segunda-feira, 25 de agosto de 2008

Filósofos do mundo de língua inglesa

Já mencionei ,em outro post, a minha surpresa com o pequeno número de trabalhos de filósofos do mundo de língua inglesa publicados no Brasil. É verdade que o cenário já foi muito pior, mas ainda fica a desejar. A chamada escola continental, aparentemente, ainda é hegemônica. Não é preciso mencionar a supreendente popularidade dos filósofos franceses. Em recente artigo para a revista “The Philosopher’s Magazine, Leiter apresenta um breve survey sobre o estado atual desta tradição filosófica. Publicamos uma pequena passagem:


“When one surveys the landscape of giants of English-speaking philosophy who have died during the last decade – Donald Davidson (2003), Carl Hempel (1997), Nelson Goodman (1998), David Lewis (2001), WVO Quine (2000), John Rawls (2001), Bernard Williams (2003), PF Strawson (2006) – it is clear that the discipline has passed a milestone. Only three of the “greats” of post-WWII Anglophone philosophy are still alive: Michael Dummett (b. 1925), Saul Kripke (b. 1940), and Hilary Putnam (b. 1926). All appear to be well past producing seminal, agenda-setting work, though perhaps Kripke may yet surprise.

There are perhaps a handful of living philosophers who can even pretend to dominate the central issues in the field – the nature of truth, knowledge, and value – like the recently deceased. John McDowell at the University of Pittsburgh stands out in this regard, though the range of philosophical opinion about his work is so wide that it is hard to see him occupying anything like the place of the recently departed. (A famous and influential philosophical naturalist, for example, refers to him as “McDarkness,” which is indicative of the extremities of opinion about his philosophical merit.)

There are other contemporaries whose work is “must reading” in various subfields – Kit Fine at New York University, Jerry Fodor at Rutgers, TM Scanlon at Harvard, Timothy Williamson at Oxford, and Crispin Wright at NYU and St Andrews are all obvious examples. But there is no one active today who seems poised to “set the agenda” for philosophy from Canberra to Los Angeles to Ann Arbor to Princeton to Oxbridge, the way the deceased greats of the last decade did.”

Para ler o artigo completo:
http://www.philosophersnet.com/magazine/article.php?id=1045