I made this list of questions primarily to help students appreciate what is distinctive about the branch of philosophy we call "metaphilosophy". Students who have no trouble understanding when a question is epistemological or ethical sometimes nevertheless have great trouble deciding whether a question is metaphilosophical. I've found that no straightforward definition of metaphilosophy helps students with this task. What does help, a bit, is to see a large number of metaphilosophical questions. My secondary purpose is making this list is to help students come up with paper topics, read philosophy with attention to its implicit metaphilosophy, and sort out their own metaphilosophical thoughts.

Table of Contents

• Cognitivity
• Systematicity
• Methodology
• Historicity
• Self-reference and Self-application
• Immanence and non-immanence
• Disagreement and diversity
• Primacy of the practical
• Philosophy good and bad
• Philosophy and expertise
• Ends of philosophy
• Death of philosophy
• Anti-philosophies
• Philosophy and assertion
• Philosophy and exposition
• Philosophy and style
• Philosophy as literature
• Literature as philosophy
• Philosophical beauty
• Philosophy as science
• Philosophy and related fields and activities
• Philosophy and argument
• Philosophy and wisdom
• Philosophy and metaphilosophy
• Philosophy and the folk
• Philosophy and 'primitive' life
• Philosophy and philosophers
• Philosophy and pedagogy

Cognitivity

• Does philosophy lead to knowledge (is it cognitive)? Can it be true or false?
  • To be cognitive in this sense is to bear any truth-value, including falsehood, as opposed to bearing none at all. Don't confuse cognitivity with truth.
• To bear a truth-value is not necessarily to be knowable with certainty, or by any method. Don't confuse cognitivity with knowability.
  • The question is not whether anything is knowledge or cognitive e.g. science; but whether philosophy is (ever) knowledge.
• Does philosophy merely criticize or examine knowledge, without itself being (or becoming) knowledge? If so, then why should we trust it? What warrants it? Can it be objective or corrigible? How should we evaluate it?
• Can philosophy be cognitive "in some sense" and non-cognitive "in another sense"? If so, try to articulate those senses. Can we say that the "highest" or "most important" philosophy is cognitive or non-cognitive?
• If philosophy is non-cognitive, would it follow that we should read it non-immanently? (See section below on immanent and non-immanent readings of philosophy .)
• If philosophy is cognitive, does the apparently permanent character of disagreement in philosophy become a sign of failure? (See the section below on disagreement and diversity.)
• In natural science even "negative results" are valuable. (A negative result is the failure to confirm an hypothesis.) Is there anything comparable in philosophy? What value might "mistaken" philosophies have?
  • Can only non-cognitivist metaphilosophies find value in "great mistakes"?
• Can non-cognitivists have any concept of philosophical error? If so, how? If not, is there a non-cognitivist equivalent?
• Is philosophical truth more like the truth of artworks or the truth of science?
• Are philosophers who are committed to "reason" thereby committed to the cognitivity of philosophy? Those who are committed to "inquiry"?
• Can philosophy be cognitive "ultimately" and non-cognitive only provisionally? Vice versa? Can you think of examples of each?
• Do some positions make their cognitivity depend on their certainty? (Can you think of any examples?) If such positions don't quite attain the certainty they need, what is the effect of relinquishing their cognitivity?
• Is philosophy non-cognitive if its point or end is non-cognitive? (See list below for some examples.)
  • Or is it non-cognitive only if it refrains from claiming truth or falsehood on the way to fulfulling the point, purpose, or end of philosophy?
• Is philosophy non-cognitive if it is prompted, inspired, or caused by something non-epistemic, such as psychological insecurity, class struggle, will to power, or feelings of pleasure and pain?
• Is all non-cognitivist philosophy fictionalist?
• If you decide that philosophy is non-cognitive (ultimately, or in the foreground), then how do you explain the apparent fact that most (practically all) philosophers write as if philosophy were cognitive, claiming that such-and-such is true, and thus-and-so false?
  • possible explanations:
    • They had secret doctrines, and did not publish their real views. (True for the majority?)
    • They were self-deceived. (And we are so much wiser than they?)
    • The way they wrote does not really imply cognitivity; truth claims, refutations, arguments, etc. are moves in the game. (Needs further explanation, justification.)
• Is non-cognitivism in metaphilosophy plausible only to the extent that we are already skeptical about the possibility of attaining knowledge? If not, why else might it be plausible?
• What different ways are there to be non-cognitive and how do we decide to favor some over others? Here are some to consider:
  • truth not propositional; philosophy propositional only as means, or only sometime (Hegel)
  • truth only within system, and system suspended or floating (Kant? Wittgenstein)
  • non-cognitive point to inquiry for truth (Stoicism, pragmatism, many others)
  • cognitive criteria ultimately subordinate to ethical or aesthetic criteria (Nietzsche)
  • self-conscious fictionalism (Nietzsche? Vaihinger)
  • centrality of regulative principles
  • philosophy as "stirring the compost"
  • philosophy as questions, not answers
  • philosophy as search for comfort, solace, utility, beauty, ataraxia, salvation
  • philosophy as literature or art
  • philosophy as expression of personality
  • philosophy as expression of Zeitgeist, substructure, personality, etc. (ideology)
  • philosophy as sheer choice
  • philosophy as cultural action
  • philosophy as liberation
  • philosophy as self-creation
  • philosophy as preparation for death
  • philosophy as meditation
  • philosophy as criticism
  • philosophy as prescription
  • philosophy as play
  • philosophy as worship, celebration
  • philosophy as therapy
  • philosophy as clarification of language
  • philosophy as (a certain kind of) living
  • philosophy as wisdom
  • philosophy as "gadflight"
• How can we decide that some philosophy is better than others? Are non-cognitivists at a loss, or disadvantage, here?
• See John Lange, The Cognitivity Paradox, Princeton University Press, 1970; Jacob Loewenberg, Reason and the Nature of Things: Reflections on the Cognitive Function of Philosophy, Open Court, 1959; James F. Peterman, Philosophy as Therapy: An Interpretation and Defense of Wittgenstein's Later Philosophical Project, SUNY Press, 1992; Joseph Wayne Smith, The Progress and Rationality of Philosophy as a Cognitive Enterprise: An Essay on Metaphilosophy, Avebury, 1988.

Systematicity

• Should philosophy be systematic?
• What is a philosophical system?
• What virtues have been claimed for doing philosophy non-systematically or anti-systematically?
• Why is beginning a problem for systematic philosophy?
  • Compare a few philosophers on their actual beginnings and on their theoretical solutions to the problem of beginning.
• Can systems prove themselves without begging the question by taking the methods and standards of proof from within the system?
• Do systems that purport to be complete license their proponents to interpret disagreement as error? If so, is this regrettable?
• Do systems that purport to be complete absorb all criticism as part of the system (the "tarbaby defense"). If so, is this regrettable?
• Compare a few systematic philosophers on how they would respond to one who felt herself to stand outside the system.
• Kant said (KdrV, B.502) that "Human reason is by nature architectonic. That is to say, it regards all our knowledge as belonging to a possible system." If Kant is right about this, does it follow that philosophy should be done systematically? Or only that reason hopes that a complete system exists in principle?
  • Kant's quotation continues: "That is to say, it regards all our knowledge as belonging to a possible system, and therefore allows only such principles as do not at any rate make it impossible for any knowledge that we may attain to combine into a system with other knowledge."
  • In any case, is Kant right?
  • Should we decide how to do philosophy in light of the nature of reason (supposing we could know it)?
• Are systems demanded (by those who demand them) because the explanandum of philosophy is systematic, or because human beings have a quirky preference (such as a native architectonic or anal retentive neurosis)?
• Can the philosophical and metaphilosophical demands of system-building distort doctrine? For example, if logic or ethics ought to say such-and-such in truth, could the problem of beginning or similar problem leads us in a different direction? Are the demands of truth and of systematic coherence compatible?
• Cf. Nietzsche: "I mistrust all systematizers and avoid them. The will to a system is a lack of integrity." Twilight of the Idols and The Anti-Christ, trans. R.J. Hollingdale, Penguin Books, 1968; from Twilight of the Idols (original 1889), I.26 (p. 25); cf Hollingdale's comments on N's anti-systematicity in Appendix A, of this edition, pp. 188-89.
• See Everett W. Hall, Philosophical Systems: A Categorical Analysis, University of Chicago Press, 1960; George Lucas Jr. (ed.), Hegel and Whitehead: Contemporary Perspectives on Systematic Philosophy, SUNY Press, 1986; Adriaan Theodoor Peperzak, System and History in Philosophy, SUNY Press, 1986; Jules Vuillemin, What Are Philosophical Systems?, Cambridge University Press, 1986.

Methodology

• Are there methods peculiar to philosophy?
• Do we need a method to discover, examine, or justify a method? Do we need a certified method to certify a method? If so, how do we escape this apparent dilemma of circularity and infinite regress?
• How does philosophy justify its methods?
• Do (should) we acquire a method before claiming knowledge, or after? Is knowledge certified by the method that discovered or established it, or is method certified by the knowledge it discovers or establishes?
• What is the relationship between method and result in philosophy?
• What is, and what ought to be, the role of argument in philosophy?
  • How rigid is the distinction between argument to convince and argument to prove? Does argument have a bona fide epistemic function or is it entirely social/political?
  • See section on philosophy and argument below.
• What are the tenable solutions, if any, to the problem of beginning?
• What is the role of criteria in philosophy? How are they discovered? Do we need criteria to validate our criteria?
• What are the roles of consistency, completeness, and certainty in philosophical writing? What is their value? What are relations among these three traditional desiderata?
• Is it true (according to Descartes) that all differences of result among philosophers may be traced to differences of method?
• What's wrong with being unmethodical?
• Why is philosophy more conscious of its methods than the sciences?

Historicity

• Is a philosophy determined, or limited, by conditions in the philosopher's time and place?
  • Are some philosophies impossible to understand from certain other historical positions?
  • For a given philosopher who claims eternal truth for her conclusions, how does she claim to have transcended history, and how does she explain her own historicity?
  • For a given philosopher who disclaims eternal truths and asserts that all assertions are historically situated, how does she cope with the apparent self-refutation of her position?
• Is the history of philosophy the history of error?
• What is the relation between the substance of a philosophy and its 'place' in the history of philosophy?
• What is the relation between philosophy itself and the history of philosophy?
  • How does this relation differ from those between mathematics, chemistry, literature, or religion and their histories?
  • If "philosophy is the history of philosophy" (Hegel), then are all philosophical claims historically conditioned and liable to reevaluation (including this one)?
• Can philosophy progress? If so, has it actually progressed?
• Can philosophy regress? Can you cite any examples?
• Compare the values of writing the history of philosophy immanently and non-immanently.
• What metaphilosophical questions are typically answered (at least by display) in writing the history of philosophy?
• How have philosophers used the history of philosophy for non-historical or doctrinal purposes?
  • See Aristotle's historical remarks at the beginning of the Metaphysics.
• Can bad history make good philosophy? (See e.g. Russell and Heidegger on the pre-Socratics.)
• How do philosophers typically use their predecessors? How should they?
  • What would you think of a philosopher who had read virtually none of his predecessors? (See. e.g. Herbert Spencer.)
  • Hobbes said that if he wasted his time reading the books of his predecessors, then he'd never know more than they did.
    • Would you expect such philosophers to ask different kinds of questions and come to different kinds of results? If so, try to describe the difference.
• In what ways have the questions of philosophy changed and stayed the same from the Greeks to the 20th century?
• Is any view of the history or historicity of philosophy displayed by philosophies that claim to be "philosophies of the future" rather than of the present or past? Cf. Feuerbach, Nietzsche.
• Why, and how, would a philosopher seek to "overcome" the history of philosophy?
• Is a "merely antiquarian" interest in the history of philosophy unphilosophical?
• Is it legitimate to take philosophical questions from one period and look for answers in philosophers of another period?
• What has happened when a philosophical question is no longer asked, or is greatly reduced in urgency or centrality? (Can you think of examples?)
• What has happened when a position or answer is passed by without being refuted?
• Can Kant be right when he says that he understands Plato better than Plato understood himself? (First Critique, B.370; cf B.862.)
  • Can Fichte be right when he makes the same claim about Kant?
  • Can Husserl be right when he says that we understand all previous philosophers better than they understood themselves? (Crisis of the European Sciences and Transcendental Philosophy, Northwestern UP, 1970, at 73.)
  • What is historical distance such that this kind of understanding becomes possible?
• Can you recognize the historical strata in the list of questions, for example, in this hand-out?
• See: Darrel E. Christensen, "Philosophy and Its History," Review of Metaphysics, 18 (1960) 58-83; Dauenhauer, Bernard P. (ed.), At the Nexus of Philosophy and History, University of Georgia Press, 1987; W.B. Gallie, Philosophy and the Historical Understanding, Schocken, 2d ed., 1968; Jorge J.E. Gracia, Philosophy and Its History: Issues in Philosophical Historiography, SUNY, 1991; Peter Hare (ed.), Doing Philosophy Historically, Prometheus Books, 1996; Frank E. Manuel, Shapes of Philosophical History, Stanford University Press, 1965; Adriaan Theodoor Peperzak, System and History in Philosophy, SUNY Press, 1986; Richard Rorty et al. (eds.), Philosophy in History: Essays on the Historiography of Philosophy, Cambridge University Press, 1984; V. Tejera and Thelma Lavine (eds.), History and Anti-History in Philosophy, Kluwer Academic Publishing, 1989; Craig Walton, "Bibliography of the Historiography and Philosophy of the History of Philosophy," International Studies in Philosophy, 9 (1977); reprinted Torino: Filosofia, n.d.

Self-Reference and Self-Application

• Are a given philosopher's criteria of truth (knowledge, meaning) true (knowable, meaningful) by their own terms? Must they be?
• Is self-referential inconsistency as objectionable as other kinds of inconsistency?
• Many philosophies have implications for the nature or use of argument, proof, language, method, and philosophy itself. Must philosophies always comply with their own strictures on these subjects, or can they work at a 'different level' and exempt themselves?
• Are there interesting or significant philosophical positions that cannot be expounded except with some self-referential problem or paradox? Can you think of examples?
• Compare the metaphilosophies of a few philosophers on their self-referential consistency.
• Some scholars have distinguished philosophical reasoning from formal logical reasoning (and scientific and legal reasoning), and found that some self-referential methods are peculiar to philosophy. What uses of self-reference are peculiar to philosophical reasoning?
  • Find examples of self-justification and self-refutation.
  • Does the search for first principles, or presuppositions, require frequent encounters with vicious and benign self-reference?
• For a given work, what is the effect of doctrine (if any) on the genre of its exposition, type of discourse, or use of language? on its mode of assertion, type of confidence or certainty claimed?
• Many philosophers use reason to limit or subvert reason (see e.g. Sextus Empiricus, Hume, and Kant). If this is paradoxical at first sight, what does it show in the last analysis about the nature of reason, philosophy, and method?
• How should we judge philosophies which (as most do) instruct us how to judge?
  • If we cannot 'get outside' philosophy to judge philosophies, should we regret or rejoice? What does it show about the cognitivity of philosophy?
• Why does a given philosopher practice philosophy and write books? Is her book consistent with this vision of the nature and function of philosophy?
• Can the doctrinal aspect of a philosophy be consistent with all its other aspects? What is the price of trying? of failing?
• See: Steven J. Bartlett and Peter Suber, Self-Reference: Reflections on Reflexivity, Martinus Nijhoff, 1987 (contains a large bibliography).

Immanence and Non-Immanence

• Should philosophy be explained as the intellectual response to philosophical questions, arguments, living problems, and prior philosophers? (These would be immanent explanations.)
• Should philosophy instead be explained as the upshot, byproduct, epiphenomenon, or side-effect of something else, such as economic or political forces, class struggle, will to power, individual psychology, cultural determinism, or linguistic confusion? (These would be non-immanent or reductive explanations; they are sometimes called "external critique".)
• If you prefer an immanent explanation, how do you explain the role of the historical and psychological conditions of the philosopher in the development of her philosophy? Does philosophy reflect the material conditions of its time and place at all?
• If you prefer a non-immanent explanation, 'ultimately', then is your favored explanation subject to philosophical criticism? If so, what is the effect of this circle on the strength of your explanation?
• How far can the two types of explanation of philosophy work together? Is it consistent to interpret the same philosopher or text as having reasons (immanent) and causes (non-immanent), or does the latter undercut the former?
• Can non-immanent analysis of a philosophy avoid "reduction"?
  • What is reduction? If it is objectionable, why is it objectionable? What metaphilosophy is displayed by the view that it is objectionable?
• For a given philosopher, ask whether she wants to be examined solely on the basis of the arguments and conclusions in her book?
  • Even if so, what might be useful for us, qua philosophers, to learn about the philosopher's (or philosophy's) psychological, political, economic, or historical background and circumstances?
• For a given philosopher, ask whether her important theses arose, or are presented as if they arose, entirely from thinking about issues and examining arguments?
• What of philosophical interest might be (in Wittgenstein's terms) displayed but not depicted by a work of philosophy?
• Is it necessary, or artificial, to distinguish the grounds of a theory according to the author (the immanent argument) from the causes of the theory accoring to the reader (the non-immanent explanation)? If they are distinct, which is more essential in understanding the nature of a philosophy?
• Marxists hold that immanent histories of philosophy presuppose idealism. Is this true? Conversely, is it true that idealist histories must be immanent histories? Must materialist histories be non-immanent? Must non-immanent histories or analyses be materialist?
  • If Marx is right, would it follow that teaching philosophy to emphasizing the immanent arguments would presuppose idealism?
• What are the social and political conditions that define philosophers and philosophy? Does identifying them help solve or dissolve any philosophical problems?
• Is immanent philosophy bad faith? "Just academic"? If philosophy must address one's situation to be authentic, how far can it then address the tradition and continue the immanent dialogue of the tradition?
• Can philosophy be done non-immanently, or only viewed non-immanently?

Disagreement and Diversity

• Why have philosophers not agreed as often as scientists?
• Have philosophers agreed more than at first appears? Less?
• Can the apparent disagreement be reinterpreted as misunderstanding? as development?
• What may, and may not, legitimately be inferred from the spectacle of disagreement in philosophy? Why?
  • For example, does it follow that at least half the positions are in error? that we should be relativists? that we should be skeptics? that certainty is unattainable? that philosophy is non-cognitive? that philosophy is dialectical? that truth is contradictory? that philosophy is not a science? that philosophers are narcissists? that future work is necessary? that future work is pointless? something else?
• If philosophy is cognitive, then is the spectacle of disagreement a sign of failure?
  • Similarly, if one takes the spectacle of disagreement to be a sign of health, then is one thereby displaying one's view that philosophy is non-cognitive?
  • Is the apparently permanent character of philosophical disagreement of philosophers a sign of success or failure? (Both? Neither?)
• How can we conceive "success" (or health) such that philosophy is successful (or healthy) despite the perennial disagreement?
  • Can philosophy be a "practical" success and a "speculative" failure?
  • Can philosophy be functional for good in its culture and for its individual practitioners (even if its theories are false or uncertain)?
  • Can philosophy show the connections among ideas, so that we understand the issues better and better (even if its theories are false or uncertain)?
  • Can philosophy provide tools for understanding (even if its theories are false or uncertain)?
• How much of the historical disagreement in philosophy can be attributed to:
  • the fact that philosophers are asking different questions?
  • the fact that individual philosophers differ from each other in some combination of race, class, gender, personality, language, century, and culture?
  • exaggerated or polarized statements that describe different but largely compatible philosophies?
  • misunderstanding?
• What does it mean that philosophers disagree even about the significance of disagreement?
• Is disagreement in and of itself a ground of doubt? Does disagreement prevent certainty? If so, is certainty impossible? Do any philosophers take disagreement into account in "setting" the "assertiveness level" of their assertions?
  • Is disagreement a sufficient sign of uncertainty, obliging us to doubt or hesitate, or is it compatible with certainty (i.e. if all but one are simply wrong)?
  • If disagreement is taken as a sufficient sign of uncertainty, and if one of the positions fighting for recognition in the choir of disagreement is actually true, then we will miss our chance to affirm truth waiting for the disagreement to disappear.
    • If this is so, are we stupid, or is this tragic?
• If epistemology converts the search for truth into the search for certainty (Suber), then does it thereby convert it to the search for agreement as well?
  • If epistemology (through questions like "how do you know?") does not do this, are there other forces that do? If so, what are they?
• Are some philosophical disagreements "incommensurable"? If so, how are they adjudicated, if at all?
  • What about disagreements about the true logic, the concept of judgment, the function of disagreement, or other parameters of debate and adjudication itself?
  • What about disagreements on the nature or place of incommensurability?
• If you incline to an Hegelian or developmental view of disagreement, how do you explain the fact that a very large majority of philosophers think they are giving the truth once and for all? Are they all self-deceived? If so, how can this be explained? Or is it not in fact true that most philosophers think they are giving the truth once and for all?
• If two positions are not really contradictory, but appear to be so, they may be reconciled at the immanent level. But all philosophies may be reconciled at a non-immanent level, even if they really contradict one another. One non-immanent reconciliation is to regard the positions as stages in the unfolding of truth. What are the dangers, and glories, of non-immanent reconciliations?
• Is agreement a goal of philosophy? Would agreement be a sign of the success of philosophy?
  • If agreements can be false or ideological, then what is the value of agreement as a goal for philosophy?
  • Is agreement a more reasonable goal for philosophy if we mean agreement in Habermas' ideal speech situation?
• From Charles Peirce: Is agreement (ultimate unanimity of all reasonable inquirers) a criterion of truth?
  • If you are inclined to say no, do your criteria ultimately reduce to this one? Do your criteria either use agreement as a sign of truth, or imply that agreement is desirable?
• Does one philosophy imply that all other, disagreeing philosophies are wrong? Do all philosophies have a (tacit or explicit) "exclusivity clause"?
  • Find philosophies that do and that do not take this position. What are their various views of disagreement? of logic? of debate? of error? of corrigibility?
  • For a philosophy without an exclusivity clause, explore the question whether that philosophy and its attitude toward disagreement are self-subverting or self-justifying.
  • Can cognitive philosophies not have an exclusivity clause? Can coherent philosophies? Can the attempt to rid oneself of an exclusivity clause depend on the use of one?
• Can a philosophy be refuted for relying on a metaphilosophy belied by the fact of disagreement?
• If disagreement can damage (some) philosophical positions, then would it matter if all human beings agreed on everything starting tomorrow? Or would the rich history of past disagreement suffice to cause whatever damage disagreement could cause?
• Is there any place in philosophy for the argument from consensus gentium? If it has even a limited role, what is it?
• In the second Critique Kant said that the distinction between contingent unanimity and necessary universality is essential to ethics. Is it essential to philosophy or metaphilosophy?
• Is disagreement symmetrical?
  • Fichte said he agreed with Kant on the theory of freedom; before he died, Kant said he disagreed with Fichte on the theory of freedom. H.L.A. Hart and Hans Kelsen also disagree on whether they disagree (Hart thinks they agree on some points, Kelsen doesn't).
  • What is happening when disagreement appears to be asymmetrical?
• What is the relation between a philosopher's attitude toward disagreement and diversity, and her theory of error? Must philosophers apply their theories of error to all philosophers who disagree? If not, when and why not?
• Why is it so very rare to read words to the effect, "I am right, everyone else is wrong, and I can prove it..."?
  • Do philosophers commonly have this attitude but timidly or courteously refrain from voicing it? Or do they have this attitude only rarely?
• How should a philosopher regard the critics and dissenters who do not agree with her?
  • Compare a few philosophers on how they actually regard critics and dissenters (e.g. as mistaken, underdeveloped, self-deceived, blameworthy, stubborn, pitiable, unintelligent, uninspired, unfortunately born in wrong sex, culture, or century, true in the untrue form,...).
  • What is displayed about one's metaphilosophy, and about one's epistemology and ethics, by how one regards critics and dissenters?
  • What features of a philosophy and a metaphilosophy permit one to use the "tarbaby defense", that is, to embrace and envelope all critics and dissenters, saying they are explained by the system and even confirm the truth of the system? Are these features objectionable in themselves, or desirable?
• See Frank Brown Dilley, "The Nature of Philosophical Disagreement," in his Metaphysics and Religious Language, Columbia University Press, 1964; Frank Brown Dilley, "Why Do Philosophers Disagree?" Southern Journal of Philosophy, 7 (1969) 217-28; Henry Alonzo Myers, Systematic Pluralism, Cornell University Press, 1961; George Kimball Plochmann, "Metaphysical Truth and the Diversity of Systems," Review of Metaphysics, 15 (Oct. 1959-Jan. 1960) 51-66; Nicholas Rescher, The Strife of Systems: An Essay on the Grounds and Implications of Philosophical Diversity, University of Pittsburgh Press, 1985; Wilmon Henry Sheldon, Strife of Systems and Productive Duality, Harvard University Press, 1918; Joseph Wayne Smith, "Against Orientational Pluralism in Metaphilosophy," Metaphilosophy, 16, 2-3 (April-July, 1985) 214-20 (against Rescher).

Primacy of the Practical

• Is 'the practical' (the ethical) primary in philosophy?
• Do we do non-ethical philosophy ultimately for the sake of ethics, and all philosophy ultimately for the sake of action or living?
• Is philosophy essentially a kind of inquiry?
• Is philosophy essentially a kind of action or life?
• What is the relation between 'the speculative' and 'the practical' in philosophy?
• Do we hold one philosophy rather than another solely by virtue of intellectual criteria or at least partially by sheer choices?
  • Explore what Fichte, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Sartre have said on this question.
• Is it legitimate to judge (say) epistemological doctrines by their implications for ethics?
• Is it legitimate to judge (say) ethical doctrines by their implications for epistemology?
• What kind of philosophy should we do if we hold that ethics is morally prior to everything, but that some kinds of knowledge are temporally prior to ethics?
• If good action requires true belief, how do we cope with the difficulty of attaining true belief? That is, how do we act ethically while undertaking the philosophical (scientific, quotidian...) labor of attaining true belief? Should we settle for approximations and fictionalist shortcuts (as in Descartes' provisional morality), or should we spend all the time it takes to "do epistemology right", letting our duties suffer in the meantime?
• Can philosophy be dangerous? If so, what are your models of safety and danger? What is the relation between truth and safety? What are the dangers of philosophy?
  • Hume said (Treatise at p. 272) that errors in religion are dangerous while those in philosophy are only ridiculous. Are there no dangerous errors in philosophy? (If so, why?)
• Can philosophy be useful for social or political ends? If so, how and which ends? If so, is service toward those ends the "point" of philosophy? If not (if philosophy is not useful for social and political ends), is that a criticism?
• Hegel believes that philosophy cannot give moral or political advice, since it always comes on the scene too late (spreading its wings only with the falling of the dusk). If true, would this rule out the primacy of the practical for philosophy? (What does Hegel himself say?)
• What does it reveal about the nature of philosophy that the life of Socrates, far more than his views, has been cherished and influential for two millenia?
• Studying the meaning of the word "of" is apt to affect one's life less than studying the concept of freedom. Is it fair to judge the merits of a philosophy, or character of a philosopher, by the degree of integration of the philosophy in the life of the philosopher?
• Are there different answers to the questions, (1) how did philosophy arise, and (2) why should one study philosophy? For example, did philosophy arise for epistemological reasons, to render our beliefs coherent, or for metaphysical reasons, to understand what was going on, whereas (perhaps) one ought to study philosophy for moral reasons?
• Let us say that "primary" philosophy tries to answer the important questions that actually arise in life, and that "secondary" philosophy tries to answer the questions that arise in doing primary (and secondary) philosophy. Secondary philosophy may address questions of methodology or systematicity, consistency, try to head off paradoxes of self-reference, and so on. If we grant primacy to the practical, what is the value of secondary philosophy?
  • Should we avoid it? Do it quickly and get back to primary philosophy? Spend as long as we must at it in order to be sure that our primary philosophy is well-founded, even if we spend most of our lives at it?
• Should we expect the study of philosophy to help us decide in specific cases how to act?
• Are philosophers moral experts? Are moral experts (if any) philosophers?
• Should we expect the study of philosophy to make us better people?
  • If so, exactly how?
  • If not, then what is the value of studying philosophy?
• What does a philosopher expect from a good reader? Scholarship and understanding? Or some more authentic reflection or action? Does it depend on the philosopher or work?
  • Identify a philosopher who expected the latter. How effective was his/her book in eliciting or inviting that reflection or action?

Philosophy good and bad

• How do we distinguish good or great philosophy from lesser philosophy?
  • How have philosophers done it?
  • Do our criteria come from the philosophies we are judging to be good or great? (What are the paradoxes of saying yes, or no, here?)
• Is it an objection to some non-immanent readings of philosophy that they ignore excellence and look at all works, good and bad, as equally representative of a certain underlying cause, or as symptoms of some syndrome?
• Is the evaluation of philosophy, as Northrop Frye says of literature, much less important than its interpretation?
• Is there a dimension of quality in philosophy beyond its truth or plausibility? Can true philosophy be badly done, or false philosophy well done? If so, what kind of quality is this and what are its criteria?
  • Call this dimension of quality the "craft" dimension. Can attention to craft ever distort doctrine, or suggest paths that 'pure' epistemology, metaphysics, or ethics (etc.) would not have suggested?
  • See also section on philosophical beauty, below.

Philosophy and expertise

• What talents or skills are required for "good" philosophizing?
  • Is familiarity with the history of philosophy required?
  • Is mastery of formal logic (or argumentation more loosely) required?
  • Is skill at exegesis required?
  • Is acquaintance with the other arts and sciences, including history, required?
  • Is wide experience, or "life", required?
• Can philosophy be "expertly" done and remain exoteric?
• If one denies that there is a special kind of expertise for philosophy, is one thereby committed to relativism?
• Cf. Hegel on the foot as standard of shoemaking, reason as the standard of philosophizing; not all who have feet are expert cobblers; not all who have reason are expert philosophers; Lesser Logic, 5; Phenomenology, 67.
  • What else is required beyond "reason"?
• Cf. Kant on the "genteel tone" that had recently arisen in philosophy.
• Cf. C.E.M. Joad on "Bunkumismus"; there are no "stigmata of competency" in philosophy; Return to Philosophy, Dutton, 1936, p. 36; also see 23-24, 35-37.

Ends of philosophy

• Do we, or should we, do "philosophy for philosophy's sake"? If so, what becomes of the pursuits of truth, justice, and good life? If not, what is the purpose of philosophy?
• Is there a single "point" to the practice of philosophy? Or could it be a mixture of (add your own...) moral improvement, inquiry for truth, solace, salvation, diversion, celebration, puzzle-solving, aesthetic enjoyment, worship, zestful living, and wonder?
• In what sense are the ends of philosophy therapeutic for the philosopher and for the readers?
• In its ends or goals, is philosophy closer to art, religion, or the sciences?
• Are the ends of philosophy yet to be achieved? Or are they constantly achieved and/or by their nature in need of continual pursuit and accomplishment?
• If philosophy is worth doing, is it worth doing forever? Or is it worth doing only until it is "finished" (whatever that would be)?
  • If the chase is worth more than the capture, would it ever make sense (or ever make good philosophy) to forgo the capture when it was within reach in order to continue the chase? If we translate this out of metaphor, what are we talking about?
  • Lessing: if God had truth in one hand and pursuit of truth in the other, he'd choose the second. Wittgenstein: let the fly out of the fly bottle; get to the point where you can stop doing philosophy.
• What would lead a philosopher to expound a position and then at the end to abandon it, or in the metaphor of Sextus Empiricus made famous by Wittgenstein, to kick down the ladder after climbing up it?
  • Compare this self-cancellation in Sextus Empiricus, Hume, Emerson, Kierkegaard, Wittgenstein, and Feyerabend.
• Feuerbach and Wittgenstein (among others) want to stop doing philosophy. What would justify stopping?
• Wittgenstein and some other analytic philosophers believe that (good) philosophy "leaves everything the way it was". Describe a perspective that would make this a virtue, and another that would make it a vice.
• What is certainty? Does philosophy seek or need certainty?
  • Is the conquest of doubt overrated in importance by the tradition? What important ends require it?
• Marx protested that previously philosophers merely tried to interpret the world, but that the point is to change it. Which pre-Marxian philosophers deserve this criticism? How would some reply to Marx?
• If a philosophy makes the philosopher miserable, is it thereby failing to achieve the ends of philosophy?
• See James F. Peterman, Philosophy as Therapy: An Interpretation and Defense of Wittgenstein's Later Philosophical Project, SUNY Press, 1992; Harry Redner, The Ends of Philosophy: An Essay in the Sociology of Philosophy and Rationality, Rowman and Allanheld, 1986;

Death of philosophy

• Why have analytic philosophers claimed that philosophy is or ought to be finished?
  • Why have continental philosophers?
• What is philosophy such that it might well be finished? What is it such that it is clearly still alive?
• Are there good philosophical reasons for wanting to cease doing philosophy, or to abolish it?
• See Kenneth Baynes et al (eds.), After Philosophy: End or Transformation? MIT Press, 1987; Daniel Brudney, Marx's Attempt to Leave Philosophy, Harvard University Press, 1998; Ian Hacking, "Is the End in Sight for Epistemology?" Journal of Philosophy, 77 (1980) 579-88; Jaegwon Kim, "Rorty on the Possibility of Philosophy," Journal of Philosophy, 77 (1980) 588-97; Kai Nielsen, After the Demise of the Tradition: Rorty, Critical Theory, and the Fate of Philosophy, Westview Press, 1991; Quentin Skinner, "The End of Philosophy," New York Times Review of Books, 23, 4 (March 19, 1981) 46-48; Peter Suber, "Is Philosophy Dead?" Earlhamite, 112, 2 (Winter 1993) 12-14; Meredith Williams, "Transcendence and Return: The Overcoming of Philosophy in Nietzsche and Wittgenstein," International Philosophical Quarterly, 28, 4 (December 1988).

Anti-philosophies

• Are there positions or theories that, if true or justified, would make most or all philosophy nugatory? Consider the claims of the following in this light:
  • the ancient Greek skeptics
  • Marxists on ideology
  • some existentialists on the role and absurdity of choice
  • American pragmatists
  • radical empiricists
  • naive realists
  • some natural scientists on the exclusivity of sound method
  • religious fundamentalists on faith
  • those believing that thinking is a disease
  • anti-intellectuals (even intellectual anti-intellectuals)
• How does, and how should, philosophy evaluate these claims?

Philosophy and assertion

• Do all philosophies "take positions" or "make assertions"? If not, what have some philosophies done in place of these?
• Why couldn't Plato (or Nietzsche...) just state his assertions and argue them? If we translated Plato (or Nietzsche...) into a "handbook" of their assertions and arguments, what would be lost except for "rhetorical color"?
• What of philosophical significance have philosophies done in addition to taking positions or making assertions?
  • What are we missing if we read works of philosophy only for their assertions?
• What modes of assertion have philosophers used?
  • hypothesis (Fichte's idealism? Leibniz on non-contradiction?)
  • faith
  • reason: proved, non-hypothetical (Kant's apodeictic certainty)
  • subjunctive mood (some Kierkegaard)
  • moral certainty (Kant on god, freedom, and immortality)
  • non-assertion (Greek skeptics' "aphasia")
  • sheer assertion, as in some aphorists and some existentialists; essentially without argument
  • non-cognitive: sheer choice
  • cognitive: sheer dogmatism
  • presuming on readers' agreement or introspective certification (much of Locke)
  • questioning, not (or more than) answering
  • doubting, not (or more than) affirming
  • "my view from here now"
  • "view from nowhere" (Thomas Nagel)
  • as reflection of Zeitgeist, personality etc.
  • mischievous, misleading
  • instrumental to see truth (Hegel? Wittgenstein?)
  • important to be misunderstood in certain way (Kierkegaard? Nietzsche?)
  • concealment of secret doctrine (Plato? Descartes?)
• Skeptics challenge the right of anyone to make assertions. What is the value of a philosophy that does not meet the skeptical challenge explicitly and successfully?
• Does assertion per se presuppose finality, objectivity, exclusivity, or cognitivity? If not, what "logical space" is left open by assertion? If so, how can a philosopher who wishes to deny philosophy one of these things (finality, objectivity, exclusivity, objectivity) expound her position without self-referential inconsistency?
• What would be the point of making and revoking philosophical assertions in the same work?
  • See Wittgenstein's proposition 6.54 in the Tractatus and its antecedents in Sextus Empiricus (Outlines of Pyrrhonism) and Kierkegaard (Concluding Unscientific Postscript).

Philosophy and exposition

• What is the relation between the substance of a doctrine and the genre in which it is presented (dialogue, treatise, system, essay, aphorism, private journal, novel, poem...)?
• Do different genres communicate in different ways such that some are inappropriate for philosophy or for particular philosophical positions?
  • Are there philosophical positions that can only or that can best be expounded in the genres of literature?
• What is the relation between the order in which a position is expounded and the logical order of inference? Compare a few philosophers on what guides the expositional order.
  • Compare and contrast the orders of proof, time, exposition, and discovery. How do they interact in works of philosophy?
• Why do philosophers write books? Compare the motivations of a few philosophers.
  • What implications can a doctrine have for the legitimate motives for promulgating it? Discuss a few cases.
  • Contrast, where you can, the motives for writing books that are found in biographical research with the motives that follow from the doctrine immanently. Can you find a case where these two motives are inconsistent?
  • Can a doctrine imply that its promulgation is unimportant, or even unwise? Can you think of any examples?
• Can exposition per se distort or belie the substance of a philosophy? Can you think of examples?
  • Are there any serious philosophical positions that would be falsified or undermined by the existence of an exposition of them?
• Why would a philosopher write a work with the intention of being difficult to understand, or of being misunderstood by some?
  • See Descartes, Discourse on Method, Part 6; Nietzsche, The Gay Science, §§ 190, 371, 381; Beyond Good and Evil, §§27, 43; Johannes Climacus, Philosophical Fragments and Concluding Unscientific Postscript.
  • How should we read such texts? Do we (1) work very hard and crack the code or (2) 'respect' the intention to hide or to mislead, and take the work at face value?
• To what extent are philosophers responsible for the use or misuse of their work? Discuss the case of one or two philosophers (e.g. Plato, Hegel, and Nietzsche were all used by Nazi scholars to justify the Nazi program).
• Is exposition essential to philosophy?
  • What is lost if philosophy is done silently?
  • Do philosophers have any kind of obligation to publish their thoughts, enter dialogue, respond to critics, or enlighten the rest of us?
    • If so, is there a correlative obligation to expound clearly? non-fictionally? systematically?
  • Is philosophy inherently a public or social enterprise? a dialogue or conversation?
• What is the relation between utterance and contemplation?
• Is argument essential to philosophy or only to its public exposition and audience (or both or neither)?

Philosophy and style

• What is the relation between the substance of a doctrine and the style in which it is written?
  • Are style and substance inseparable? Or can every substance (doctrine, position) be expressed in other styles?
  • Does style itself convey substance?
• Why would a philosopher ever use irony?
• Find a few philosophies that have implications for the use of language and compare them on the relation between their style and content. How well did their own writing live up to, abide by, or embody their views?
  • See e.g. Aristotle on systematic equivocation; Locke on general terms; Kant on definition (or examples, or prosaic language); Hegel on picture-language;
• Compare a philosopher's metaphorical and non-metaphorical expressions for their contribution to the vision and integration in the position.
• Arthur Lovejoy said of William James that he wrote so well that it is difficult to know what he was saying or whether it is true. Should philosophers, like scientists and jurists, adopt dry styles that create no risk of persuasion beyond the evidence?
  • See F.C.S. Schiller, "Must Philosophy be Dull?" (in his Our Human Truths)
• Margaret Wiley said of Spenser and Emerson that they adopted paradox as a style in order to avoid the risk of oversimplification. Are there other "logically objectionable" tropes that might have higher rhetorical justifications in philosophy?
• Some have suggested that opacity is a philosophical style, adopted in order to mystify and avoid the burden of precision. Is this just cynical?
• Edgar Allen Poe said nothing was ineffable. One qualification we may put on this is that nothing thinkable is ineffable. One way to read this is that everything thinkable can be expressed in common language; the introduction of technical vocabulary, or new languages, is always unnecessray. We could refine this further to an a priori suspicion more than a provable truth: if we feel driven to esoteric language to express our esoteric thought, then we should first suspect that we are bad writers.
  • Are technical vocabularies justified in philosophy?
  • Are new ways of using language needed by some philosophies? Or are those who think so just insufficiently agile with common language?
• What is clarity?
  • Is it reasonable to demand that all philosophy be written clearly?
  • Is clarity always doctrinally neutral?
  • Does "clarity" mean the same thing to different philosophical paradigms?
• What are the differences among (1) Kant's reluctance to use examples, (2) Hegel's reluctance to use picture-language, and (3) Dennett's preference for using "intuition pumps"?
• See Pat Bigelow, Kierkegaard and the Problem of Writing, Florida State University Press, 1988; Brand Blanshard, On Philosophical Style, Indiana University Press, 1954; Robert Ginsberg (ed.), The Philosopher as Writer: The Eighteenth Century, Susquehanna University Press, 1987; Berel Lang, The Anatomy of Philosophical Style: Literary Philosophy and the Philosophy of Literature, Basil Blackwell, 1990; Berel Lang (ed.), Philosophical Style: An Anthology about the Writing and Reading of Philosophy, Nelson-Hall, 1980; special issue of The Monist on Philosophy as Style and Literature as Philosophy, 63, 4 (October 1980); John J. Richetti, Philosophical Writing: Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Harvard University Press, 1983; Richard Rorty, "Philosophy as a Kind of Writing: An Essay on Derrida," in Rorty's Consequences of Pragmatism, University of Minnesota Press, 1982, pp. 90-109.
  • More under Literature as Philosophy, below.

Philosophy as literature

• Are there perspectives that make it fruitful to see philosophy as a sub-genre of literature?
• See for example:
  • Collingwood, section of Essay on Philosophical Method
  • Lewis White Beck, essay, "Philosophy as Literature"
  • Juan Marias, Philosophy as Dramatic Theory
  • Kenneth Burke, essay, "Dramatistic Introduction to Kant" (mostly on Kant's ethics)
• If philosophy is non-cognitive, does it then acquire the same value and epistemic standing as literature (whatever those are)? Why or why not?
• If we read the history of philosophy non-immanently as the reflection of personality, how could we distinguish philosophy and literature?
• Are theories (philosophical and scientific) and literary plots variations on a single structure, the story? What would a general theory of stories look like, and how would it force us to reinterpret the nature and history of philosophy?
• Do great works of philosophy and of literature survive "the test of time" for different reasons? How do works of each kind become "dated" and primarily of historical interest?
• Can we interpret Kierkegaard's "authorship" (his term), with its many pseudonyms and histrionics, as a gigantic work of literature? What is gained and lost by such a reading?
• Can we interpret Platonic dialogues as dramas? What is gained and lost by such a reading?
• Are philosophy and literature different (insofar as they are different) primarily in genre or primarily in substance?
  • Was Aristotle (in the Poetics) right to locate the difference in literature's use of particulars and philosophy's use of universals? What similarities does such a theory recognize or permit?
• See the bibliography at the end of the next section.

Literature as philosophy

• Can philosophy be written in the genres of literature? Can we say (as Santayana does) that Dante, Shakespeare, and Goethe are philosophers?
• Why might a philosopher occasionally expound her ideas in the genres of fiction?
  • Obvious examples are Rousseau's Emile, Nietzsche's Zarathustra, and some works of Lucretius and Voltaire. Can we say the same of the novels of Dostoevsky, Sartre, de Beauvoir, or Iris Murdoch? the poetry of Milton, Blake, or Wordsworth?
• How would you characterize the boundaries between philosophy and literature today? In the past, e.g., in the generation of Goethe? Shakespeare? Plato? Hesiod?
• What makes the boundary between philosophy and literature change over time? What changes have occurred? Can you correlate the changes with philosophically important changes in the history of philosophy, or with critically important changes in the history of literature?
• Is it unfair to literature, or to philosophy, to see literature as "empirical philosophy" that makes its position known through concrete particulars?
• Why is the novel a genre more commonly used by existentialists than by other kinds of philosophers?
• See Anthony J. Cascardi, The Bounds of Reason: Cervantes, Dostoevsky, Flaubert, Columbia University Press, 1986; Anthony J. Cascardi (ed.), Literature and the Question of Philosophy, John Hopkins University Press, 1987; Albert Cook, The Stance of Plato, Rowman & Littlefield, 1995; Richard Eldridge, On Moral Personhood: Philosophy, Literature, Criticism, and Self-Understanding, University of Chicago Press, 1990; Ethan Fishman, Likely Stories: Essays on Political Philosophy and Contemporary American Literature, University of Florida Press, 1989; Hans-Georg Gadamer, Literature and Philosophy in Dialogue: Essays in German Literary Theory, trans. Robert H. Paslick, SUNY Press, 1993 (on Goethe, Hölderlin, Rilke, and others); Jill Gordon, Turning Toward Philosophy: Literary Device and Dramatic Structure in Plato's Dialogues, Penn State University Press, 1999; Thomas Gould, The Ancient Quarrel Between Poetry and Philosophy, Princeton University Press, 1991; Jürgen Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, MIT Press, 1990 (contains a section called "Excursus on Leveling the Genre Distinction Between Philosophy and Literature," pp. 185-326); Everett W. Knight, Literature Considered as Philosophy: The French Example, Collier Books, 1962; Richard Kuhns, Structures of Experience: Essays on the Affinity Between Philosophy and Literature, 1970; Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, The Subject of Philosophy, University of Minnesota Press, 1993; Berel Lang, The Anatomy of Philosophical Style: Literary Philosophy and the Philosophy of Literature, Basil Blackwell, 1990; Bernd Magnus et al, Nietzsche's Case: Philosophy as/and Literature, Routledge, 1992; Donald G. Marshall (ed.), Literature as Philosophy, Philosophy as Literature, University of Iowa Press, 1987; Martha Craven Nussbaum, Love's Knowledge: Essays on Philosophy and Literature, Oxford University Press, 1990; Mark Taylor, Deconstruction in Context: Literature and Philosophy, University of Chicago Press, 1986 (interplay of lit. and philosophy from Kant to Derrida); Samuel Weber, Demarcating the Disciplines: Philosophy, Literature, Art, University of Minnesota Press, 1986. Also see the journal, Philosophy and Literature, published by Johns Hopkins University Press.

Interpreting Philosophy

• When we read a philosophy text, must we assimilate the position we find to our own terms in order to understand it? Does understanding always require assimilation?
  • If so, then is understanding always distorted?
  • If not, how can understanding occur without assimilation?
• If understanding requires assimilation, then could there be incommensurable disagreements that we simply never notice?
  • We might not notice them because we assimilate the incommensurable other and it seems commensurable to us, or because the incommensurable other never comes into focus (our understanding) sufficiently for us to acknowledge its existence or content.
• If understanding requires assimilation, then must we be unfair to positions in conflict with our own?
  • Do we beg the question to judge positions we read by our own standards rather than judging our own position by the standards of the position we are reading?
  • What if our own position explains away the position we are reading, as opposed to explaining it?
  • Can we avoid judging a conflicting paradigm from the partisan position of our own paradigm?
    • If not, what does this imply about the permanency of disagreement, the fairness of judgments, and the nature of interpretation and debate?
  • Does fairness require commensurability?
  • What follows for the ethics of argument from that fact that we can demand fairness but cannot demand commensurability?
• If there is incommensurability, or simply assimilation without incommensurability, then the ideal speech situation is violated.
  • Does this mean that "logical rudeness" is unavoidable, and non-ideological agreement foreclosed?
• Do philosophers intend a single meaning that her readers can discover with due diligence? Is 'good' interpretation 'accurate' interpretation that uncovers the historical intention of the author? Or is this model of textual understanding simply inadequate?
  • What can the interpretation of philosophy learn from literary theory on this question? Does it matter that philosophy is "non-fiction"?

Philosophical beauty

• Can philosophy be beautiful? If so, how does philosophical beauty differ from literary, scientific, and mathematical beauty?
• Is philosophical beauty linked in any way to the content of the philosophy? For example, is the harmony of form and content beautiful? Is truth an element of beauty? Were Shaftesbury and Keats right to identify truth and beauty?
• Do we often use beauty as an unacknowledged criterion of truth? Can we acknowledge and justify this practice?
• Is the distinction between the beauty of expression (language and organization) and the beauty of ideas (content) easier to make, or harder, in philosophy than in literature?
• What are some beautiful works or theories of philosophy?
• Are there "great" works of philosophy that are not beautiful? Are there beautiful works that are not great?
• What are the elements of philosophical ugliness?

Philosophy as science

• Is philosophy a science, as so many philosophers have claimed? If so, how can we explain the wide and deep disagreements in philosophy?
• Compare the visions of philosophy as a science of two or more philosophers, e.g. Kant, Hegel, Husserl. What model of science was used? How appropriate was it? If inappropriate, what dimensions of philosophy did it violate or ignore?
• What features of science have led so many philosophers to try to emulate it?
• In what periods has philosophy most and least emulated its contemporary science? Can you correlate the coming and going of such periods with the state of science? with the state of philosophy?
• How tenable is it to say that the sciences were once part of philosophy and were jettisoned when they became scientific? What does that imply about the nature of what currently passes under the name of philosophy?
• Do philosophers who believe that philosophy is capable of discovering truths thereby believe that philosophy is some kind of science? Can philosophy be cognitive and unscientific? If so, how?
• See C.J. Ducasse, Philosophy as a Science: Its Matter and Its Method, Oskar Piest, 1941 (on many different models of philosophy as a science); Edmund Husserl, "Philosophie als strenge Wissenschaft," Logos, 1 (1910-11) 289-95; Hilary Putnam, Renewing Philosophy, Harvard University Press, 1992 (against science as a model for philosophy); Hans Reichenbach, The Rise of Scientific Philosophy, University of California Press, 1951.

Philosophy and related fields and activities

• How is philosophy different from (and similar to) religion, theology, faith, literature, empirical science, history, mathematics, logic, linguistics, dreaming, guessing, common sense, play?
• Take a religious philosopher and ask what, in her view, religion offers that philosophy does not, and vice versa. (This will tend to highlight her metaphilosophy.)
  • Ditto with a scientific philosopher; with an artistic philosopher; with a literary philosopher....
• What are the most important similarities and differences between philosophy and the Glass Bead Game?
• If all knowledge is a seamless web, and only artificially divided into "fields", then what is the place and function of philosophy?
• It is often said that philosophy synthesizes the insights or principles of the different sciences and humanistic disciplines. Is this true? If so, how are these syntheses made and what is their intellectual value? To what extent is philosophy parasitic on the other disciplines?
  • Must good philosophers be well-acquainted with many other fields?
• What are the sources of philosophical inspiration? How much philosophy could be done without the results of other disciplines? How much philosophy is stimulated by other philosophy, and how much by science or art, and how much by "life itself"?
• Are there results in any of the special sciences, e.g. logic, that philosophers must accept to be good philosophers? Or are all such results open to philosophical criticism?
• Can philosophy make a contribution to the solution of problems within the natural or social sciences? If so, how? Can you think of possible or actual cases.
  • Thomas Kuhn believes that when scientific paradigms are tottering, scientists turn more often to philosophy, which provides fresh creative insights. When paradigms are stable, one of their beneficial functions is to protect scientists from the need to ask foundational questions so they can do necessary detail-work. This view makes philosophy useful, alluring, and dangerous all at once. Is this view historically correct?
  • What plays the role for philosophy that philosophy plays for science?
    • Recall how Mill and James were both cured of severe depressions that halted their philosophical work by immersion in poetry (Wordsworth for Mill, Whitman for James). Music seems to have played a similar role for Socrates and Schopenhauer. Wittgenstein was a garderner in a monastery, and watched American westerns from the front row, when he needed distraction from philosophy, or a fresh wind in the doldrums.
• Is philosophy essentially playful?
  • See Huizinga on philosophy and play; Richard Hofstadter on intellectualism as piety and play; Schiller on centrality of play to being human; Kant on play and reason in third Critique; Gadamer on play; play in Glass Bead Game; Socratic method.
• Has the relation between philosophy and other academic disciplines changed over time? If so, it is more a function of changes within philosophy or changes within the other disciplines?
  • Did the fairly sudden success of the physical sciences in the 17th century change philosophy? If so, how exactly? What does this show about the relation between philosophy and science?
• How did philosophy emerge from non-philosophy? Why? How did it differentiate itself from proto-science, religion, and myth?
  • Why do we think Thales was the first philosopher? If not Thales but x, then why x?
• See Alasdair MacIntyre, "Philosophy, the 'Other' Disciplines, and Their Histories," Soundings, 65 (1982) 127-45.

Philosophy and argument

• Are there forms of argument peculiar to philosophy? How is "philosophical reasoning" unlike other kinds of reasoning?
  • Consider the charge of infinite regress, self-referential inconsistency.
• Must philosophy be argued? What is the value of philosophical works that are not at all argued, e.g. some aphoristic works, Wittgenstein's Tractatus?
• What is the role of argument in philosophy? To prove? To persuade without necessarily proving? To show the linkage of ideas without necessarily persuading or proving? Something else?
• If abstruse arguments are not persuasive, even when sound (Hume), then what are the chances that a sophisticated philosophy can be "lived"?
• If argument is not essential to philosophy, could it still be essential to a philosophical curriculum? What is the value to philosophers of learning to analyze and compose arguments?
• Must different genres of philosophy use argument differently? Do systems encounter special problems in supporting themselves by argument not encountered by essays? Vice versa?
• What philosophical reasons have been given in the tradition to excuse the lack of argument in a given work or for a certain assertion?
  • E.g., it's a matter of faith; it's more certain than any proof; it's admittedly hypothetical; it's a sheer choice; it's presupposed by the very concept of argument, logically prior to any argument; it's a "potential contribution"
• In general is contemporary philosophy more rigorous in its arguments than prior philosophy? More self-conscious in making arguments? More demanding that arguments be made in works of philosophy?
  • Is it the other way around? Is the importance of argument cyclical instead?
  • What drives the fortunes of argument in the history of philosophy?

Philosophy and wisdom

• What is wisdom? How does it differ (if at all) from knowledge? from virtue?
• Is wisdom non-cognitive?
  • Was Socrates right that wisdom is compatible with, or even the same as, ignorance?
• Can philosophy bring us closer to wisdom? If so, how?
  • Is philosophy better or worse at bringing us to wisdom than other kinds of study or practice?
• Compare the visions of wisdom in a few philosophers.
• Does philosophy still love wisdom?
  • If it has other ends, what might they be?
  • If it has ceased to love wisdom, roughly when and why did it cease to do so?
• For a given work of philosophy, what is its vision of wisdom (if any), and how does it (if at all) promote wisdom in its readers?
  • How does a work of philosophy that is not explicitly about wisdom reveal or betray its vision of wisdom?
  • How does a work of philosophy that ostensively argues for certain conclusions and articulates a doctrine promote wisdom?
  • May we properly object if a work of philosophy has no intention to promote the wisdom of its readers?
• What is the place of play and humor in philosophy? How are they related to wisdom?
• Who was more right, Pythagoras for humbly calling himself a mere lover of wisdom (philo-sopher), or Hegel for saying that the time has come to go beyond love to the actual attainment and science of wisdom?

Philosophy and metaphilosophy

• What is the relation of philosophy and metaphilosophy?
• Compare the envelopment of metaphilosophy by philosophy in a few philosophers. That is, how has reflection on metaphilosophical problems affected (for better or worse) answers to philosophical questions?
• Can metaphilosophical reflection help solve philosophical problems?
• Is there any philosophical point in deciding the scope, nature, or value of philosophy?
• Is "philosophy" a descriptive or normative term?
• If the distinction between philosophy and metaphilosophy makes sense (even provisionally), then is there an infinite series of meta-meta-meta...-philosophical questions and perspectives?
• If metaphilosophy is a "branch" of philosophy, is it one like ethics that is done in one book while epistemology is done in another book? If not, just how is metaphilosophy assimilated to (absorbed by, subordinated to) philosophy?
• Is the metaphilosophical self-consciousness of philosophy increasing with time? If so, why? Is this a sign of progress? If so, what kind? regress?
• Compare a few philosophers on how they distinguished (in theory and in practice) between bad philosophy and non-philosophy.
  • How do these methods shed light on those philosophers' views of the nature of philosophy?
  • If there are interesting disparities between the theory and practice of philosophers in making this distinction, what does that say about their metaphilosophy?

Philosophy and the folk

• Does everyone "have a philosophy"?
• How important is it to think about philosophical questions explicitly, e.g. by studying the books of philosophers?
• Can all good philosophy be exoteric? If not, why not?
  • Is it an objection that a philosophy is not as exoteric as it could be?
• Is Kant right that philosophy need not be popular, that is, accessible to non-professionals?
• Are argumentative rigor and technical terminology dispensable from philosophy? At what price?
  • What about conceptual difficulty and complexity?
• Is "common sense" the ultimate criterion of philosophy, as John Kekes suggests? Or does (good) philosophy routinely violate common sense?
• Is Nicholas Rescher correct to suggest that the origin of philosophy lies in the attempt to make consistent the endoxa (ordinary beliefs) that we inherit from our culture?
  • Aristotle's methodological remarks in the Nichomachean Ethics suggest that we should consult and juxtapose inherited moral beliefs as the first step of moral philosophy. Why is this likely to be helpful?
• Cabell said bitterly that literature was a starveling cult kept alive by the literary. Is philosophy a starveling cult kept alive by the philosophical, irrelevant to the lives of non-philosophers?
• In Buddenbrooks Thomas Mann shows the disastrous effect on a businessman of picking up a volume of Schopenhauer. Philosophy was once read by the educated lay public as commonly as literature was. What happened, and was it (entirely) regrettable?
  • When was philosophy commonly read by the general educated public? Does the history of the esoteric and exoteric pendulum in philosophy shed any light on the value and possibility of reaching a general audience, or on the kinds of philosophy that may do so?
• What happened to the nature of philosophy as it became a special field, an academic department, a profession?
  • And what happened to its practice and popularity?
• If we distinguish philosophical beliefs from ordinary beliefs, how do (and how should) philosophers live ordinary lives? To what extent must philosophical beliefs be put aside to take part in ordinary life (Hume, Fichte)?
• Is there a presumption in favor of "common sense", or agreement with "the folk", such that philosophers must explain their departures from (more than their agreement with) these norms? What is the nature of the pressure to explain these departures?
• Do philosophers assume too hastily that there is a "natural consciousness" or non-philosophical mind? What are the differences between the disagreements among philosophers and the disagreements among other folk?
  • The term "natural consciousness" is used in Hegel, "natural standpoint" in Husserl and other phenomenologists.
• Find philosophers who use folk consciousness as a paradigm of error, and as a test or criterion of truth. What are the fundamental epistemological and political disagreements among such philosophers?

Philosophy and 'primitive' life

• What is the relation between philosophy and myth?
  • How do Socrates and Plato use myth for philosophical purposes?
  • What is the subsequent history of this use?
  • What is the prehistory of this use? Can philosophy fruitfully be seen as originating in myth?
  • Cf. Schelling's call for a new mythology at the end of his System of Transcendental Philosophy.
• What kind of philosophy can precede a scientific consciousness and what kinds can follow it?
• Is there a stage in the history of culture when philosophy is indistinguishable from religion? from shamanism?
• See Paul Radin, Primitive Man as Philosopher, D. Appleton, 1927 (reprinted, Dover, 1957); John Sallis (ed.), Philosophy and Archaic Experience, Duquesne University Press, 1982.

Philosophy and philosophers

• What is gained and what is lost by studying philosophical texts apart from the biographies of their authors? To what extent, and for what purposes, should we bring in biography?
• Compare the autobiographies of a few philosophers on their relation to their philosophies. (Try Croce, Mill, Collingwood, Jung, Quine, Rescher.)
• Why have so few philosophers written autobiographies, compared, say, to novelists or diplomats?
• To what extent is philosophy autobiographical?
  • See Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, §6: "...every great philosophy so far has been...the personal confession of its author and a kind of unconscious memoir".
  • See Ernest Campbell Mossner, "Philosophy and Biography," in his Hume, Doubleday, 1966.
  • See de Beauvoir's many-volume autobiography where, if anywhere, she expounds her philosophical position.
• The psychological motives, economic interests, and personal animosities of a philosopher may all be sources of his/her work. How relevant are they to our evaluation of that work?
• Does the recognition of causes for belief undermine the recognition of reasons for belief?
• When we say that the life-and-times of a philosopher "illuminate" her work, or that her life situation "influenced" her work, can we make sense of these claims without reducing philosophy a complex effect of blind causation? Is there a slippery slope from influence to reduction? If not, what is the "snag" that keeps reasons from sliding to causes?
• Do non-immanent reductions of philosophy necessarily entail relativism and determinism? Must they be self-referentially inconsistent?
• What parts of a philosophy can biography most illuminate? Its truth-value? the proper interpretation of its texts? the philosopher's choice of topics, scope of coverage, emphasis? expositional style and structure? idea of the audience, hence, degree of rigor, use of technical language, political appeals?
• Steven Bartlett has written that philosophers as a group are typically individualistic and even narcissistic, more concerned to develop their own thought than to share or understand the thought of others. How true is this?
• Does philosophy appeal only to certain personality types? If so, what non-immanent perspectives on philosophy does this suggest? Could philosophy be a neurosis?
  • Which came first, psychological tendencies or philosophical positions?
  • Might the latter have their own autonomy and simply attract (rather than being explained by) the former?
  • Should we always explain the latter through the former instead of sometimes the former through the latter?
• May we legitimately call someone a philosopher who denied that she was a philosopher? (See case of Simone de Beauvoir; cf. Dostoevsky, Camus, Buber.) May we deny the name of philosopher to one who called himself a philosopher? (Analytic philosophers often deny that their non-analytic colleagues are philosophers.)
• How would we, and how should we, interpret the works of a philosopher with known moral failings? For example: Nietzsche was a vicious misogynist, Charles Peirce beat his wife, Heidegger was a Nazi. See the case of Paul de Man, an influential deconstructionist lately revealed to have been an early Nazi propagandist.
  • Do these failings contaminate all the writings by that philosopher, perhaps on a theory that a philosophical position comes from the whole person?
  • Can we compartmentalize, and hold a philosopher benighted on questions of gender or politics, but profound on epistemology, metaphysics, or perhaps even other topics within ethics?
  • Do we deliberabely ignore such failings on the ground that to let them diminish our assessment of the writings would commit the genetic fallacy?
  • In answering this question, how do we factor in our belief that everyone has moral failings, including we ourselves?
• How would we, and how should we, change our evaluation of a philosopher's work if we learned that he killed someone in cold blood?
  • See case of Louis Althusser, who murdered his wife at the height of his respect and influence as a Marx scholar.
• If a philosophy cannot 'be lived', what legitimately follows about its worth as a philosophy?
  • See e.g. Hume.
• See: William Earle, "Philosophy as Autobiography," in his Public Sorrows and Private Pleasures, Indiana University Press, 1976, pp. 161-75; C.E.M. Joad, "Thought and Temperament," pp. 218-52 of his Essays in Common Sense Philosophy, George Allen & Unwin, 2d ed. 1933; Jean-Jacques Lecercle, Philosophy Through the Looking Glass, Open Court, 1985; Albert W. Levi, "The Mental Crisis of John Stuart Mill," Psychoanalytic Review, V, xxxii (1945) 86-101; Fay Horton Sawyier, "Philosophy as Autobiography: John Stuart Mill's Case," Philosophy Research Archives, 11 (1985) 169-79; Ben-Ami Scharfstein, The Philosophers: Their Lives and the Nature of Their Thought, Basil Blackwell, 1980.
  • This is a selective bibliography; see my longer bibliography in a separate handout.

Philosophy and pedagogy

• How should philosophy be taught?
• What metaphilosophical questions must be answered before we can decide how philosophy should best be taught?
• Compare the following approaches:
  • emphasis on topics, doctrines, texts, questions, periods, figures
  • lecture, discussion, dialogue, questioning, answering, reading
  • waiting for questions to arise in life
• What background should one have prior to the study of philosophy?
• Should philosophy be taught academically to 18 year olds?
  • Most philosophers were not addressing readers so young. Most philosophical questions arise naturally in life, but not necessarily by age 18.
  • Fichte thought it preferable to address young people who had not already committed themselves to a philosophical position.
• Can philosophy be taught to elementary school children?
• Can philosophy, responsibly taught, "corrupt youth"? In the Athenian sense of this phrase, can it avoid "corrupting youth"?
• Has the nature or direction of philosophy changed since most philosophers became professors of philosophy (academics, that is, middle class professionals with lower class incomes) roughly during the lifetime of Kant?
  • See David W. Hamlyn, Being a Philosopher: The History of a Practice, Routledge, 1992.
• Philosophy and literature share the problem of the "canon". How do we decide which works should be taught in an undergraduate curriculum when there is not enough time to teach everything? (This is similar to, but significantly different from, the question which books we should read ourselves, knowing we cannot read them all.)
  • Are "the classics" classical only by criteria that are class-biased and injurious to minority viewpoints?
  • Even if so, should "the classics" be given a large slice of the curriculum simply because they have molded, and do comprise, the actual tradition?
    • If we say 'no', are we substituting wishful thinking for historical fact?
    • If we say 'yes', are we perpetuating an injury?
  • Are we more justified, or less justified, in following this path if our curriculum is limited to the Western (European) tradition?
  • What time should be allotted to contemporary works that have not had the chance to be "tested by time"?
  • What time should be allotted to heterodox works that challenge the traditional canon?
  • Is this kind of challenge a good idea in philosophy even if the classics are classical because they are actually great and universal? That is, is it part of good philosophy teaching to challenge even great works, even with flimsy works?
  • If some mix of classical and non-classical works seems best, what specific criteria should we use when it is painfully clear that every non-classical work will squeeze out a classical work (some work "that every philosophy student should know")?

Return to the Metaphilosophy course home-page.

Peter Suber, Department of Philosophy, Earlham College, Richmond, Indiana, 47374, U.S.A.
peters@earlham.edu. Copyright © 1997-2000. Peter Suber.