Akeel Bilgrami

Columbia University Press, 2010

Abstract

Some of the philosophical debates of our time are secular echoes, indeed secular descendants, of disputation some centuries ago that was no less intense and of measurably greater and more immediate public significance. If some of this sort of significance persists in our current debates, it is seldom on the surface. This is because of our tendency in analytic philosophy to view our metaphysical and epistemological concerns in relatively autonomous terms, unburdened by any political and cultural implication or fall-out. Hence, such wider significance as might still exist can only be unearthed by paying some genealogical attention to the antecedent disputes in which the issues at stake loomed larger and more visibly in public and political life.

View the paper here: The Wider Significance of Naturalism: A Genealogical Essay