Abstract
AbstractThis chapter offers an account of “the whole function of philosophy.” It elaborates William James’s thought of philosophy as aiming to help people sort out their “somewhat chaotic” views of “the frame of things.” Philosophy is viewed as contributing to large questions of the age, as assisting a wide variety of forms of inquiry, and as a synthetic venture, directed at resolving the confusions arising in various domains of life. Philosophy works among disciplines, not striving for a special kind of knowledge, but as offering concepts, analogies, and lines of reasoning that prove useful in many attempts to make sense of our place in the world.
Publisher
Oxford University PressNew York