What Philosophers Know: Case Studies in Recent Analytic Philosophy Book

This is a clear and compelling set of case studies dedicated to describing the content of American academic philosophy which, in the most respected departments, remains substantially analytic. The book concludes with the philosopher who did the most to delegitimate analytic, or for that matter any other form, any pretension that philosophy is anything more than a specialized genre of writing, Richard Rorty. Gutting doesn't write this, but Rorty's claim has a positivist tenor: the distinctions dwelt upon by philosophers analytical and continental can't be measured so they can't matter. Rorty meant to expand the canon of philosophy with his work, but Gutting is right to repair the sense that philosophy is not about anything in particular. His studies illuminate what can be learned from various philosophers from the 20th century in the analytic tradition, and the claims are compelling. Where he leaves us is where Deleuze did in much different register. That philosophy is a set of tools, not merely redescription, and the tools can do work. Gutting adds that, given that first principles are often assumptions, even in the work of the great such as Quine, the work of philosophy cannot be the eradication of another's belief. Having a starting point should be no embarrassment: the work of philosophy is in its elaboration.