Naturalism, Quietism, and the Threat to Philosophy

Two opposed movements of thought threaten philosophy as an autonomous practice from the inside: scientific naturalism and quietism. Naturalism (qua methodological thesis) threatens to turn philosophy into a mere ancilla of the sciences, quietism understood as the prescription to remain silent in philosophy would not countenance any more positive philosophy. This book reconstructs naturalism and quietism such that it becomes clear naturalism does have the potential to end philosophy as an autonomous practice and that quietism, correctly understood, does not. To this end, this book provides arguments against the prevailing orthodox status of naturalism and a heterogenous reading of Wittgenstein's metaphilosophical quietism as the rejection of a certain kind of theories in philosophy, namely quasi-scientific theories.

Auteur
Thomas J. Spiegel studied in Berlin, London, Leipzig, Pittsburgh, and Tokyo. For his dissertation, on which this book is based, he was awarded Best Junior Researcher Award by the Saxonian Academy of the Sciences as well as Best Dissertation Award of the Research Academy Leipzig. He is currently wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter at the chair of theoretical philosophy at University of Potsdam. His main research interests are Wittgenstein, (critiques of) naturalism, phenomenology, and social ontology.