The Engaged Intellect: Philosophical Essays

by John McDowell

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.

Genres: Philosophy

360 pages, Hardcover

First published January 15, 2009

About the author

John H. McDowell (MA, Oxford) is University Professor of Philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh. Before coming to Pittsburgh in 1986, he taught at University College, Oxford. He has held visiting appointments at Harvard University, the University of Michigan, UCLA, and Princeton University. He was the John Locke Lecturer at Oxford University in 1991. His major interests are Greek philosophy, philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, metaphysics and epistemology, and ethics. He is a fellow of the British Academy and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Reviews

[Caleb · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a really remarkable collection showing the breadth, depth, and coherence of McDowell's philosophical acumen. The early essays offer interpretations of Plato and Aristotle, the latter focusing on the nature of phronesis and the notion of the noble. Later essays deal with Heidegger, Kant, Wittgenstein, Davidson, Sellars, Gareth Evans, Frege, Brandom, and even Hubert Dreyfus's phenomenological criticisms of McDowell's claims concerning the unboundedness of the space of reasons. McDowell engages each of these thinkers to defend elements of his version of what should be called absolute idealism, especially his view of veridical experience as providing non-inferential entitlement for perceptual beliefs.