Routledge History of Philosophy, Vol. 10.. Philosophy of Meaning, Knowledge and Value in the Twentieth Century
تاريخ روتليدج للفلسفة، المجلد 10.. فلسفة المعنى والمعرفة والقيمة في القرن العشرين
Routledge Histoire de la philosophie, vol. 10.. Philosophie du sens, de la connaissance et de la valeur au vingtième siècle
Twentieth-century analytic philosophy transformed the questions of meaning, knowledge, and value into rigorous technical disciplines, reshaping the intellectual landscape within which debates about morality and its possible grounding in God must be situated.
Editorial summary
This volume presents a comprehensive intellectual history of anglophone philosophy from 1900 to the century's end, tracking the evolution of three interconnected domains: meaning, knowledge, and value. Canfield assembles leading scholars to examine how twentieth-century philosophers revolutionized these traditional areas of inquiry through new methodological approaches and conceptual frameworks.
The collection traces the linguistic turn that reshaped philosophical method, beginning with Moore and Russell's rebellion against idealism and culminating in diverse approaches to language, mind, and reality. Contributors analyze how logical positivism's verification principle attempted to eliminate metaphysical speculation, including theological claims, by restricting meaningful discourse to empirically verifiable or analytically true statements. This movement's influence on discussions of religious language receives careful attention, particularly regarding whether statements about God possess cognitive content or merely express attitudes and emotions.
Several chapters examine how ordinary language philosophy and post-positivist developments challenged earlier dismissals of religious discourse. The volume explores Wittgenstein's later work on language games and forms of life, which opened new possibilities for understanding religious utterances as meaningful within specific contexts rather than as failed attempts at scientific description. Contributors discuss how speech act theory and other pragmatic approaches to meaning transformed debates about the logical status of theological claims.
In addressing moral philosophy's twentieth-century trajectory, the work examines the fact-value distinction's evolution and its implications for ethics' relationship to religious worldviews. The collection traces debates from emotivism through prescriptivism to contemporary moral realism, analyzing how each position affects arguments about morality's dependence on or independence from theistic foundations. Particular attention goes to the naturalistic fallacy's role in discussions about deriving ought from is, whether the is in question involves natural facts or divine commands.
The volume's intellectual-historical approach illuminates how technical developments in philosophy of language and epistemology repeatedly transformed the conceptual terrain on which religious and secular thinkers engaged. By documenting these shifts comprehensively, the collection demonstrates how twentieth-century anglophone philosophy's methodological innovations continually reopened questions about meaning, knowledge, and value that previous generations considered settled, including fundamental questions about reality's ultimate nature and morality's grounds.
Structured analysis
Related works
Canfield, John V. (1997). Routledge History of Philosophy, Vol. 10.. Philosophy of Meaning, Knowledge and Value in the Twentieth Century.
@book{routledge-history-of-philosophy-vol-10-p,
author = {Canfield, John V.},
title = {Routledge History of Philosophy, Vol. 10.. Philosophy of Meaning, Knowledge and Value in the Twentieth Century},
year = {1997},
url = {https://god-database.com/en/works/routledge-history-of-philosophy-vol-10-philosophy-of-meaning-knowledge-and-value-in-the-twentieth-century}
}