Why we need ordinary language philosophy /

Working at a deeply theoretical level, this book is not an exercise in ordinary language philosophy. Laugier (Univ. of Paris 1) has a wide command of both logical empiricist lineage in the US (Carnap, Quine, Davidson, Putnam) and the ordinary language lineage (Wittgenstein, Austin, Cavell, Diamond, Conant), using these philosophers' texts, positions, and arguments to revise the relation of American philosophy to the Continental tradition. Her details undoubtedly will be disputed on all sides, but her range and insight are impressive. This volume offers a sweeping history of philosophy story: one that takes in not only the philosophers just mentioned, but also Hume, Kant, Emerson, and Thoreau. The author aims to differentiate approaches to realism in the empiricist and linguistic traditions, arguing that the latter--where her sympathies lie--offers a kind of realism without empiricism that is "radically anti-metaphysical." While written as a corrective to contemporary French analytic philosophers, this book should be interesting to an English-speaking philosophical readership as a new perspective on philosophers' family resemblances and dissonances. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-level undergraduates and up. J. Churchill formerly, Hendrix College