Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Introduction
- I 1870–1914
- II 1914–1945
- 8 Logic and philosophy: the analytic programme
- 9 The diversity of philosophy
- 10 Knowledge, language, and the end of metaphysics
- 41 Sensible appearances
- 42 The renaissance of epistemology
- 43 The solipsism debates
- 44 Language
- 45 The end of philosophy as metaphysics
- 11 Philosophy and the exact sciences
- 12 Mind and its place in nature
- 13 Philosophy and social science
- 14 Ethics, religion, and the arts
- 15 Law and politics
- Biobibliographical appendix
- Bibliography
- INDEX
- References
42 - The renaissance of epistemology
from 10 - Knowledge, language, and the end of metaphysics
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2008
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Introduction
- I 1870–1914
- II 1914–1945
- 8 Logic and philosophy: the analytic programme
- 9 The diversity of philosophy
- 10 Knowledge, language, and the end of metaphysics
- 41 Sensible appearances
- 42 The renaissance of epistemology
- 43 The solipsism debates
- 44 Language
- 45 The end of philosophy as metaphysics
- 11 Philosophy and the exact sciences
- 12 Mind and its place in nature
- 13 Philosophy and social science
- 14 Ethics, religion, and the arts
- 15 Law and politics
- Biobibliographical appendix
- Bibliography
- INDEX
- References
Summary
The renaissance of epistemology between the two world wars forms a bridge between early modern and contemporary philosophy of knowledge. At the turn of the century there had been a resurgence of interest in epistemology through an anti-metaphysical, naturalist, reaction against the nineteenth-century development of Neo-Kantian and Neo-Hegelian idealism. Within German-speaking philosophy, this reaction had its roots in Helmholtz’s scientific reinterpretation of Kant, in Brentano’s phenomenology, and in Mach’s neutral monism. In British philosophy, it had acquired the specific nature of a rebuttal of Hegelianism by G. E. Moore and Bertrand Russell. And in America, the new pragmatist epistemology of William James and C. S. Peirce had directed attention away from the traditional a priori to the natural sciences. The interwar renaissance of epistemology, however, was not just a continuation of this emancipation from idealism. It was also prompted by major advances in mathematics, logic, and physics which engendered new methodological concerns (as in the influential tradition of French philosophers of science: Duhem, Poincaré, Bachelard). Hence among the traits that became prominent as a result of this renaissance, one may list an interest in mathematical, natural, and social sciences; criticism of the possibility of synthetic a priori truth; logical and semantic investigations which transformed epistemology from a theory of ideas and judgement into a theory of propositional attitudes, sentences, and meanings; a realist and naturalist orientation that tended to accommodate, if not to privilege, commonsensical and empiricist demands; a reconsideration of the role of philosophy as a critical exercise of analysis rather than as an autonomous and superior form of knowledge; and, finally, a disregard for the philosophy of history and the temporal dialectic of conceptual developments.
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- Information
- The Cambridge History of Philosophy 1870–1945 , pp. 533 - 543Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2003
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