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Analysis and Metaphysics: An Introduction to Philosophy

Online ISBN:
9780191695032
Print ISBN:
9780198751182
Publisher:
Oxford University Press
Book

Analysis and Metaphysics: An Introduction to Philosophy

P. F. Strawson
P. F. Strawson

Professor Emeritus and Honorary Fellow

St Johns, University, and Magdalen Colleges, Oxford
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Published online:
3 October 2011
Published in print:
16 April 1992
Online ISBN:
9780191695032
Print ISBN:
9780198751182
Publisher:
Oxford University Press

Abstract

All developed human beings possess a practical mastery of a vast range of concepts, including such basic structural notions as those of identity, truth, existence, material objects, mental states, space, and time; but a practical mastery does not entail theoretical understanding. It is that understanding which philosophy seeks to achieve. This book sets out to explain and illustrate a certain conception of the nature of analytical philosophy. The author draws on his many years of teaching at Oxford University, during which he refined and developed his route to understanding the fundamental structure of human thinking. Among the distinctive features of his exposition are the displacement of an older, reductive conception of philosophical method (the ideal of ‘analysing’ complex ideas into simpler elements) in favour of elucidating the interconnections between the complex but irreducible notions which form the basic structure of our thinking; and the demonstration that the three traditionally distinguished departments of metaphysics (ontology), epistemology, and logic are but three aspects of one unified enquiry.

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