"A
daring book! It demonstrates why and how philosophy must address the
perennial questions of human existence. Failure to take up this
challenge condemns the philosophy profession to irrelevancy and to the
nihilism that has plagued it for too long."
- Kenneth Stikkers
"The book blew my mind! It is a significant
contribution to the growing literature assessing the fate of philosophy in
the twentieth century, especially in America."
- Nicolas Capaldi
| Fashionable Nihilism
Wilshire brings together eight of his cogent and accessible essays on why and how pluralism bests language analysis when it comes to "doing" philosophy. (A ninth essay in this collection is a meditation on the death of his adult daughter.) Using evidence from APA convention behavior, comparing the contemporary state of professionalized philosophy with William James's prediction that acting like analytic philosophers "distends and dissociates us from our moral and psychical centers," and investigating the popular debate of whether we show ourselves to be as the result of nature or nurture, Wilshire leads the reader as a good philosophy lecturer might lead his class through a semester: historic positions are stated with all their attendant drama, arguments supported and found wanting, and active engagement is invited from the floor. While some academicians will be tempted to dismiss this volume as a screed against the politically favored way of thinking about thinking, many lay readers, graduate students, and philosophers will welcome Wilshire's head-on assault on establishment formulation of what is to be called philosophy. © 2004 Bruce Wilshire. All Rights Reserved. |
For several generations, analytic philosophy has been in academic ascendancy in the United States and England. The effects on philosophic thinking and on undergraduates' concept of what to think philosophically might entail has been argued on the floor of the American Philosophical Association (APA) and in university bars but has rarely been brought to the attention of the general public, primarily because, like any other professional association, the APA tends to be heard as one voice, if it is heard at all beyond its membership. 