert that one can make
reliable claims about unobservable (via, that they have the same ontological status) as observables.
Analytical philosophers generally have a commitment to scientific realism, in the sense of regarding
scientific method as a reliable guide to the nature of reality. The main alternative to scientific realism is
instrumentalism.

EXISTENTIALISM

Existentialism in the border sense is a 20h century philosophy that is centered upon the analysis
of existence and of the way humans find themselves existing in the world. The notion is that humans exist
first and then each individual spends a lifetime changing their essence or nature.

In simpler terms, existentialism is a philosophy concerned with finding self and the meaning of
life through free will, choice, and personal responsibility. The belief is that people are searching to find
out, who and what they are throughout life as they make choices based on their experience, beliefs, and
outlook. And personal choices become unique without the necessity of an objective form of truth. An
existentialist believes that person should be forced to choose and be responsible without the help of laws,
ethnic rules, or traditions.

Existentialism takes into consideration the underlying concepts:

 Human free will

 Human nature is chosen through life choices
 A person is best when struggling against their individual nature, fighting for life
 Decisions are not without stress and consequences
 There are things that are not rational
 Personal responsibility and discipline is crucial
 Society is unnatural and its traditional religious and secular rules are arbitrary
 Worldly desire is futile

Existentialism is broadly defined in a variety of concepts and there can be no one answer as to what it is,
yet it does not support any of the following:

 Wealth, pleasure, or honor makes the good life

 Social values and structure control the individual
 Accept what is and that is enough in life
 Science can and will make everything better
 People are basically good but ruined by society or external sources
 "I want my way, now!" or "It is not my fault!" mentality

There is a wide variety of philosophical, religious, and political ideologies that make up existentialism to
there is no universal agreement in an arbitrary set of ideas and beliefs. Politics vary, but each seeks the
most individual freedom for people within a society.

Existentialism- Impact on Society

Existentialistic ideas came out of a time in society when there was a deep sense of despair
following the Great Depression and World War II. There was a spirit of optimism in society that was
destroyed by World War I and its mid-century calamities. This despair has been articulated by existentialist
philosophers well into the 1970s and continues on to this day as a popular way of thinking and reasoning
(with the freedom of choose one's preferred moral belief system and lifestyle).
 An existentialist could either be a religious moralist, agnostic relativist, or an amoral atheist
Kierkegaard, a religious philosopher, Nietzsche, an anti-Christian, Sartre, an atheist, and.

Germany). Some contemporary philosophers argue that this division is harmful to philosophy, and thus
attempt a combine approach (e.g. Richard Rorty).

Analytic and continental philosophy shares a common Western philosophical tradition up to

Immanuel Kant. Afterwards, analytic and continental philosophers differ on the importance and influence
of subsequent philosophers on their respective traditions,. The German idealism school which developed
out of the rork of Kant in the 1780s and 1790s and culminated in George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegal is
considered an important development in philosophy's history by many continental philosophers, but was
thought to be repudiated by Russell, Moore, and many analytic philosophers.

Analytic philosophy

The analytic programing philosophy is ordinarily dated to the work of English philosophers
Bertrand Russel and G. E. Moore in the early 20 century, building on the work of the German philosophers
and mathematician Gottlob Frege. They turned away from then- dominant forms of Hegelianism
(objecting in particular to its idealism and purported obscurity) and began to develop a new sort of
conceptual analysis based on recent developments in logic. The most prominent example of this new
method of conceptual analysis is Russell's 1905 paper On Denoting", a paper that is widely seen
philosophy. be the paradigm of the analytic program in

Although contemporary philosophers who self-1dentity as "analytic have widely divergent

interests, assumptions, and methods-and have often rejected the fundamental premises that defined the
analytic movement between 1900 and 1960-analytic philosophy, in its contemporary state, is usually
taken to be define by a particular style characterized by precision and thoroughness about a narrow topic,
and resistance to "imprecise or cavalier discussions of broad topics.

Some analytic philosophers at the end of the 20 century, such as Richard Rorty, have called for a
major overhaul of the analytic philosophic tradition. In particular, Rorty has argued that analytic
philosophers must learn important lessons from the work of continental philosophers. Some authors, such
as Paul M Livingston and Shaun Gallagher are praised for drawing valuable common truth from both
traditions while others, such as Timothy Williamson, have called for even stricter adherence to the
methodological ideas of analytic philosophy:

We who classify ourselves as "analytic" philosophers tend to fall into the assumption that our
allegiance automatically grants us methodological virtue. According to the crude stereotypes, analytic
philosophers use arguments while "continental" philosophers do not. But within the analytic tradition
among philosophers use argument only to the extent that most "continental philosophers do [...| How
can we do better? We can make a useful start by getting the simple things right. Much even of analytic
philosophy moves too fast in its haste to rich the sexy bits. Details are not given the care they deserve:
crucial claims are vaguely stated, significant