Review
This work is a formidable achievement that demonstrates deep historical knowledge and awesome hermeneutic and systematic philosophical powers that, in this degree, are conjoined at best in a handful of people alive. This is in every way a superior work of philosophy, and shows why Robert Brandom holds a singular position in the discipline worldwide.
--Sebastian Rödl, Universität Basel.
This book represents a new collection of papers by one of the most important systematic philosophical thinkers of our time. As such it will be welcomed by those already familiar with Brandom's thought. At the same time, by connecting his views to familiar historical themes, Brandom has provided what is, to my mind, the most accessible route into his often dauntingly complex ideas, a route strongly recommended to those new to his work.
--Mark Lance, Georgetown University
Product Description
Transcendentalism never came to an end in America. It just went underground for a stretch, but is back in full force in Robert Brandom’s new book. Brandom takes up Kant and Hegel and explores their contemporary significance as if little time had expired since intellectuals gathered around Emerson in Concord to discuss reason and idealism, selves, freedom, and community. Brandom’s discussion belongs to a venerable tradition that distinguishes us as rational animals, and philosophy by its concern to understand, articulate, and explain the notion of reason that is thereby cast in that crucial demarcating role.
An emphasis on our capacity to reason, rather than merely to represent, has been growing in philosophy over the last thirty years, and Robert Brandom has been at the center of this development. Reason in Philosophy is the first book that gives a succinct overview of his understanding of the role of reason as the structure at once of our minds and our meanings—what constitutes us as free, responsible agents. The job of philosophy is to introduce concepts and develop expressive tools for expanding our self-consciousness as sapients: explicit awareness of our discursive activity of thinking and acting, in the sciences, politics, and the arts. This is a paradigmatic work of contemporary philosophy.
