Many of my friends are non-philosophy professors in the humanities (since a man can't live by logic puzzles alone). Some of them seem to labor under the misimpression that Anglo-American philosophy is over. On one point, I'm in full agreement. The phrase "Anglo-American philosophy" is so misleading that we should have set it out to pasture a long time ago. First, it denotes a style of philosophy many of the founding members of which were from the continent (e.g. Frege, Wittgenstein, Carnap, Tarski). Secondly, a number of non-English speaking countries have had by this point rather distinguished national traditions in this style (the Scandinavian countries come to mind). Third, and most importantly, there are so many excellent philosophers in this tradition who work in non-English speaking countries that it seems absurd to retain the label. The European Analytic Philosophy meetings next year are taking place in Portugal, not in the United Kingdom. France, Germany, Italy, and Spain all have excellent philosophers in this style distributed all over who organize regular conferences. Holland has long been a hotbed of activity in logic and philosophy of language (the Amsterdam colloquium being one of the world's major conferences in these areas). Geneva and Lisbon are regular stopping points for talks, and Latin America has had a number of good departments in this tradition for decades (e.g. the institute of philosophy in Mexico City has been a regular locus of philosophical activity at least since the 1970s). Nowadays, a well-established senior philosopher in the "Anglo-American" tradition has a talk schedule in a year that includes departmental colloquia all over the world (e.g. one of my friends recently gave a departmental colloquium on the metaphysics of modality in Iran). "Anglo-American philosophy" was a confused failure, but Anglo-American philosophy is thriving.
-Jason
Recent Comments