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This book considers diverse philosophical topics unified by the identification of false moves commonly found in modern philosophy, mainstream Anglo-American philosophy, and social theory. The authors expose the sources of fundamental problems that recur in philosophy-basic problems with what the authors call "factoring philosophy." Factoring philosophy fails to attend to the phenomenological task of determining when what is distinguishable is separable and when not. Consequently, factoring philosophy makes phenomenological mistakes-false moves-when it treats as separable what is only distinguishable. Analytic philosophy is prone to false moves when it fails to recognize that phenomenology is the necessary complement to analysis. There is nothing wrong with analysis-we might as well give up thinking as give up analysis-and nothing is wrong with the values prized by analytic philosophy. As Hegel observed, "philosophizing requires, above all, that each thought should be grasped in its full precision and that nothing should remain vague and indeterminate." Ultimately, this book contends that false moves prevail in philosophical analysis and social theory when they neglect their phenomenological foundations.
List of contents
Introduction: How Factoring Philosophy Puts Philosophy on the Sidelines.- Chapter One: Is Life Absurd?.- Chapter Two: Being Mortal.- Chapter Three: Reinventing Humans: The Strange Allure of Stoicism.- Chapter Four: Beyond the Illusion of Philosophical Egoism: Recovering Self-Love and Selfishness.- Chapter Five: Moral Luck, Responsibility, and this Worldly Life.- Chapter Six: The Pure Self in Political Life: Reconsidering the Primacy of the Right over the Good.- Chapter Seven: Values as Purely Subjective: Against the Idea of "A New Creation".- Chapter Eight: Setting Aside the Purely Subjective: Reclaiming the Discourse of Truth and Error.- Beyond "the Illusion of the Economic": Renewing the Concept of Capital: A Foreword to Chapters Nine, Ten, and Eleven.- Chapter Nine: Why Wealth is a Poor Concept.- Chapter Ten: Capital, the Truth about Utility.- Chapter Eleven: The Myth of Instrumental Reason and Action.- Conclusion: Just Enough Phenomenology.- Appendix A: Dogmas of Factoring Philosophy.- Appendix B: Symptoms of Factoring Philosophy.
About the author
Patrick Murray is John C. Kenefick Faculty Chair in the Humanities, Creighton University, USA.
Jeanne Schuler is Professor of Philosophy, Creighton University, USA.
