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. This book will be of particular interest to any sophisticated reader concerned about the lack of a coherent cultural narrative.

552 pages, Paperback

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.