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Habermas and Political Pluralism (Farewell, maestro!)
By Michele Marsonet ( University of Genoa, Italy ) Pragmatists always had clear ideas about the relations between the natural and the social worlds. Most of them tell us, first of all, that human beings have evolved within nature as creatures that solve their survival problems through intelligence. The emergence of intelligence, on the other hand, must not be seen as a purpose of nature itself, but rather as our functional version of survival mechanisms such as physical force or numerousness. The systematic use of this intelligence in a cont…
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Logic and Metaphysics
by Michele Marsonet (University of Genoa) Abstract Logical positivists claim that the whole of human knowledge can be reduced to analytic and synthetic sentences, and this means that the only possible knowledge is provided by science. Metaphysics is thus meaningless, because its sentences do not comply with the rules set forth by logical analysis of language. What, then, is the philosopher’s job? The members of the Vienna Circle answer that his task is to clarify the concepts used within empirical and formal sciences, while analytic philosop…
Pragmatism and Contemporary Philosophy by Michele Marsonet
The book first provides an overview of the transition, in the second half of the last century, from analytic to post-analytic philosophy, explaining to the reader how and why this situation came about. It also thematizes the rediscovery, within Anglo-American philosophical circles, of pragmatism — a current that had been overshadowed for decades by the logical neopositivism of Viennese origin and by analytic philosophy itself. The book then examines the relationships among authors such as Donald Davidson, Richard Rorty, Hilary Putnam, and Ni…
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