Lexington Books Transformative Philosophy: Socrates, Wittgenstein, and the Democratic Spirit of Philosophy

The recent cross-fruition between analytical philosophy and continental philosophical traditions has stimulated an intense interest in the philosophy of philosophy. At stake in the debate is our understanding of the role of philosophy and of the use of argument and reason in culture.Transformative Philosophy articulates a new conception of philosophy through a discussion of salient themes in the analytical tradition, in the work of the later Wittgenstein, and in critical theory. Wallgren traces the genealogy leading to the present impasse on the discourse of philosophy; discusses authors such as Quine, Peter Winch, Michael Dummett, and Ernst Tugendhat; and considers Wittgenstein's conception of philosophy and of the private language argument. Drawing on an analysis of the relations between truth, communal agreement, and the role of the personal will in philosophical argumentation, Transformative Philosophy develops an image of philosophy as a transformative care for self and others. This work makes a great contribution to the study of philosophy and social theory. Review Thomas Wallgren's book Transformative Philosophy is a remarkable, important achievement in modern philosophy.... The importance of the book is that it manages to portray significant positions and debates in modern philosophy both in their own modern terms and as examples of how to deal with some deep and basic problems that have always characterized serious philosophy since Socrates. There is hardly any other book available that analyses "what philosophy is about today" with such profundity as this book. It reveals a fine and valuable insight into important parts of both modern analytic and modern continental philosophy.... It is a book that one can recommend to not only to students of philosophy but to learned scholars, since few living philosophers have managed, with excellence, to present the aspirations of modern philosophy as still answering to the historical roots and original ambitions of the enterprise.--Steen Brock, Aarhus Universitet Transformative Philosophy is a courageous, profoundly searching examination of the character and value of philosophical theory and practice.... Philosophers as diverse as the pre-Socratics, Socrates, Heidegger, Quine, Dummett, Davidson, Habermas, Apel, Foucault, Deleuze, Guattari, Rorty, and Wittgenstein himself, along with his recent expositors and critics, are scrutinized to determine the extent to which their basic contentions make sense and make a genuine difference to--or instead raise basic difficulties for--our philosophical procedures. Wallgren develops a compelling alternative to first-philosophical pretensions, deflationist quietism, and relativism in the form a "polyphonic" grammatical interpretation of Wittgenstein's later philosophy. He shows how we can be seriously committed philosophically both to rational justification and to the moral relevance of philosophy to our own times.... Wallgren's book is replete with subtle and important insights, above all about Socrates and Wittgenstein; it is a "must read" for philosophers of all persuasions.--Kenneth R. Westphal, University of East Anglia I found [Transformative Philosophy] a charming [book], philosophically quite astute and wide-ranging, and decidedly bold and inventive in the direction it proposes.--Joseph Margolis, Temple University About the Author Thomas Wallgren is a Senior Fellow at the Academy of Finland.