The Engaged Intellect
Philosophical Essays
John McDowell(Author)
Harvard University Press
Published on 31. January 2009
Book
Hardback
360 pages
978-0-674-03164-7 (ISBN)
Description
"The Engaged Intellect" collects important essays of John McDowell. Each involves a sustained engagement with the views of an important philosopher and is characterized by a modesty that is partly temperamental and partly methodological. It is typical of McDowell to represent his own best insights either as already to be found in the writings of his heroes (Aristotle, Wittgenstein, Gadamer, and Sellars) or as inevitably emerging from a charitable modification of the views of those (such as Anscombe, Sellars, Davidson, Evans, Rorty, Dreyfus, and Brandom) subjected here to criticism.McDowell therefore develops his own philosophical picture in these pages through a method of indirection. The method is one of intervening in a philosophical dialectic at a characteristic juncture - in which it is difficult to avoid the feeling that further progress is required. McDowell shows how progress is to be achieved by preserving what is most attractive in the views of those he is in conversation with, while whittling away their weaknesses. As he practices this method, what emerges through the volume is the unity of McDowell's own views.
The combination of philosophical breadth with dialectical depth - of intricate argumentative detail with overall philosophical coherence - marks McDowell as one of the most compelling philosophers of our time.
The combination of philosophical breadth with dialectical depth - of intricate argumentative detail with overall philosophical coherence - marks McDowell as one of the most compelling philosophers of our time.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Cambridge, Mass
United States
Target group
College/higher education
Product notice
sewn/stitched
Cloth over boards
Unsewn / adhesive bound
With printed dust jacket
Dimensions
Height: 235 mm
Width: 155 mm
ISBN-13
978-0-674-03164-7 (9780674031647)
Copyright in bibliographic data is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or its licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

E-Book
09/2013
Harvard University Press
€73.99
Available for download
Person
John McDowell is University Professor of Philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh and author of Mind and World; Mind, Value, and Reality; and Meaning, Knowledge, and Reality (all from Harvard)
Content
I. Ancient Philosophy * Falsehood and Not-Being in Plato's Sophist * Eudaimonism and Realism in Aristotle's Ethics * Deliberation and Moral Development in Aristotle * Incontinence and Practical Wisdom in Aristotle II. Issues in Wittgenstein * Are Meaning, Understanding, etc., Definite States? * How Not to Read Philosophical Investigations: Brandom's Wittgenstein III. Issues in Davidson * Scheme-Content Dualism and Empiricism * Gadamer and Davidson on Understanding and Relativism * Subjective, Intersubjective, Objective IV. Reference, Objectivity, and Knowledge * Evans's Frege * Referring to Oneself * Towards Rehabilitating Objectivity * The Disjunctive Conception of Experience as Material for a Transcendental Argument V. Themes from Mind and World Revisited * Experiencing the World * Naturalism in the Philosophy of Mind VI. Responses to Brandom and Dreyfus * Knowledge and the Internal Revisited * Motivating Inferentialism: Comments on Chapter 2 of Making It Explicit * What Myth? * Response to Dreyfus * Biography * Credits * Index