Truth but no consequences: Why philosophy doesn't matter

Critical Inquiry

Volumn 29, Issue 3, 2003, Pages 389-417

  Fish, Stanley ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT CHICAGO   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 32944479029     PISSN: 00931896     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1086/376302     Document Type: Review

References (18)

1. Larry Hickman, "Dewey Modernism, Postmodernism, and Beyond," a symposium sponsored by the Behavioral Research Council, a division of the American Institute for Economic Research, July 2001.
2. I should add that nothing follows from the general proposition that nothing follows from general propositions in general. That is to say, if you are persuaded by my argument, you will not be directed either to do something or to refrain from doing something. On this point, see Stanley Fish, "Theory Minimalism," San Diego Law Review 37 (Summer 2000): 761-77.
3. Matthew Kramer, In the Realm of Legal and Moral Philosophy: Critical Encounters (Cambridge, 1999), p. 16; hereafter abbreviated R.
4. Kramer, "God, Greed, and Flesh: Saint Paul, Thomas Hobbes, and the Nature/Nurture Debate," Southern Journal of Philosophy 30 (Winter 1992): 51.
5. Augustine, On Christian Doctrine, trans. D. W. Robertson (Indianapolis, 1958), p. 93.
6. Jürgen Habermas, Between Facts and Norms, trans. William Rehg (Boston, 1998), pp. 162-64; hereafter abbreviated BFN.
7. Thomas Nagel, "Moral Conflict and Political Legitimacy," Philosophy and Public Affairs 16 (Summer 1987): 230.
8. Habermas, Communication and the Evolution of Society, trans. Thomas McCarthy (Boston, 1979), p. 2; hereafter abbreviated C.
9. Habermas, Knowledge and Human Interests, trans. Jeremy J. Shapiro (Boston, 1971), p. 314.
10. William Rehg, introduction, BFN, p. xii.
11. Mark E. Warren, "The Self in Discursive Democracy," in The Cambridge Companion to Habermas, ed. Stephen K. White (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 180-81.
12. Habermas, "Richard Rorty's Pragmatic Turn," in Rorty and His Critics, ed. Robert Brandom (Oxford, 2000), pp. 48-49; hereafter abbreviated "RR."
13. James Kloppenberg, "Pragmatism: An Old Name for Some New Ways of Thinking?" in The Revival of Pragmatism: New Essays on Social Thought, Law, and Culture, ed. Morris Dickstein (Durham, N.C., 1998), pp. 116, 84.
14. Thomas Haskell, "Justifying the Rights of Academic Freedom in the Era of 'Power/Knowledge,'" in The Future of Academic Freedom, ed. Louis Menand (Chicago, 1996), pp. 69-70. In order to reach this conclusion, Haskell must assume, falsely, that inquiry is a willful activity in need of an external constraint. In fact, inquiry is only possible if constraints - the constraints of some particular discipline or interpretive community - are already in place and have been internalized by the inquirer who proceeds within them. Constraints, in short, are constitutive of inquiry - were there none in place, inquiry would be directionless -and need not be sought in some external authority.
15. Susan Haack, "Vulgar Pragmatism: An Unedifying Prospect," in Rorty and Pragmatism, ed. H. J. Saatkamp, Jr. (Nashville, Tenn., 1995), p. 136.
16. John Milton, "The Readie and Easie Way," Complete Prose Works of John Milton, ed. Robert W. Ayers, 8 vols. (New Haven, Conn., 1974), 7:462.
17. John Milton, "The Readie and Easie Way," Complete Prose Works of John Milton, Ibid., 7:463.
18. Richard Rorty, "Response to Jurgen Habermas," Richard Rorty and His Critics, p. 62.