Modern Challenges to Past Philosophy: Arguments and Responses

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Since genius is scattered across the centuries, anyone philosophically engaged does well to ponder the teachings of at least some great earlier philosophers. Yet, historicists argue that each philosophy is temporally bound, contemporary analytic philosophers are apt to draw negative conclusions about the value of past philosophy for forming a justifiable conception of reality, and champions of a scientistic world-view dismiss all philosophy uninformed by the latest discoveries. In Sullivan and Pannier challenge these skeptical arguments and illustrate concretely the power of past philosophy to invigorate the mind and its philosophic products. They cast doubt, through abstract argument and concrete illustration, on the wisdom of treating all earlier systems and theories as useless patrimony of long dead elders.

Reviews

"Some philosophers (e.g., Kant, Wittgenstein) defend various philosophical positions, but argue that past philosophy is largely irrelevant to what they are doing. This book looks at a number of these positions and makes the case against the deniers that much of past philosophy is, after all, relevant to these discussions [...] It could be background reading for any course, such as one on Wittgenstein, wherein the subject has arrogantly dismissed philosophy's past." --Wilson Fred, University of Toronto, CHOICE

Author Bio

Russell Pannier is Emeritus Professor of Law, William Mitchell College of Law, USA. He has published in the areas of philosophy of logic, metaphysics, jurisprudence, ethics, constitutional law, philosophy of religion, and decision theory. He has published several essays on some of those topics with Thomas D. Sullivan. Thomas D. Sullivan is Professor of Philosophy, University Ireland Professor, and Aquinas Chair in Philosophy and Theology at the University of St. Thomas, St. Paul, USA. Sullivan has won many teaching awards, local and national. He is the co-author, with Sandra Menssen, of The Agnostic Inquirer: Revelation from a Philosophical Standpoint (2007).