The Future for Philosophy

The title of this book is unusual in using the conjunction 'for' rather than 'of'. It is a collection of articles that aims to assess the position of philosophy at the beginning of the 21st century. The author maintains that analytic philosophy is defunct, and that postmodernism has much less influence than is generally supposed. Naturalism, however, is the conventional point of departure for most philosophy today, and this volume is no exception. It does range across the whole field, examining ancient philosophy, language, the mind-body problem, social epistemology, causation, ethics and even existentialism. The most interesting article for most readers of Network Review will, I suspect, be Jaegwon Kim's essay on the mind-body problem, which is the epitome of lucid analytical exposition. Readers will find their minds both honed and clarified by what he says.