Bernard Williams on Philosophy's Need for History
2010; Philosophy Education Society Inc.; Volume: 64; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
2154-1302
Autores Tópico(s)Philosophy, History, and Historiography
ResumoIN A NUMBER OF RECENT WORKS published just before and just after his death, Bernard Williams explored in great detail very timely idea that there is an important internal connection between practice of philosophy and practice of history. This idea is elaborated in Williams's final book, Truth and Truthfulness, subtitle of which is An Essay in Genealogy. Prior to publication of this book, Williams had considered idea at length in such essays and addresses as What Might Become? and Philosophy as a Humanistic Discipline. After his death, publication of three volumes of various articles and lectures by Williams provides further evidence that over past few decades his thinking had gradually evolved to a position in which he found that philosophical thought must thoroughly integrate historical practice into its work. Williams's attempt to take history seriously constitutes a significant departure from traditional practice of analytic philosophy as it was passed down throughout much of twentieth century. This departure is notable just insofar as Williams was among most venerated practitioners of relatively ahistorical style of analytic philosophy from which he gradually defected in his final decade or so of writing. Williams's Truth and Truthfulness might plausibly come to be seen as last important work in ahistorical analytic philosophy or, and this is even more likely, as among first important works in a new genre of historically-engaged analytic philosophy. Surely precedents for Williams's interest in a combination of philosophy and history can be found in a wide range of books from past few decades inspired principally by impressive works by erstwhile analytic philosophers, including Alasdair MacIntyre's After Virtue, Richard Rorty's and Mirror of Nature, and Hilary Putnam's Reason, Truth, and History along with other works from late 1970s by such thinkers as Charles Taylor, Quentin Skinner, and Ian Hacking. (1) During time that these and other philosophers were developing a historical flavor of analytic philosophy, Hans Sluga, in an important book about first major analytic philosopher, Gottlob Frege, sought to redress the analytic tradition's lack of interest in historical questions by showing how Frege's founding gestures cannot be understand apart from their historical context. One of Sluga's most crucial points in his book was that [t]he meaning of contemporary problems is ... a function of meaning of historical discourse within tradition. (2) Sluga's point was that philosophy cannot even so much as understand problems it sets itself without an appreciation of historical context in which these problems evolved. Despite enormous influence of above named works on subsequent work in philosophy over past three decades, it still remains case that discipline of philosophy today largely carries on as if concerns about historicity of rational and moral thought do not need to be addressed. Analytic philosophy, that is, largely proceeds today with strongly ahistorical assumptions about practice of philosophy itself. The cogent criticisms of analytic methodology voiced by MacIntyre, Rorty, Putnam, Sluga, and others have hardly received a reply from those perpetuating vices described in these criticisms. It is for this reason that Williams's book might come to be seen in future decades as a crucial turning point in history of analytic philosophy. Although it is undeniable that there has in recent years been a slowly increasing acknowledgment within analytic circles of importance of history and historicity, nobody would equate this tolerant acknowledgment with enthusiastic embrace. While increasingly few analytic philosophers would deny that rationality is historical through and through, precious few of them know what to do with such a view, how to take it seriously, how to develop it, and how to mine it for philosophical insights. …
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