The Enlightenment Project in the Analytic Conversation

by Nicholas Capaldi

Analytic philosophy has been a dominant intellectual movement in the 20th century and a reflection of the cultural pre-eminence of scientism. In response to analytic philosophy's peculiar reticence (and inability) to discuss itself, this book provides its first comprehensive history and critique.
The central element in the analytic conversation has been the Enlightenment the appeal to an autonomous human reason, freed of any higher authority and channeling itself through science as its privileged tool. This centrality is demonstrated by systematically examining its presence and development in the philosophy of science, metaphysics, epistemology, language, psychology, social science, ethics, political philosophy, and the history of philosophy. This journey highlights the internal logical disintegration of that project. Post-modern relativism is its natural offspring and not a viable alternative.
The Enlightenment Project's conception of physical science is defective; this defective conception of physical science renders the analytic conception of social science, philosophical psychology, and epistemology defective; and that defective conception of the human condition leads to defective conceptions of both moral and political philosophy, specifically the idea of social engineering or social technology.
Throughout the book, an alternative conception of philosophy is presented as a way out of the abyss of analysis, an alternative that reconnects philosophy with the mainstream of Western civilization and initiates the process of providing a coherent cultural narrative.
This book will be of particular interest to any sophisticated reader concerned about the lack of a coherent cultural narrative.

548 pages, Hardcover

First published March 31, 1899

Reviews

[Sophia · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's hard to talk about a movement that refuses to be considered as a movement and is also unable or unwilling to analyze itself. Capaldi manages to succeed in this difficult task and presents a narrative describing, among other things, how analytic philosophers, while unwilling to admit a pretheoretical environment where their work should be grounded upon, still must pressuppose an underlying metaphysics and epistemology. This metaphysics and this epistemology is, in crude terms, that of physicalism and scientism. The refusal of accepting holistic philosophical systems puts analytic philosophy in the situation where there are underlying assumptions there are simply not talked about. There is no analysis in the vacuum and by focusing on analysis by analysis sake, analytic philosophy is caught on in a labyrinth of words, a realm of methodology that is barren, technocratical and meaningless.