On Philosophy, Intelligibility, and the Ordinary

Going the Bloody Hard Way

Randy Ramal

• Publisher: Lexington Books
• Year: 2021
• eBook ISBN: 9781793638816
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Analytic Philosophy

Randy Ramal argues that philosophy's main responsibility lies in providing intelligibility to the ordinary language of everyday life while dispelling unwarranted skepticism. Philosophers need to go the hard way to fulfill this responsibility because of the constant and dangerous temptation to turn philosophy into a normative discipline rather than keep it as a descriptively hermeneutical enterprise. In On Philosophy, Intelligibility, and the Ordinary: Going the Bloody Hard Way, the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead is central to Ramal's endeavor to demonstrate the need to separate the hermeneutical responsibility of philosophy from the normative aspects of responsibility. While showing the futility of labeling Whitehead as a purely disinterested philosopher who abandons the idea that ordinariness is relevant to good philosophical thinking, Ramal frames this discussion within a larger, in-depth engagement with a vast number of thinkers, philosophers, and literary figures whose works touch on the question of the ordinary.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 On Ordinariness and Philosophy’s Responsibility to Intelligibility
• 2 Speculating on Being in the World with Plato and Aristotle
• 3 Courting Ordinary Language with the Ideal Language Philosophers
• 4 Negotiating Ordinary Experience with the Empiricists
• 5 Rubbing Shoulders with Wittgenstein on Ordinary Realism
• 6 Inverting the Logic of Ordinary Atheism with Flew and Dawkins
• 7 Animalizing Philosophy with Derrida and J. M. Coetzee
• Conclusion: Final Thoughts
• Bibliography
• Index
• About the Author