An Inquiry into Analytic-Continental Metaphysics: Truth, Relevance and Metaphysics

by Jeffrey A. Bell

Overview

Jeffrey Bell offers a novel approach to thinking about a number of longstanding problems in metaphysics, issues that have persisted throughout the history of philosophy.
By developing a metaphysics of problems, he shows how the history of both the analytic and continental traditions of philosophy can be seen to be an ongoing response to the problem of regresses. By highlighting this shared history, Bell brings these two traditions back together to address problems that have been essential to their projects all along and central to much of the history of philosophy.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781399508292
Publisher:	Edinburgh University Press
Publication date:	05/31/2024
Series:	Intersections in Continental and Analytic Philosophy
Pages:	240
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 0.00(d)

About the Author

Jeffrey A. Bell is Professor of Philosophy at Southeastern Louisiana University. He has recently been a Leverhulme Trust Visiting Professor in Philosophy at Royal Holloway, University of London, during which time much of this book was written. He is the author of numerous books and articles on Deleuze and Deleuze and Guattari, including Deleuze and Guattari's What is Philosophy?: A Critical Introduction and Guide (Edinburgh UniversityPress, 2016), Deleuze’s Hume (Edinburgh UniversityPress, 2008), Philosophy at the Edge of Chaos (University of Toronto Press, 2006) and The Problem of Difference: Phenomenology and Poststructuralism (University of Toronto Press, 1998). Bell is co-editor with Paul Livingston and Andrew Cutrofello of Beyond the Analytic–Continental Divide: Pluralist Philosophy in the Twenty-First Century (Routledge, 2015) and with Claire Colebrook of Deleuze and History (Edinburgh UniversityPress, 2009).

Table of Contents

Introduction

§1 Problem of the New

§2 Problem of Relations

§3 Problem of Emergence

§4 Problem of One and Many

§5 Plato and the Third Man Argument (TMA)

1. Plato’s Theory of Forms
2. Vlastos on Third Man Argument
3. Gail Fine and the Imperfection Argument
4. The New and the Third Man Argument
5. The Imperfection Argument and Degrees of Being/Novelty
6. Problem of Becoming in Plato
7. Philebus and the Method of Mixture
8. Relative and Absolute Relations

§6 Bradley and the Problem of Relations

1. TMA and Regress
2. Bradley on Relations
3. Bradley Regress and TMA
4. Imperfection Argument and Bradley Regress
5. Relative and Absolute Relations (again)

§7 Moore, Russell, and the Birth of Analytic Philosophy

1. Birth of Analytic Philosophy
2. Moore on Bradley
3. Moorean Brute Facts and End to Regress
4. Russell on Bradley
5. Moore/Russell on Brute Facts
6. Defending Bradley
7. Michael Della Rocca on the Method of Intuition
8. Della Rocca’s Spinozist Solution to the Problem of Relations
9. Method of Intuition and Analytic Philosophy of Time
10. Monism or Pluralism?

§8 Russell and Deleuze on Leibniz

1. Russell on the Task of Analysis (and on the taste of coffee)
2. Russell on Leibniz
3. Deleuze on Leibniz
4. Clear and Distinct/Confused and Obscure; or, on Differential Unconscious

§9 On Problematic Fields

1. Plato, Leibniz, and Problematic Fields
2. Problematic Fields and Field Theory
3. Bourdieu on Fields
4. Russell on Externality of Relations to Terms
5. Problematic Fields and Bourdieu’s Fields contrasted
6. Austin and Performatives
7. Weimar Republic and November 20, 1923
8. Problematic Fields and External Circumstances
9. On Learning
10. Problematic Fields and Platonic Ideas

§10 Kant and Problematic Ideas

1. Kant and Plato
2. Infinity and Antinomies
3. Returning to Kant and Hume
4. Unity of Consciousness
5. Kant, Russell, and the Otherness of the Given
6. Kant, Infinite Regresses, and Infinite Tasks
7. Possible Experience and Real Experience
8. Kant’s Left-Hand Paradox
9. Kant, Plato, and Frege
10. Kant and the Problematic Idea

§11 D.M. Armstrong and David Lewis on Problem of One and Many

1. Kant’s Transcendental Illusion
2. Frege and the Third Man Argument
3. Armstrong on Universals
4. Lewis on Universals and Natural Properties
5. Classes and Individuals
6. The Trouble with Singletons
7. Lewis and Regresses
8. Natural Properties and Humean Supervenience
9. Primacy of the Determinate
10. Philebus and Lewis
11. Problematic Ideas as Non-Mereological Part of Determinate

§12 Determinables and Determinates

1. Problem of Emergence
2. Jessica Wilson and Fundamental Determinables
3. Wilson and Deleuze
4. Uexküll’s ticks
5. Metaphysical Indeterminacy and the Primacy of the Determinate
6. Determinables and Problematic Ideas

§13 The Limits of Representational Thought

1. Predicates as Determinates or Determinables?
2. Mark Wilson on Predicates
3. Hasok Chang on Inventing Temperature
4. Mark Wilson on Theory Façades
5. Husserl and the ‘constitutive becoming of the world’
6. Husserl and American neo-realism; or, Hook and Nagel invent Analytic Philosophy
7. Heidegger, Carnap, and the Purification of Everyday Language
8. Husserl’s Humean Phenomenology
9. Husserl and Regress of Consciousness
10. Husserl and Problem of Singletons
11. Husserl and Lebensphilosophie
12. Problematic Ideas and Singletons
13. Deleuze’s Transcendental Empiricism

§14 Learning from a Cup of Coffee

1. Mark Wilson, Temperature, and Theory Façades
2. Transcendental Empiricism and Real Experience
3. Adorno’s Negative Dialectics
4. Adorno’s non-conceptual objectivity
5. Ethnomethodology and the Taste of Coffee
6. Objectivity and Problematic Ideas

§15 Carnap and the Fate of Metaphysics

1. Carnap’s "Elimination of Metaphysics"
2. Regresses and Logical Analysis
3. Wilfrid Sellars and the Myth of the Given
4. McDowell and World-Disclosing Experience
5. Dreyfus on McDowell; or, on non-conceptual experience
6. McDowell replies, and Jason Stanley on Skill
7. MacFarlane on McDowell; or,
8. the Problem of Mathematical Experience
9. Lewis and Singletons, again
10. Meillassoux, Contingency, and Mathematics
11. Huw Price, Pragmatic Relevance, and the Fate of Metaphysics
12. Monism or Pluralism?

§16 Truth and Relevance

1. Arbitrary Accounts and Infinite Regresses
2. Brute Facts or Spinozist Bullet?
3. Davidson’s Coherence Theory of Truth
4. Davidson on Language
5. Problematic Ideas; or, Pluralism = Monism
6. Problematic Ideas and the Relevance of the Determinate
7. Living the Problem; or, the inescapable social field
8. Meillassoux and the primacy of the determinate
9. Towards a Humean Political Theory

Conclusion

Bibliography

Editorial Reviews

With stunning erudition, interdisciplinary insight, and characteristic boldness, Bell highlights the vicissitudes of the Principle of Sufficient Reason. Equally at home in the history of philosophy and in contemporary philosophy, as well as in both analytical and continental traditions, this　pluralist manifesto powerfully challenges the one-sided alliance with science that has led to an unfortunate scaling back of philosophy's traditional pursuit　of the questions of relevance and meaning.

Michael Della Rocca