—Derek Parfit on Kant, in On What Matters

(Reading reviews of philosophy is often more interesting than the philosophy itself, since the reviews tend to be more comprehensible. That was certainly true for On What Matters. Despite, for example, Tyler Cowen’s review, I still wonder if a lot of philosophy, in its quest for rigor, paradoxically cannot find rigor in a confusing world limited by our language’s ability to describe it. Recursiveness in language is great right up to the point where you have to endlessly drill down to figure out what words mean. Cowen says, “In the subject areas of On What Matters the semantics are too slack, too open to multiple interpretation, and too many of the central concepts cry out for formalization. There are not compelling new metaphors and examples to pin down the discourse.” I wonder if the semantics of philosophy in general are simply “too slack” for them to do much. Note how I say “I wonder” at the start of the preceding sentence: this is not a rhetorical device. I also wonder if technology drives culture far more than vice-versa; when I read some philosophy, I think “yes.”

Two caveats: I haven’t read enough philosophy to grok it. In addition, what philosophy I do read I often view as material for fiction rather than in its own terms. One reason I may have liked Richard Rorty’s Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity is simply because he argues that fiction goes places philosophy can’t and thus might have the intellectual high ground. )

Derek Parfit’s On What Matters has been the most eagerly awaited work in philosophy since Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations. Read Constantine Sandis’ review of this book in the Times Higher Education online.

The journal Ratio which has a focus on analytic philosophy, recently produced a special issue book entitled ‘Essays on Derek Parfit’s On What Matters’, edited by Jussi Suikkanen and John Cottingham. In Essays on Derek Parfit’s On What Matters, seven leading moral philosophers (including Princeton’s Michael Smith, one of the world’s leading meta-ethicists) offer critical evaluations of the central ideas presented in the greatly anticipated work by world-renowned moral philosopher Derek Parfit.  

Click here to find out more and buy your copy.