Gary Gutting

(1942 - 2019)

This book is an important introduction to the critical interpretation of the work of the major French thinker Michel Foucault. Through comprehensive and detailed analyses of such important texts as The History of Madness in the Age of Reason, The Birth of the Clinic, The Order of Things, and The Archaeology of Knowledge, Professor Gutting provides a lucid exposition of Foucault's 'archaeological' approach to the history of thought - a method for uncovering the 'unconscious' structures that set boundaries on the thinking of a given epoch. The book also casts Foucault in a new light, relating his work to two major but neglected influences: Gaston Bachelard's philosophy of science and Georges Canguilhem's history of science. This perspective yields a new and valuable understanding of science, balancing and complementing the more common view that he was primarily a social critic and theorist. An excellent guide for those first approaching Foucault's work, the book will also be a challenging interpretation and evaluation for those already familiar with his writings.

THE GOAL OF THIS PAPER IS TO DEFEND SCIENTIFIC REALISM (OF\nTHE SORT PROPOSED BY WILFRID SELLARS) AGAINST THE ATTACK ON\nIT IMPLICIT IN HUSSERL'S "CRISIS". IN PARTICULAR, I DISCUSS\nTHREE ANTI-REALIST HUSSERLIAN THESES: (1) THAT THE METHOD\nOF SCIENCE IS IN ESSENCE ONE OF THE IDEALIZATION; (2) THAT\nALL SCIENTIFIC CONCEPTS CAN BE TRACED BACK TO OUR\nLIFE-WORLD EXPERIENCE; (3) THAT ANY SCIENTIFIC DESCRIPTION\nOF THE WORLD NECESSARILY OMITS MAJOR DIMENSIONS OF OUR\nLIFE-WORLD EXPERIENCES. I ARGUE THAT EACH OF THESE THESES\nIS INCONSISTENT WITH A CORRECT UNDERSTANDING OF SCIENTIFIC\nMETHODOLOGY. I FURTHER ARGUE THAT THESE THESES DERIVE ONLY\nFROM HUSSERL'S FAULTY EXPLICATION OF SCIENTIFIC METHOD;\nTHERE IS NOTHING IN HUSSERL'S BASIC EPISTEMOLOGICAL\nPOSITION THAT IS INCONSISTENT WITH (A PROPERLY CONSTRUED)\nSCIENTIFIC REALISM

In this book Gary Gutting tells, clearly and comprehensively, the story of French philosophy from 1890 to 1990. He examines the often neglected background of spiritualism, university idealism, and early philosophy of science, and also discusses the privileged role of philosophy in the French education system. Taking account of this background, together with the influences of avant-garde literature and German philosophy, he develops a rich account of existential phenomenology, which he argues is the central achievement of French thought during the century, and of subsequent structuralist and poststructuralist developments. His discussion includes chapters on Bergson, Sartre, Beauvoir, Merleau-Ponty, Foucault, and Derrida, with sections on other major thinkers including Lyotard, Deleuze, Irigaray, Levinas, and Ricoeur. He offers challenging analyses of the often misunderstood relationship between existential phenomenology and structuralism and of the emergence of poststructuralism. Finally, he sketches the major current trends of French philosophy.

The project of “religious epistemology,” as it has developed and thrived among certain analytic philosophers over the last thirty years, has seldom exhibited a strong historical sensibility. Nonetheless, contemporary discussions of the rationality of religious belief obviously have important antecedents in the history of modern philosophy, particularly in the history of the Enlightenment project that so strongly challenged traditional religious belief. This paper develops two themes from this history that I will try to show are particularly important for understanding contemporary issues about the rationality of religious belief: the affirmation of ordinary life, and the question of radical evil in human nature.

Philosophy has never delivered on its promise to settle the great moral and religious questions of human existence, and even most philosophers conclude that it does not offer an established body of disciplinary knowledge. Gary Gutting challenges this view by examining detailed case studies of recent achievements by analytic philosophers such as Quine, Kripke, Gettier, Lewis, Chalmers, Plantinga, Kuhn, Rawls, and Rorty. He shows that these philosophers have indeed produced a substantial body of disciplinary knowledge, but he challenges many common views about what philosophers have achieved. Topics discussed include the role of argument in philosophy, naturalist and experimentalist challenges to the status of philosophical intuitions, the importance of pre-philosophical convictions, Rawls' method of reflective equilibrium, and Rorty's challenge to the idea of objective philosophical truth. The book offers a lucid survey of recent analytic work and presents a new understanding of philosophy as an important source of knowledge.

In this book Gary Gutting offers a powerful account of the nature of human reason in modern times. The fundamental question addressed by the book is what authority human reason can still claim once it is acknowledged that our fundamental metaphysical and religious pictures of the world no longer command allegiance. If ethics and science remain sources of authority what is the basis of that authority? Gutting develops answers to these questions through critical analysis of the work of three dominant philosophical voices in our time: Richard Rorty, Alasdair MacIntyre, and Charles Taylor. His own position is defined as 'pragmatic liberalism'.

This paper discusses the controversy between philosophers of science (e.g. Grünbaum) and historians of science (e.g. Holton) regarding Einstein's discovery of STR. Although Holton is surely correct on the historical point that experimental results (especially the Michelson-Morley experiment) had little influence on Einstein's development of STR, this fact is not sufficient to establish his (and Polanyi's) claim that major scientific discoveries are primarily matters of private, nonspecifiable insights into physical reality. It is possible that Einstein's work was based primarily on non-empirical but nonetheless publicly discussable, objective considerations. And a more comprehensive survey of the discovery of STR shows that this was indeed the case and thus excludes STR as a supporting instance of Holton's and Polanyi's assertions of the primacy of "private science."