March 15, 1998
Norman,
I fully agree with the sentiments of your paper that philosophy has gone
the way of negative, and very often personal, criticism. I do not consider
that there is something inherent in philosophy itself that has led it to
its current nadir, but, I submit that the way philosophy is practiced,
especially analytic philosophy, leads it practitioners along the path of
negative criticism. Criticism is a very easy thing to do, and criticism
that gets personal is even easier. To me it indicates the lack of
charity to the speaker on the part of the questioner. The lack of charity
fits in with the larger issue of the lack of a positive project for
analytic philosophy. Joe Margolis' paper, "A Biopsy of Recent Analytic
Philosophy", Philosophical Forum, Spring 1995 is a good place to
start on the muddle of recent analytic philosophy.
Thank you for writing a paper that diagnoses the current ills of the
practice of philosophy. Your paper is needed to wake up the
profession.
Yours truly,
Francis Remedios
Institute of Philosophy
University of Louvain
http://www.freenet.edmonton.ab.ca/~francisr
email: francisr@freenet.edmonton.ab.ca
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