Why Listen to Philosophers? A Constructive Critique of Disciplinary Philosophy

Item Type

Language

English

Abstract

This article articulates a fundamental crisis of disciplinary philosophy—its lack of disciplinary self-consciousness and the skeptical problems this generates—and, through that articulation, exemplifies a means of mitigating its force. Disciplinary philosophy organizes itself as a producer of specialized knowledge, with the apparatus of journals, publication requirements, and other professional standards, but it cannot agree on what constitutes knowledge, progress, or value, and evinces ignorance of its history and alternatives. This situation engenders a skepticism that threatens the legitimacy of disciplinary philosophy. The article proposes a response to this skepticism, rooted in the conditions that philosophers evince a specific kind of awareness of their own activity and its professional and cultural location, demonstrate this awareness by articulating it in the practice of philosophy itself, and recognize that precisely such articulation lies at the core of the Socratic idea of philosophy as a form of self-knowledge.

Subject

Agnotology
Ignorance
Disciplinarity
Disciplines
Epistemology
Justification
Legitimacy
Metaphilosophy
Philosophy of philosophy
Skepticism
Sociology of philosophy

Publication Title

Publication Year

2016

Publication Date

2016-01-01

Source

Wiley Online Library

License

Rights

© 2016 Metaphilosophy LLC and John Wiley & Sons Ltd

ISSN

1467-9973

Physical Description

vol. 47, n. 1, pp. 3-25

Short Title

Why Listen to Philosophers?

Citer cette ressource

Why Listen to Philosophers? A Constructive Critique of Disciplinary Philosophy, dans Science & Ignorance, consulté le 21 Novembre 2024, https://ignorancestudies.inist.fr/s/science-ignorance/item/4800

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