Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)
Timothy Williamson (1955-present)
In “Kant, Williamson, and the Future of Analytic Philosophy,” Robert Hanna points out that it’s a truth not generally acknowledged, that all Anglo-American-&-European philosophy since Kant—i.e., since the end of the 18th century—is post-Kantian. This is of course trivially true, in that all Anglo-American-&-European philosophy since the end of the 18th century literally temporally succeeds the publication and dissemination of Kant’s philosophical writings. But it’s also profoundly true, in that all Anglo-American-&-European philosophy since the end of the 18th century falls within a single comprehensive Ur-framework, according to which Kant’s philosophy is either (1) wholly accepted without revision-or-updating (ortho-Kantianism), (2) at least partially accepted but also significantly revised-&-updated (quasi-Kantianism, crypto-Kantianism, and classical 19th and early 20th century neo-Kantianism, whose original rallying cry was: back to Kant!), or (3) outright rejected (anti-Kantianism). In The Fate of Analysis, Hanna argued—among other things—(i) that the philosophical program of classical Analytic philosophy from Frege to Quine was defunct by the early 1950s, (ii) that since the early 1950s, classical Analytic philosophy has been gradually succeeded by post-classical Analytic philosophy, which has dominated professional academic philosophy in a social-institutional sense for the last 70 years, right up to 6am this morning (see also Soames, 2018), (iii) that in its post-classical period, the difference between Analytic philosophy and non-Analytic philosophy is purely sociological and not theoretically substantive (see also Rorty, 1982: esp. p. 217), and (iv) that contemporary post-classical Analytic philosophers don’t actually either practice philosophical analysis or believe in the very idea of an analytic-synthetic distinction. In short, ironically, first, Analytic philosophy as originally conceived,has been dead since the early 1950s, and actually has no future whatsoever, and second, Kant’s theoretical philosophy is actually significantly closer in content and methodology to classical Analytic philosophy, than post-classical Analytic philosophy is. Therefore, the title of this essay—“Kant, Williamson, and The Future of Analytic Philosophy”—is doubly ironic. For not only does Analytic philosophy itself actually have no future whatsoever, but also whatever was worth saving from the wreckage of Analytic philosophy—i.e., the analytic-synthetic distinction (now supplemented by an intelligible and defensible theory of synthetic a priori necessary truth and knowledge), and the thesis that analytic a priori necessary truth and knowledge are genuine kinds of a priori necessary truth and knowledge (even if not the only kinds of genuine a priori necessary truth and knowledge)—is already preserved in contemporary and futuristic Kantian philosophy.
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