The Problem of Naturalism Analytic Perspectives, Continental Virtues [Hardcover]

Blending analytic and continental traditions, Brian Lightbody offers a wonderfully clear and comprehensive exploration of the struggle to be thoroughly naturalistic. While extolling the attitudes of naturalistic philosophers who dare to unearth metaphysical assumptions in others, Lightbody warns us of the more difficult task: to ferret out our own ideological baggage, to be mindful, especially, of the circularity inherent in the knower and the known.The Problem of Naturalism: Analytic and Continental Perspectives, investigates how the term naturalism is defined and applied in the philosophic secondary literature from two often competing perspectives: analytic and Continental. The book offers its own justification and explication for naturalism by arguing that naturalism is best thought of as an attitude and not as a methodological or substantive position.Philosophers often use the term naturalism in order to describe their work. It is commonplace to see a metaphysical, epistemological and/or ethical position self-described and described by others as one that is naturalized. But what, if anything, does the term naturalized add--or subtract---to the position being articulated? I demonstrate in The Problem of Naturalism: Analytic and Continental Perspectives, that the term naturalism connotes such a broad meaning that it is difficult to demarcate naturalism from philosophy itself.Still, many philosophers have tried to provide non-trivial and non-vacuous definitions of the term. My book, by and large, argues that such attempts are unsuccessful. Instead, I argue that naturalism is an attitude and neither a methodology nor a substantive position. I then articulate the guidelines the naturalist needs to follow, as well as the virtues he or she needs to practice, in order for the term naturalism to do any meaningful work.Much of the book explains and then critiques the various attempts to define naturalism in the Anglo-American secondary literature. Some of the criticisló-