Book Review: Philosophy Incarnate

Abstract

Introduction:  Philosophy has been occasionally subjected to humbling and sometimes humiliating castigations from disgruntled practitioners. One recalls William of Ockham’s radical criticisms of medieval philosophy, the logical positivist’s criticism of much traditional metaphysical philosophy, and the later Wittgenstein’s contention that «philosophy is descriptive.» Each of these criticisms called for radical revisions in the way philosophy had been done, and in many ways each attempted to circumscribe the future practice of philosophy. The aforementioned criticisms had some success: Ockham’s nominalism contributed to the Protestant Reformation and the Scientific Revolution, the positivists scientism contributed to the piecemeal analytic approach to philosophy so pervasive in Anglo-American philosophical practice, while Wittgenstein’s turn from the prescriptivism of philosophy ushered in part the celebration of diversity in postmodernism.