Peter Strawson

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Sir Peter Frederick Strawson (born November 23, 1919 in London , † February 13, 2006 in Oxford ) was a British philosopher .

He is assigned to analytical philosophy and has made well-known contributions to the philosophy of language , metaphysics , logic , epistemology and to classics and arguments from the history of philosophy, in particular to Immanuel Kant . For the development of analytical philosophy since the 1960s towards a resurgence of metaphysical theoretical approaches, Strawson's study of individual things from 1959 was decisive.

biography

Strawson was Waynflete Professor of Metaphysical Philosophy at Oxford University from 1968 to 1987.

Strawson was beaten to Knight Bachelor in 1977 . In 1960 he became a Fellow of the British Academy and in 1971 a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences .

Strawson's son, Galen Strawson , is also a philosopher.

Peter Strawson died on February 13, 2006 in Oxford.

Teaching

Strawson was best known for his article On Referring (1950), a criticism of Bertrand Russell's Theory of Descriptions , which shows that Russell's analysis cannot explain all the relevant uses of the particular article, especially when the object in question does not exist - Russell must then evaluate the sentence as wrong, which, according to Strawson, is counter-intuitive in many cases. In the theory of labeling , Strawson's reference to the influence of presuppositions on the meaning of statements contributed to further development. Strawson's proposal to start from rules that determine a correct reference under certain conditions may also converge. a. with basic ideas from Austin and other representatives of a speech act theory .

He assumes that philosophy and, within philosophy, the discipline of metaphysics have the task of “describing the actual structure of our thinking about the world”, a methodical approach that he calls “descriptive metaphysics” and from which he distinguishes the procedure To “bring about a better structure”, which he calls “revisionary metaphysics”. The conceptual system of common sense or the lifeworld is therefore unavoidable - we have ever dealt with concepts such as “person”, but also with concepts such as space, time, causality, truth and the like. Like. Strawson said that these terms cannot be reduced to more fundamental terms or conditions, such as empirical data or scientific terms. Contemporary philosophers such as Bertrand Russell criticized Strawson for being too orientated towards an ideal language . Strawson himself is therefore assigned to the so-called philosophy of normal language with regard to his language-philosophical statements .

Strawson's distinction between descriptive metaphysics and revisionary metaphysics is often adopted, but also criticized. a. in use on classics, etc. a. because it is not sufficiently selective.

The main finding of the Individuals book is that people and material bodies are the fundamental entities. According to popular opinion, the work marks the most important turning point towards the revival of metaphysics in the analytic-philosophical traditions.

Strawson is of the opinion that Kant's Critique of Pure Reason essentially pursues the goal of a descriptive metaphysics. In his work The bounds of sense , published in 1966 , Strawson advocates an interpretation of Kant according to which many of Kant's theses are untenable, including Kant's explanation of synthetic a priori judgments, Kant's transcendental idealism, and the like. v. a. m. However, Strawson tries to defend other ideas of Kant. a. by reconstructing Kant's arguments and arguing that a somewhat weaker but plausible objective of proof is being produced. It can be shown that human consciousness is able to apply the categories used to classify experiences to objects that are themselves independent of experience. In particular, Strawson sees skeptical arguments rebuttable on this basis. Also Bounds of Sense was received immediately and wide and Strawson order not only wore a Renaissance Kant in the Anglo-Saxon philosophy at, but also sparked a new debate in the transcendental to the possibility of transcendental arguments.

Strawson has also written very influential papers on the concept of truth , the problem of skepticism and the concept of the analytical .

bibliography

Books

  • Introduction to Logical Theory. Methuen, London 1952.
  • Individuals: An Essay in Descriptive Metaphysics. Methuen, London 1959
    • Single thing and logical subject. A contribution to descriptive metaphysics. Trans. V. Freimut Scholz. Reclam, Stuttgart 1972, ISBN 3-15-009410-0
  • The Bounds of Sense: An Essay on Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Methuen, London 1966
    • The limits of meaning. A comment on Kant's “Critique of Pure Reason”. Trans. V. Ernst Michael Lange. Hain, Königstein 1981, ISBN 3-445-12025-0 ; ibid. 1992, ISBN 3-445-07018-0
  • Logico-Linguistic Papers. Methuen, London 1971
    • Logic and linguistics. Essays on the philosophy of language. List, Munich 1974, ISBN 3-471-61429-X
  • Freedom and Resentment and other essays. Methuen, London 1974
  • Subject and Predicate in Logic and Grammar. Methuen, London 1974
  • Skepticism and Naturalism: Some Varieties. Columbia University Press, New York 1985; Routledge, 2008 (with foreword by Quassim Cassam; DOC; 67 kB)
  • Analysis and Metaphysics: An Introduction to Philosophy. Oxford University Press, Oxford 1992
    • Analysis and Metaphysics. An introduction to philosophy. Trans. V. Charlotte Hochkeppel. dtv, Munich 1994, ISBN 3-423-04615-5
  • Entity and Identity. Oxford University Press, Oxford 1997.

items

literature

Web links

Footnotes

  1. ↑ See Strawson: Individuals. London / New York 1959, p. 9.
  2. ↑ In detail Winfried Löffler: About descriptive and revisionary metaphysics. In: Matthias Lutz-Bachmann & Thomas M. Schmidt (Eds.): Metaphysics Today - Problems and Perspectives of Ontology. Alber, Freiburg 2007, pp. 114-131.
  3. ↑ Cf. Winfried Löffler: About descriptive and revisionary metaphysics. In: Matthias Lutz-Bachmann & Thomas M. Schmidt (Eds.): Metaphysics Today - Problems and Perspectives of Ontology. Alber, Freiburg 2007, p. 114 (116)
  4. ↑ Winfried Löffler: About descriptive and revisionary metaphysics. In: Matthias Lutz-Bachmann & Thomas M. Schmidt (Eds.): Metaphysics Today - Problems and Perspectives of Ontology. Alber, Freiburg 2007, p. 114
personal data
SURNAME Strawson, Peter
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Strawson, Peter Frederick; Strawson, PF
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British philosopher
DATE OF BIRTH November 23, 1919
PLACE OF BIRTH London
DATE OF DEATH February 13, 2006
Place of death Oxford