What Philosophy Can Do

The late Gary Gutting used to be the big swinging dick of matters ontological and epistemic. I remember seeing him stand toe-to-toe with Basil van Fraassen, constructive empiricist extraordinaire, in an epic heavyweight dust-up in the pages of Monist back in '82. With his 2015 book What Philosophy Can Do, Gutting has attempted to go mainstream. He argues that philosophy can be useful in, say, potentially polarized political debates, as it can identify the convictions behind (and the limitations within) any given liberal or conservative position. This all smacks of the optimism of the pre-post-Truth era, and that seems to be the dustbin to which Gutting's book has been consigned. Just the other day, I saw more than a few copies marked down to $2 at my local paper peddler. Apparently, philosophy can't do much for anyone anymore. Thorough, well-researched, and well-considered arguments don't fly in this day and age of Trump and trigger-warnings. Nice try, Mr. Gutting, but everybody just goes with their gut now. If psychiatric drugs can't help these people, do you think philosophy has any hope? May peace be upon you, because we certainly won't have it here on earth.

Epistemology Bloody Epistemology

Charles Norwood's Epistemology Bloody Epistemology is a novel(la) beyond comparison. Its body consists of six interconnected stories which trace the activities of philosophy students at a fictional university wherein preferences for different schools of thought have essentially degraded into gang affiliations. What follows is pure mayhem interspersed with thoughtful philosophical debate—imagine, if you will, that the script for Mad Max had been written by Bertrand Russell. The result is not always for the faint-of-heart, as the brutality gradually escalates throughout the piece, allowing for some truly demented—but unfailingly thought-provoking—scenes of hyperbolic carnage. Norwood delivers the narrative(s) in accessible prose, which occasionally proves artful, certainly surpassing that of your average e-book. And while Norwood may not solve the perennial debates of philosophy, he certainly lampoons the folly of embodying any given perspective in said debates too righteously. The "solipsist community" section is especially brilliant, reminiscent of something in a David Foster Wallace novel, and probably warrants a purchase for anyone who fancies extended literary elaborations of philosophical thought experiments. A few minor peccadilloes had this assessor considering a four-star review rather than a five. Norwood employs, for instance, more than a few overly conventional similes. Additionally, some passages are a bit didactic, but that may actually be the book's beauty. Altogether, the various interwoven stories converge upon something that resembles a structuring narrative for western philosophy as a whole, and the grisly scenes may even prove to be a useful mnemonic device for helping make the rudiments of various schools of thought stick. Thus, the book is of particular interest for students of philosophy, both undergraduate and graduate. Given the originality of the content, I am left with little choice but to give it my highest recommendation. EBE is well worth the low cover price, and perhaps even the psychological toll it may take on the reader.