Three Contemporary Philosophical Perspectives During The 20th Century

Submitted By mommy1987
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Pages: 5

This week’s paper we were to research and identify three prevailing philosophical perspectives at work during the 20th Century. To begin I will research the history of a few new tendencies in contemporary philosophy. Then I will discuss the Tom Rockmore interpretation of such tendencies. Tom Rockmore is Professor of Philosophy and a McAnulty College Distinguished Professor, Dr. Rockmore's current research interests encompass all of modern philosophy, with special emphasis on selected problems as well as figures in German idealism (Kant, Fichte, Hegel, Marx) and recent continental philosophy (Heidegger, Habermas, Lukacs). He is continuing to explore the epistemology of German idealism as well as the relation between philosophy and politics. His most recent work concerns a new theory of knowledge as intrinsically historical.

Tom Rockmore believes that there are approximately three tendencies that govern the 20th Century‘s philosophy dispute. These three tendencies according to Tom Rockmore are the Continental philosophy, Anglo- American analytical philosophy and the American (neo) pragmatism. According to answer.com, continental philosophy is a cluster of 20th-century European philosophical movements that see themselves as the ongoing legacy of Hegel, Husserl, and Heidegger and which encompasses phenomenology, existentialism, hermeneutics, structuralism, and deconstructionism, mainly as different with analytic philosophy (answer, 2010). The Anglo- American analytical philosophy is the philosophy that uses the process of analysis to be central to philosophical method and progress. The similarities of analytical philosophers were that the exterior form of a language may cover hidden logical structure, and may misinform us as to that structure. This may be revealed by a process that would resolve philosophical issues, or differently demonstrate them to be the progeny of the misleading surface forms of unique language. Assurance in the process of analysis was encouraged by the early successes of Frege and Russell in decreasing mathematics to logic, and by the knowledge afforded by the premise of exact depictions. The most practical of analytical philosophy also included Moore, and Carnape. The American (neo) pragmatism philosophy is a philosophical movement that was given systematic terms by Charles Sanders Peirce and William James and later taken up and revamped by John Dewey. Pragmatists stress the practical purpose of knowledge as a way for acclimatizing to reality and controlling it. Pragmatism concur with empiricism in its emphasis on the importance of experience over a priori reasoning. However the truth had customarily been discussed in terms of communication with reality or in terms of coherence pragmatism embraces that truth is to be sought in the process of verification. Pragmatists translates ideas as means and plans of action rather than as images of reality; more specifically, they are recommendations and anticipations of possible conduct, hypotheses or forecasts of what will result from a given action, or ways of organizing behavior(Answer,2010)

Between the continental and the analytic philosophy, being the two most significant tendencies, barely any debate was taking place; this was due to the lack of knowledge, contempt, and mutual lack of attention. In spite of this, the situation is changing slowly: especially American philosophers like Taylor, Nagel, Rorty and others converse subjects in which until recently only continental philosophers used to be interested. Things have also changed in continental philosophy, albeit less clearly. These diverging philosophical trends can be seen as responses to Hegels Philosophy.

Hegel philosophy to me is the main, nucleus or the core of a certain philosophical project. This philosophy was to comprehend the certainty, nature as well as history, matter as well as spirit, as manifestations of the precise idea. Some believe that the earliest foundation of this project date