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Title: The American Philosopher: Conversations With Quine, Davidson, Putnam, Nozick, Danto, Rorty, Cavell, Macintyre, and Kuhn by Giovanna Borradori, Rosanna Crocitto ISBN: 0-226-06648-7 Publisher: University of Chicago Press Pub. Date: 01 February, 1994 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $21.00

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Average Customer Rating: 5 (3 reviews)

Rating: 5
Summary: Great interviews with top American philosophers
Comment: This collection, first published in 1994, contains a series of interviews by Italian philosopher Giovanna Borradori with a number of the more important American philosophers of the last third of the 20th century. By no means is the roster of top philosophers interviewed. The most important American philosopher during that period by far, John Rawls, is not included, nor many other prominent thinkers, such as Saul Kripke. The inclusion of MacIntyre is somewhat troubling, since he is not American-born, making him the lone individual in this collection who was not. This, of course raised the question of criterion for inclusion, for a number of foreign-born philosophers who enjoyed most of their careers in the United States could easily have been considered, such as Paul Feyerabend.

These interviews provide a first rate introduction to many of the top contemporary American philosophers. In nearly every instance, these are thinkers who enjoyed the peak of their influence some years ago, so it also serves today as a bit of a retrospective. Sadly, many of the thinkers included here have passed away in the past decade, including Quine, Davidson, Kuhn, and Nozick. Unfortunately, if one is coming to these interviews from a general cultural standpoint, they underscore the shrinking importance of philosophy in the greater culture. Although within philosophy these are all major figures, in our greater intellectual culture, virtually all of them remain unknowns. For instance, as much as I have enjoyed reading Quine, how many otherwise very well read and highly educated people have even heard of his work? Yet, he is one of the most important Anglo-American philosophers of the last half of the past century. Donald Davidson is rightfully considered a major philosopher of language and philosophical psychology, yet upon his recent death very few nonphilosophers knew his name. Danto is somewhat known in the New York City area for his art criticism and is therefore because of that somewhat better known (though probably the least regarded within the philosophical community. But the only two thinkers here who could really be said to be well known figures in the greater intellectual community are Thomas Kuhn, because of his gigantically influential book THE STRUCTURE OF SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTIONS (the book that single-handedly popularized both the word "paradigm" and the concept of "paradigm shift"), and Richard Rorty, who is no longer even regarded as a philosopher by most philosophers but more of a literary or cultural critic.

Philosophy simply no longer plays an especially central role in educated circles. My point can be illustrated by comparison with the 18th century. In 1760 in either the American colonies or the British Isles, you could hardly be considered an educated individual if you had not read with degree of seriousness John Locke's ESSAY CONCERNING HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. It was essential reading. But today, would anyone consider it a blight on one's education if one had not read Saul Kripke's NAMING AND NECESSITY or Davidson's INQUIRIES INTO TRUTH AND INTERPRETATION or Quine's "Two Dogma's of Empiricism"?

As good as these interviews are, and as revealing and as illuminative as they are on the recent state of academic philosophy in America, I continued to be disturbed by the ongoing obliviousness of contemporary philosophers to the current irrelevance of the discipline to contemporary intellectual life. This is a problem that greatly exercised Wittgenstein, who is idolized by all the thinkers mentioned in this volume. What is the role of philosophy today? Can it recover the centrality it once possessed in Western culture? Has the role of philosophy been taken over by other disciplines? Can a purely academic philosophy continue to exist in a world in which it is more and more on the periphery? I would have liked to see these questions discussed in some detail. So, while this remains a first rate collection, to what degree is its subject matter of especial significance?

Rating: 5
Summary: An Axcellent Read
Comment: This book examines the work of nine of the most influential contemporary American philosophers since the mid-twentieth century through interviews. The interviews are focused around the historical opposition between analytic and continental traditions. Other themes addressed in the book include pragmatism, hermeneutics, logical positivism, Marxism. Giovanna Borradori does a superb job as both the interviewer and editor. The resulting book provides a good glimpse not only into the work, but the lives of these philosophers. Hilary Putnam's interview, "Between The New Left and Judaism" is especially charming. This book will be an enjoyable read for philosophers.

Rating: 5
Summary: readable and approachable committed bunch
Comment: Interviews/Conversations has been a one-stop source penetrating the most arduous and complex sets of mind-configurations capable,yet with an element of entertainment,of living the source and the resource of thought. The voice and how we speak,when we speak is an important realm fairly neglected.And these conversations has an element of the analytic merely in the performative dimension of these impressive thinkers.

We readily have neglected our American philosophic cadre,perhaps they haven't been great(between the four-corners of the page) entertainers as Derrida,or with a breath of the artist to inform the sentence constructions as Foucault.

In reading these interviews I never knew that most of these thinkers at one time espoused political convictions,quite militant in comparison to their European counterparts.In the Vietnam times,someone like Hilary Putnam, were formative something extended well into the present and his return to Judaic thinking,or Robert Nozick's sophisicated anarchism,Rorty's early fascination with Marx.

Borridori's questions sometimes seem self-conscious and sculpted,not spontaneous,yet the conversation flows all the same. It's fascinating how philosophy(we learn) needed a stimulant,perhaps a sign, a signature of post-modernity,and art,Pop Art was far more interesting to discuss than literature,speaking of the work of Danto.

This arduous Atlantic Wall where Europeans don't understand us, and we don't understand them is time now to be broke or it is breaking in some places now that the structuralist storms(early,middle,and post) has subsided.

Someone with the scope of thought of Jurgen Habermas has done much toward breaking down this artificial and self-serving wall,where his thought has embraced Pierce,and this corridor of the social,the pragmatic and the analytic.