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What Should Philosophy Do?
A Theory
by Steven Yates
Imprint: Wipf and Stock
Philosophy as an academic discipline has fallen on hard times. Its practitioners might retort that never have there been so many books, articles, blogs, etc. But quantity is not quality, and while philosophers are graduating with PhDs few are finding adequate employment, and this is just the most visible problem.
The question, What Should Philosophy Do?, is going begging, and the social justice warriors have tried to transform it into one of their political platforms right along with the rest of the liberal arts or humanities.
In this book, philosopher Steven Yates revisits the question anew and comes up with a fresh perspective. He argues that philosophy is not a mere academic discipline, that it has a job to do in civilization that transcends its academic niche. He argues that philosophy should identify, clarify, and evaluate worldviews--noting their contributions, noticed as such or not, to the conversations of civilization, examining their capacity to solve problems, their consistency, and their overall adequacy in helping us live.
Yates concludes that we should revisit the Christian worldview, and perhaps other worldviews, as part of an intellectual move towards a philosophical pluralism that emphasizes the freedom and intrinsic value of persons and could provide an alternative to the technocratic world order towards which we are presently heading at breakneck pace.
Steven Yates is a professional writer and independent scholar in philosophy, an entrepreneur, and an expatriated US citizen living in Chile. He has taught philosophy at Clemson University, Auburn University, USC-Upstate, Universidad Andrés Bello, and elsewhere. He is the author of Civil Wrongs: What Went Wrong With Affirmative Action (1994) and Four Cardinal Errors: Reasons for the Decline of the American Republic (2011), and has published around twenty-eight articles, review essays, and reviews in refereed journals and anthologies.
“Steven Yates’s What Should Philosophy Do? deserves to be read by both philosophers and non-philosophers, and especially by those who wonder whether philosophy is relevant at all in a postmodern era dominated by science and technology. Strictly speaking, philosophy does not ‘do’ anything. It is human beings who pursue philosophy as a quest for truth and love of wisdom that can encompass the central questions of human existence—not only the ‘how’ but also the ‘why?’ Philosophy, assisted by theology, is able to grapple with Francis Schaeffer’s query: ‘How should we then live?’ And the even more probing question found in Scripture: ‘What is man, that thou art mindful of him?’ Yates’s book is not only about recalling philosophy to its essential task of interrogating reality and cultural critique, but above all as Socratic dialogue. . . . This is philosophy at its best.”
—Oskar Gruenwald, editor of the Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies
“Can an entire culture be in thrall for centuries to basic yet unexamined assumptions that lead it inexorably to the edge of a cliff? Steven Yates argues convincingly for the affirmative, and he issues a call to arms to the one group that might yet save the day: his fellow philosophers.”
—Michael J. Behe, professor at Lehigh University and author of Darwin’s Black Box
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