Journal of Philosophical Research

Volume 25, 2000

Joseph Margolis
Pages 3-26

Back to the Future at the End of the Century

In offering an overview of late twentieth-century philosophy, I consider the import of three questions: the classic topics of reference and predication and the modern question of the historicity of thought. I show the sense in which a large part of analytic philosophy is “fatigued,” in recycling philosophical programs and theories known to be unworkable already in the ancient and premodern world or at least by the time of the post-Kantians; and in resting programs and theories on presumed solutions of the problems of reference and predication that could not support them. The solutions that are possible would lead us in an altogether different direction that, among other things, would restore a sense of fruitful exchange between Anglo-American and continental European philosophy.