A recent review ends with "the book provides compelling evidence for the truth of Zurn's claim that "the best work in the philosophy of recognition occurs precisely where the two perspectives [historical and contemporary] meet and fruitfully interact" (11)." (It's a review of Hans-Christoph Schmidt am Busch and Christopher F. Zurn (eds.), The Philosophy of Recognition: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives, Lexington Books, 2010).
As somebody who works in HPS (History/Philosophy of science), I am sympathetic to the comment, I doubt the underlying sympathy is not true anymore (if it ever was). While some neo-Kantians, neo-Hegelians, virtue-ethicists, and Deleuzians still constructively engage in historical work in order to further their ethical inquiry, I suspect that by and large the best in ethics (both meta-ethically and in normative work) is now done 'straight up.'
There was a period, after, say, 1950 in which the recovery of the history of ethics produced a lot of great work. (Arthur Prior's Logic and the Basis of Ethics, may be a good place to mark the turn-around.) But now that most of the low-hanging fruit has been recovered (I wish their were more work on the eclectics!), it seems more and more folk want to get on with their projects (and not be bothered with past masters). There is an additional reason for this trend (if it is one, I have done no empirical work on this): PhDs are getting shorter (in europe almost everywhere strictly limited to four years), and there simply is very little time to acquaint oneself with both contemporary literature and the great dead.
Posted on behalf of Eric Schliesser.
Recent Comments