The Nature of Philosophy: How Philosophy Makes Progress and Why It Matters

The Nature of Philosophy is an exploration of the bewildering variety of philosophical inquiries, from the Western style(s) to the Eastern one(s), from so-called Analytic to Continental philosophy. The book asks whether philosophy makes progress, and if so, in what sense. The answer comes from an analysis of different ways in which a field may progress, and from a comparison between philosophy and a number of allied fields, such as the natural sciences, mathematics and logic. The conclusion is that philosophy does, indeed, make progress over time. Such progress is more similar to that which characterizes mathematics and logic than to that of science, although it features aspects of all those other disciplines. Progress in philosophy is largely a question of exploring conceptual landscapes defined by the specific philosophical question and a number of assumptions that help framing that question.