Philosophy Today

Philosophy Today

For most of its history, philosophy has been concerned with the problems of everyday, human situations; in recent decades, however, many philosophers in the Western world turned their attention almost exclusively to questions about the nature and role of philosophy or to a discussion of the terms and language through which thoughts are expressed. A knowledge of terms and the structure and uses of language is important, but we need not substitute the study of instruments—logic, semantics, and linguistic analysis—for the study of the basic problems—the perennial problems of Philosophy. Recently, however, a growing number of philosophers have broadened the scope of their interests. They are working with hospitals, business and industry to help solve the problems of health care delivery and corporate communities.

Philosophers are professionals like doctors, lawyers, and tennis players: philosophers get paid for being specialists in the area of ideas. Many people today have become dissatisfied with narrow analytic conceptions of philosophy; in the 1980s, philosophy began to be concerned with nontraditional fields, such as brain research, cognitive science, and artificial intelligence; and with new issues, such as animal rights, defining life and death, establishing the nature and role of technology in modern thought, and experimentation with human subjects; and with raising philosophical questions in relation to outer space, gender issues, literature, sports, violence, social norms, and the environment. Moreover, as is apparent from newsletters of the American Philosophical Association, many philosophers are giving attention to other topics such as “Feminism and Philosophy,” and “Philosophy and Law.” Applied philosophy has captured the interest of many philosophers who do not regard linguistic analysis as the sole job of philosophy.