Abstract
Professor Moore’s stimulating paper ‘The Center of the World’ is a most interesting and unusual blend of continental existentialism and Anglo-American linguistic analysis. However, in Moore’s paper linguistic analysis is not used in an attempt to refute existentialism, as is often the case among American and British philosophers. On the contrary, I interpret Moore to be using linguistic analysis to try to substantiate and demonstrate the truth of some conclusions and insights of existentialism. Now even if Moore is unsuccessful in his attempt to do this, the effort is surely worth the try. As Moore himself points out, a great gulf separates continental and Anglo-American philosophy and much misunderstanding and mistrust prevail. An effort like Moore’s to bridge this gulf, to show, e.g., how the techniques of linguistic analysis may illuminate the major insights of existentialism, must surely be applauded as a courageous attempt at international philosophical peace-making.1
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References
For another attempt to bring together these two traditions, see John Wild, ‘Is There a World of Ordinary Language?’, Philosophical Review, 1958, 460–476.
For further discussion of this point, see A. J. Ayer, ‘Names and Descriptions’, The Concept of a Person and Other Essays, New York, St. Martin’s Press, 1963.
Although Moore does not explicitly say so, it is likely that he is here greatly indebted to Husserl’s notion of the life-world (Lebenswelt). For a discussion of Husserl’s concept of the life-world with special reference to the philosophy of science see Herbert Marcuse, ‘On Science and Phenomenology’ and Aron Gurwitsch, ‘Comments on the Paper by by H. Marcuse’, both in Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Vol. II (ed. by R. S. Cohen and M. Wartofsky ), New York, Humanities Press, 1965.
See for example, Michael Polanyi, Personal Knowledge, New York, Harper and Row, 1964; Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1963.
See for example, Kierkegaard’s remarks on subjectivity: S. Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript (transl. by D. F. Swenson and W. Lowrie), Princeton, University Press, 1944. See also Walter Kaufman, ‘Kierkegaard’, The Kenyon Review, Spring 1956 for a critique of Kierkegaard’s views on subjectivity.
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© 1967 D. Reidel Publishing Company / Dordrecht-Holland
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Martin, M. (1967). Comments: Analytic Premises and Existential Conclusions. In: Cohen, R.S., Wartofsky, M.W. (eds) Proceedings of the Boston Colloquium for the Philosophy of Science 1964/1966. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol 3. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-3508-8_21
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