This original and ambitious book aims to change how we think about good lives. The perennial debates about good lives--the disagreements caused by conflicts between scientific, religious, moral, historical, aesthetic, and subjective modes of...
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This original and ambitious book aims to change how we think about good lives. The perennial debates about good lives--the disagreements caused by conflicts between scientific, religious, moral, historical, aesthetic, and subjective modes of...
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Many years ago, I read a book by John Kekes in a graduate seminar on contemporary ethics. I returned to Kekes at the suggestion of an Amazon friend who has read and reviewed some of his books. A prolific philosophical author, Kekes is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Albany. In addition to his writings on ethics, Kekes is a political conservative who has written extensively on political philosophy. I find the combination of philosophical pluralism and political conservatism appealing and intuiguing. The book I am reviewing, however, "Pluralism in Philosophy: Changing the Subject" (2000), concerns issues in ethics and theory of knowledge, with little detailed, explicit discussion of political theory.
The title of the book with its references to "pluralism" and to "changing the subject" indicate Kekes' broad approach. His book explores the relationship of the philosophical concepts of "absolutism", "pluralism" "relativism" and "reason". According to Kekes, many philosophers have erred over the centuries by pursuing an "absolutistic" approach. By this, Kekes means, seeking a single type of philosophical answer to the problems of life that overrides or trumps all other possible answers. Kekes identifies five types of absolutist approaches offered by various great philosophers: religious, moral, scientific, aesthetic, and subjective. In contrast to an absolutist approach, Kekes argues that a pluralistic approach recognizes each of these approaches and significant and important. He denies that any one of these approaches predominates over the other in all cases. He argues that the weight to be given to these factors varies by circumstance, by society and social conditions, and by individual. Kekes denies that his approach leads to a "relativistic" result, a charge leveled frequently at pluralistic approaches. He denies the charge of "relativism" (or "skepticism") because, he claims, in individual situations, some approaches are better than others, or more nearly right. The lack of a general solution, he claims, does not lead to arbitrariness. The use of reason and rationality is particular more than general.
In the first part of the book, Kekes develops the nature of his pluralistic approach and explains how it has "changed the subject" in terms of traditional philosophical approaches. The most interesting part of the book is the opening chapter, "Everyday Life". Kekes argues that philosophical questions arise not out of abstractions or from armchair speculation. Instead, they arise from life and from disruptions that arise from conflicts, difficulties, and disappointments, intellectual and otherwise. Arising from everyday experience, these disruptions provoke reflections that are outside the scope of experience. Kekes writes: "We need to think because we encounter problems, doubts, incapacities, despair, misfortune, conflicts, injustice, and the disrupt our lives. ....Everyday life is the background against which both the disruptions and the thinking occur, and it is with that we must begin."
Kekes identifies five large philosophical problems that have arisen from reflection upon the contingencies of human life: the meaning of life, the possibility of free action, the place of morality in good lives, the art of life, and the nature of human self-understanding. He traces various absolutistic approaches to these issues based upon religion, morality, science, aesthetics, and subjectivity and argues that these approaches are partial, at best, and have led to skepticism and relativism. In the second part of the book, Kekes discusses the five issues from a pluralistic approach. He indicates the discussion in intended to be introductory and tentative.
Kekes' discussions are broad, challenging and mixed. They work best when Kekes is able to take a vague, poorly-framed phrase, say, "the meaning of life" and analyze it into the question "what helps make an individual life meaningful and worthwhile?" Kekes has worthwhile things to say about individual lives and personal projects that make lives particular and worth living. Kekes becomes less convincing when he discusses the philosophical problem of free will and determinism and explores the three competing approaches (the third of which, compatibilism, tries to bridge the gap and deny that free will and determinism are inconsistent with each other.) I had difficulty with Kekes' pluralistic answer to the free will/determinism issue and was unsure how it differed, or ought to differ, from various compatibilist answers. The remaining chapters of the book owe are great deal to these two issues: the meaning of life, and free will/determinism. Kekes discusses the approaches of several philosophers, including Kant, Mill, and Nietzsche, and tries to redirect them into a pluralistic framework with mixed results. The writing is often insightful, but almost as often, confusing or turgid.
Kekes' approach is not as original, in "changing the subject" as he sometimes claims. In its emphasis on pluralism, particularity, and working things through I was reminded in many places of the American pragmatists, William James and John Dewey. His solutions and approach seem markedly similar to theirs. Some discussion of the pragmatists and of how, if at all, Kekes' approach differs would have been welcome. As I suggested at the outset, the comparison would be particularly valuable because of the "liberal" tendencies of Dewey and the "conservative" tendencies of Kekes.
Kekes has written a difficult and stimulating introduction to what has become the "pluralistic" approach to philosophy. His book, however, is not fully convincing and is far from the last word on the subject.
