A Thing of This World: A History of Continental Anti-Realism (Topics in Historical Philosophy) [Paperback]

Lee Braver (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 13, 2007 | ISBN-10: 0810123800 | ISBN-13: 978-0810123809 | Edition: 1

At a time when the analytic/continental split dominates contemporary philosophy, this ambitious work offers a careful and clear-minded way to bridge that divide. Combining conceptual rigor and clarity of prose with historical erudition, A Thing of This World shows how one of the standard issues of analytic philosophy - realism and anti-realism - has also been at the heart of continental philosophy. Using a framework derived from prominent analytic thinkers, Lee Braver traces the roots of anti-realism to Kant's idea that the mind actively organizes experience. He then shows in depth and in detail how this idea evolves through the works of Hegel, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Foucault, and Derrida. This narrative presents an illuminating account of the history of continental philosophy by explaining how these thinkers build on each other's attempts to develop new concepts of reality and truth in the wake of the rejection of realism. Braver demonstrates that the analytic and continental traditions have been discussing the same issues, albeit with different vocabularies, interests, and approaches. By developing a commensurate vocabulary, his book promotes a dialogue between the two branches of philosophy in which each can begin to learn from the other.

Editorial Reviews

Review

The idea that a philosopher develops his own position out of various adaptations to the framework that was bequeathed to him is not new. In this masterful work, however, Braver provides an ingenious exegetical tool to illustrate this evolution from Kant through Derrida. By showing how they each modify what he identifies as the theses of realism into varying degrees of anti-realism, Braver succeeds admirably in penetrating the obscure vocabulary to demonstrate clearly that continental philosophers and analytic philosophers share a common Kantian origin and hence some common concerns (though not the same answers). This might indeed be the beginning of a very fruitful conversation.

--Review of Metaphysics.





It is the sort of book that everyone working in the continental tradition, and many in the analytic tradition, will want to read... Braver's real strength is his sweeping synoptic vision of continentalism from Kant to Derrida, backed by triple the needed homework to make this vision tangible. The book deserves great success, and Braver ought to become a household name in continental circles... It would be hard to ask for a more thoroughly researched work on the topic, or for one more honest or more technically precise... A landmark. ----Philosophy Today

This is a superb book, and potentially an important book. It is addressed to analytic and continental philosophers alike without sacrificing either of the strengths of those traditions: conceptual rigor and clarity of prose on the one hand, historical depth and careful erudition on the other. . . . It is high time our profession embarks on some serious scholarship in this field, and Lee Braver seems to be the one to lead that effort. ---- John Protevi, editor of A Dictionary of Continental Philosophy

A Thing of This World is an impressive and valuable achievement. . . that could do a lot to help apnalytical and continental philosophers understand each other. Lee Braver shows an amazing overall knowledge of the relevant primary and secondary sources, and his analyses of the philosophers he takes up are admirably clear and free from jargon. His Heideggarian critique of Davidson on language, for example, casts new light on the approaches of both thinkers. ---- Hubert L. Dreyfus, professor of philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley

About the Author

Lee Braver is chair of the department of philosophy at Hiram College in Hiram, Ohio.

Product Details

• Paperback: 516 pages
• Publisher: Northwestern University Press; 1 edition (July 13, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0810123800
• ISBN-13: 978-0810123809
• Product Dimensions: 6 x 1.3 x 9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #663,624 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Bravo! July 12, 2009

By Quentin de Montargis

Format:Hardcover

The argument of Braver's book is that one of the threads that connects the major philosophers in the continental tradition is a commitment to anti-realism. This claim is not as obvious as one might think, due to the simple fact that these authors rarely employ the vocabulary associated with realism/anti-realism debates.

To remedy this situation, Braver first constructs a set of theses that are associated with realism. The word "theses" in the plural is significant because realism does not only entail the thesis that there is a mind-independent world. For example, he argues that an adherence to a bivalent theory of truth is also a logical consequence of realism - and I find his arguments convincing, especially since he supports them with texts from the analytic tradition.

Then Braver launches into his history of anti-realism in the continental tradition, starting with Kant. Kant develops a system of philosophy that opposes some of the major theses associated with realism - but he is not able to challenge all of them, rendering his philosophy inconsistent. According to Braver, the philosophers who follow - Hegel, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Foucault, and Derrida - attempt to do a better job than Kant in eradicating all the theses associated with realism (none of them succeed completely, but that is the task of future philosophers, and the anti-realist positions that they develop become more consistent over time).

Braver's succeeds in demonstrating that each philosopher is arguing against realism, even if they don't use conventional vocabulary. He quotes their works frequently, and then explains how that quote opposes a certain thesis of realism.... For example, this strategy helped me understand what Heidegger means by Being - I've read several secondary works on Heidegger which have given me a functional understanding of the concept, but Braver enabled me to grasp it fully.

The genius of recasting these philosophers' works in terms of realism or anti-realism is that the theses associated with realism are relatively simple. The concepts of a mind-independent world or truth as correspondence are intuitive. Therefore, connecting notoriously difficult terms as "spirit," "will to power," "being," and "metaphysics of presence" to realism renders them less mysterious.

Another goal of this book is a rapprochement of the analytic and continental traditions. I would argue that this goal is secondary, since the primary goal is to situate diverse continental thinkers within a certain debate - but this has been a debate occurring in analytic circles also. At first, I thought Braver was going to argue that, "Look, once we develop commensurate vocabularies, we'll discover that we've been saying the same things all along!" He gives this impression at certain times, especially when he connects later Heidegger to later Wittgenstein (and the similarities are eerie).

However, in the conclusion, he argues that the two traditions fundamentally split because of the way in which they appropriated Kant. I've heard this argument elsewhere, and Braver's version make sense. In the end, he emphasizes both the similarities and the differences between the two traditions, an aspect of the book that I appreciated.

Overall, this book earns the highest praise from me. It is not without its flaws. Nevertheless, I would recommend this book to anyone interested in the continental tradition of philosophy, although I would recommend a prior understanding of these philosophers (especially Kant and Heidegger). You don't necessarily have to be interested in the realism/anti-realism debate beforehand. Suppose you just want to understand the later Heidegger - this book, by casting his vocabulary in terms of realism and anti-realism, will help you figure it out.

P.S. I have noticed that frequently philosophers who work to produce a synthesis between the analytical and continental fields often identify major continental philosophers as realists (for example, CG Prado for Foucualt and Christopher Norris for Derrida). I wonder if this results from a desire to make them more palatable for analytic philosophers (which is not to say that the aforementioned authors don't provide convincing reasons for their interpretations, they do). Therefore, Braver's book is unique for this genre. Read more ›

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A Must Read Book July 15, 2010

By Jon M. Cogburn

Format:Hardcover

First let me say that Quentin de Montargis' review of this book here is right on target, so I won't repeat what he says.

Let me just add a couple of brief things. A number of philosophers (including myself) participated in an on-line reading group on this book at the blog "Perverse Egalitarianism." Amazon won't let me provide a link, but if you google "Braver Reading Group" the archive comes up. Also, the Notre Dame Philosophical Review is at [...].

Braver begins the book by describing different core realist theses from disparate discussions in recent analytic metaphysics and philosophy of language, and then the bulk of the book is a Whiggish history from Kant to Derrida in terms of an unfolding dialectic concerning these theses.

A large part of the sheer genius of this book is that it is so consistently philosophically rich and inventive while still being historically rigorous. It is not obnoxiously hagiographic as some continental philosophy tends to be. People who disagree fundamentally with Derrida and Foucault will still learn an immense amount of good philosophy from Braver's text. And the book is not obnoxiously anachronistic as some analytic philosophy tends to be. To be able to avoid this Scylla and Charibdis with Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, early and late Heidegger, Foucault, and Derrida is just amazing. And I should say that the Hegel, Nietzsche, and two Heidegger chapters each on their own are worth the price of the book. For example, after reading Braver's clear and interesting presentations of Heidegger I found "Being and Time" accessible for the first time in my life and was also able to fruitfully engage with the principle secondary literature on Heidegger....

My personal impression is that many of the fundamental realism/anti-realism debates have kind of dried up in the last decade or so after a really fertile period. Of course lots of very good philosophers still discuss the relevant thinkers, but the heydey of new ideas has waned a bit. One of the solutions is to take all we've learned and return to the post-Kantian environment, study those debates applying our new knowledge in a historically sensitive manner. And the very best work today is doing just that. In this regard, Lee Braver joins such august company as Michael Friedman, Graham Priest, Frederick Beiser, and Graham Harman. Read more ›

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars There need to be more books like this one... May 28, 2011

By Brian C.

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

I am convinced that philosophy students are becoming more and more fed up with the petty name calling that often passes for debate between philosophers working within the analytic and Continental traditions of philosophy and are becoming more and more interested in crossing the boundaries between the two traditions. Perhaps this has always been the case but it seems to me to definitely be the case today. Lee Braver's book is the perfect book for those who are interested in crossing the boundaries between the analytic and Continental traditions in philosophy. It is an excellent book for analytic philosophers who would like to get a sense of what Continental philosophers are up to or who are looking for a readable history of Continental philosophy since Kant (one that avoids a great deal of the jargon that is so notorious in Continental philosophy). And it would also be an excellent book for Continental philosophers who are wondering how to present their ideas in a form that would fit or be understandable to analytic philosophers or would answer to the more 'problem-oriented' approach of analytic philosophy.

Lee Braver attempts in this work to work out a schema of realism based in analytic philosophy and then attempts to situate each Continental philosopher based on his place within this abstract schema (the Continental philosophers dealt with are Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Foucault and Derrida). Lee Braver is in an excellent position to present such a history; as his bibliography will attest he has a commanding grasp of the relevant scholarship relating to both the Continental and analytic traditions of philosophy.... I spend a ton of time on amazon looking for philosophy books and I still found a ton of books in Braver's bibliography that I had not yet discovered on my own (a glance at the bibliography and the truly overwhelming amount of research that must have been necessary to write this book will go a long ways in explaining why there are not more books written like this one). The danger in adopting Braver's abstract schema approach is that real differences might get ironed over in attempting to fit each philosopher neatly into the structure that Braver has devised. In my opinion Braver does an excellent job at avoiding this possible problem. He admits that he is only presenting perspectives on particular aspects of each philosopher's thought, rather than a summary of their thought as a whole, but he avoids over-simplification, and he avoids the danger of reducing real differences to nothing (for example, one of Braver's structuring elements is what he calls 'realism of the subject'; it would be easy to simply categorize each philosopher in terms of their answer to this question but this would obscure real differences between, for example, Heidegger and Foucault who both to a certain extent reject realism of the subject; as I said Braver does an excellent job of avoiding this particular danger by presenting nuanced readings of each philosopher which take cognizance of both similarities and differences).

Braver believes that the Continental tradition of philosophy is fundamentally anti-realist (hence the subtitle of the book) and that this anti-realism can be traced back to Kant. Braver also believes that this anti-realism can be divided up into two major paradigms. The Kantian paradigm is the first in which relativity is attributed to the conceptual schemes through which human beings cognize reality but there is a remaining vestige of realism in some form. In Kant this remaining vestige of realism is based in his realism of the subject and in the uniqueness of the conceptual scheme for all beings whose cognitions are constituted in the human form. For Hegel this lingering realism is found in the concepts teleological movement towards absolute knowledge. In Nietzsche it is found in the metaphysical doctrine of the will to power, and in the early Heidegger it is found in the atemporal existentials of Dasein. Braver sees a fundamental shift in paradigm that takes place in the later Heidegger when the conceptual schemes are unmoored from any fundamental ground and are conceived instead as 'destinings of Being'. This Heideggerian paradigm is then taken up and radicalized by Foucault and Derrida. I could be wrong but I think this particular historical understanding of the history of Continental philosophy (as divided between the Kantian and Heideggerian paradigms) is original to Lee Braver. I certainly have never encountered it before and it is possible that Braver's attempt to situate each thinker in terms of the abstract scheme he develops at the beginning of the book is precisely what made this particular development visible.

At the very end Braver attempts to determine what precisely separates the analytic and Continental traditions of philosophy. The fact that he is able to situate Continental thinkers in terms of his scheme of realism developed from analytic philosophy suggests that philosophers in both traditions are, indeed, concerned with some of the same problems. So why the split? Braver admits the split is over-determined having to do not only with substance but also with style, etc.. But he sees the fundamental difference as residing in a tension within Kant's philosophy between the first and second critiques. In the first critique Kant takes human finitude seriously and attempts to limit reason's reach based on the fundamental finitude of our cognition. Braver believes that the Continental tradition belong on this side of the tension within Kant's philosophy. They take seriously (even more seriously than Kant) human beings radical finitude and, therefore, reject the notion of a Truth in itself. In the second critique, however, Kant argues that in order to maintain the autonomy and universality of morality reason must be radically independent of any contingent empirical influences. Braver believes that analytic philosophy belongs on this side of the tension. Frege's philosophy, for example, was motivated largely by an effort to overcome the contingencies of human language in an effort to express objective truth (interestingly enough Alain Badiou, a philosopher I have only just begun to study, belongs much more to the analytic tradition of philosophy if one were to accept Braver's method of delimitation despite the fact that he is usually considered a Continental philosopher). Braver admits that his own method for determining the difference between analytic and Continental philosophy would require repositioning in certain cases (Wittgenstein, for example, would be an analytic philosopher who would have to be moved to the Continental camp). My own feeling is that the division is based on other equally important factors and that the standard placements are generally correct (I would think the most important factor would be influence, i.e., Wittgenstein is an analytic philosopher because he was responding to Frege and Russell, etc. and not Husserl or Heidegger). But Braver's presentation of the differences between the two traditions (after presenting the similiarities in the rest of the book) was extremely enlightening nonetheless.

I would recommend this book to anyone who is interested in philosophy. Whatever tradition you consider yourself to belong to it should prove enlightening in the highest degree (it did for me). Read more ›