Abstract

This book offers a thought-provoking critique of analytic philosophy focusing on four central figures--Russell, Wittgenstein, Carnap, and Quine. In Wang's view, what lies "beyond" analytic philosophy is the abandonment of Empiricist accounts of how we know and epistemological limitations on what can be known. In making the foundations of science the center of "legitimate" philosophy, Analytic Empiricism has blocked important global perspectives found, for example, in continental and oriental philosophies. Wang advocates a Kantian transcendental dialectic: What explanation is required if we are to do justice to the many facets of knowledge, including artistic, poetic, emotional, and ethical as well as scientific? His thesis is that "intuition" must reclaim a central place in the answer.