What Philosophy Can Do

by Gary Gutting

Overview

"A brilliant demonstration of what philosophy can do and how it is essential to human integrity and identity." —Simon Critchley, coeditor of The Stone Reader

In What Philosophy Can Do, Gary Gutting takes a philosopher’s scalpel to modern life’s biggest questions and the most powerful forces in our society—politics, science, religion, education, and capitalism. Along the way, he introduces readers to powerful philosophical tools, from inductive and deductive logic to the Principle of Charity, which they can use to make better sense of current debates. Interweaving his discussion of contemporary issues with philosophical concepts from Aristotle to Michel Foucault and John Rawls, Gutting shows how philosophy can enrich public discussions about our most urgent issues.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393242287
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	08/20/2015
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	320
File size:	687 KB

About the Author

Gary Gutting (1942—2019) was the John A. O’Brien Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame. He edited Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, was a contributor to the New York Times’s philosophy blog, The Stone, and was the author of What Philosophy Can Do.

Table of Contents

Introduction xi

1 How to Argue About Politics 1

2 Science: A Consumer's Guide 30

3 Philosophy and the Limits of Science 55

4 The New Atheists 89

5 Religious Agnosticism 118

6 Happiness, Work, and Capitalism 141

7 Education in a Capitalist Society 167

8 Thinking about Art 195

9 Can We Stop Fighting About Abortion? 222

10 What Philosophy Can Do 243

For Further Thought 269

Notes 277

Acknowledgments 287

Index 289

Editorial Reviews

"This book is a brilliant demonstration of what philosophy can do and how it is essential to human integrity and identity. Gutting’s is a distinctly American voice: straightforwardly intelligent, generously sympathetic, but always forcefully critical, without ever being mean or scornful. Reading this book, one feels whole clouds of dogma and nonsense suddenly evaporate and one sees the landscape of a whole series of debates. Highly recommended."

Simon Critchley

"Splendid…With wit and flair, Gutting shows how philosophical thinking permeates life’s decisions and can enrich our overall personal sense of worth and happiness."

Michael Ruse

"Clearheaded, sensible, and teacherly in the best sense, Gutting in What Philosophy Can Do accomplishes what American philosophy today too rarely attempts—he illuminates how leading academic thinkers see ideas such as science, happiness, work, God, evil, capitalism and education in a voice any open-minded reader can appreciate."

Carlin Romano

08/01/2015
In this collection of essays, Gutting (endowed chair in philosophy, Univ. of Notre Dame; What Philosophers Know), a contributor to the New York Times philosophy blog "The Stone," seeks to expand on modern-day topics covered in his blog posts. The pieces in this compilation are much longer than his posts and, in turn, more in-depth. As with "The Stone," the intended audience is philosophers outside of academia. Each chapter focuses on a debatable issue—the limits of science, the morality of abortion—and applies philosophical concepts and principles to show how philosophy can help guide our discussions. While demonstrating the ways in which aspects of philosophy can assist our conversations, Gutting is also concerned with illustrating the worth of philosophy to those who might think it no longer has a place in the dialog. VERDICT While Gutting applies complex philosophical and logical principles in his essays, he does so in an accessible way. The range of essays makes this work appealing to anyone with an interest in philosophy.—Scott Duimstra, Capital Area Dist. Lib., Lansing, MI

Library Journal

★ 2015-06-23
It can't take you to the airport, but philosophy, as this spirited book argues, can do all sorts of great things—including contribute to our happiness. An introduction to "public philosophy," which Gutting (Philosophy/Notre Dame Univ.; Thinking the Impossible: French Philosophy Since 1960, 2011, etc.) defines as "an application of and a complement to the more technical and specialized work of academic philosophers," this well-argued book begins a daunting task: making political arguments less stupid and more humane. Those arguments, writes the author, tend toward practical or epistemic circularity, a less folksy way of saying that they preach to the choir: if you believe that George W. Bush was a dunce, then it follows that anyone who believes that he was a great president is also a dunce. Gutting counsels greater generosity of spirit in advancing our political views, which fuel debates that are central to attaining knowledge about our social world, therefore allowing us to make better choices about what policies to pursue. If all that seems a touch ideal, so do the author's informed critiques of capitalism, which similarly draw on the "principle of charity" while showing how our self-interest is traduced: "The amount of instrumental work [capitalism] demands leaves us little time for work that's valuable for its own sake, and it pushes us to want things we think will make us happy even though they won't." By inference, capitalism thus works against our happiness, for all the protestations of the free market purists. Gutting's applications of philosophical and scientific principles to such questions as abortion and the existence of God are bracing. One hopes that these pieces, which grew from the author's blog posts for the New York Times, might encourage better argumentation. Besides, it's nice to see both Richard Dawkins and climate change deniers get slapped around a little, if always politely. Somewhat less supple than Simon Blackburn's Think (1999) as a general introduction to philosophy but an excellent, readable, and eminently practical guide.

Kirkus Reviews