The Engaged Intellect: Philosophical Essays - Softcover

As rich in ideas as philosophy today ever is. I know of no contemporary philosopher whose work repays as handsomely careful and repeated study, no philosopher more likely to shed original and yet fundamentally revealing light on a difficult subject, no philosopher whose 'philosophical ear' or 'philosophical sense' is more worthy of respect.-- (08/12/2009) [These essays] provide the rare and instructive spectacle of a philosopher who is able to genuinely enrich our understanding of the history of philosophy while at the same time engaging in current philosophical problems and debates.--Courtney D. Fugate"Philosophy in Review" (05/01/2012) This volume showcases McDowell's remarkable mastery of a wide range of philosophical subject matter, containing essays that treat Plato, Aristotle, Frege, Wittgenstein, Gadamer, Merleau-Ponty, P.F. Strawson, and many other philosophers. It ranges over philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, and epistemology...He extends our conception of what might be possible and desirable in a naturalistic account of the mind. McDowell's account promises a more authentic way of retaining our responsiveness to reasons than any other account on offer in contemporary philosophy.-- (11/03/2009)

The Engaged Intellect collects important essays of John McDowell. Each involves a sustained engagement with the views of an important philosopher and is characterized by a modesty that is partly temperamental and partly methodological. It is typical of McDowell to represent his own best insights either as already to be found in the writings of his heroes (Aristotle, Wittgenstein, Gadamer, and Sellars) or as inevitably emerging from a charitable modification of the views of those (such as Anscombe, Sellars, Davidson, Evans, Rorty, Dreyfus, and Brandom) subjected here to criticism. McDowell therefore develops his own philosophical picture in these pages through a method of indirection. The method is one of intervening in a philosophical dialectic at a characteristic juncture--in which it is difficult to avoid the feeling that further progress is required. McDowell shows how progress is to be achieved by preserving what is most attractive in the views of those he is in conversation with, while whittling away their weaknesses. As he practices this method, what emerges through the volume is the unity of McDowell's own views. The combination of philosophical breadth with dialectical depth--of intricate argumentative detail with overall philosophical coherence--marks McDowell as one of the most compelling philosophers of our time.