The Primacy of the Practical in the History of Philosophy

Philosophy is something that we do: it is a way of dealing with the questions and concerns that arise as we live our lives. Because of this, philosophy inevitably reflects our perspectives; these perspectives make philosophy possible—even as they constrain what philosophy can say. This is the tension at the heart of philosophy; the point of this dissertation is less to resolve this tension than to explore it—specifically, by recovering insights from Plato, Immanuel Kant, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Alasdair MacIntyre.First, this dissertation explores the insight that our perspectives constrain what philosophy can say. For we are situated within the world that our philosophical theories describe—and so those theories must describe a world in which we arrive at justified theories. Our theories must presuppose this regardless of how the world is—lest our practice of philosophy undermine itself. Contemporary philosophers often forget to reflect on their own practice in this way—and so forget that philosophy is a practice; because of this, they fall into performative contradiction.Second, this dissertation explores the insight that our perspectives make philosophy possible. For philosophy is a practice—and, because practices are irreducibly normative, no practice occurs outside of some linguistic perspective or other. Now, these linguistic perspectives sometimes contradict one another—but, because our linguistic perspectives inevitably constrain our conclusions, there is no neutral way to decide among them. Nonetheless, the decision of one rather than another is sometimes justified.Third, this dissertation refutes an objection to its foundation. Many contemporary philosophers hold that philosophy should not reflect any perspective at all—and certainly should not address the questions and concerns that arise as we live our lives. However, it is because contemporary philosophy does not address these questions and concerns that it so often seems irrelevant to our students.