Naturalism, Realism, and Normativity
// Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews // News
2017.03.09 : View this Review Online | View Recent NDPR Reviews
Hilary Putnam, Naturalism, Realism, and Normativity, Mario De Caro (ed.), Harvard University Press, 2016, 238pp., $49.95 (hbk), ISBN 9780674659698.
Reviewed by Stathis Psillos, University of Athens
Hilary Putnam died on March 13, 2016. In 2013 he wrote: "It had better be the case that we can learn from dead philosophers, 'cause we're all gonna be dead!" (92). Well, Putnam was in constant dialogue with many dead (as well as living) philosophers. His intellectual career, as is amply testified by the present volume, was characterized by an honest and genuine attempt to refine and revise his philosophical positions so that they reflect more accurately his changing views. Putnam was not afraid of changing philosophical views either as a result of arguments produced by dead and living philosophers or as a result of fresh empirical findings. His corpus is a philosophical goldmine. I doubt that there has been any philosopher who interacted...
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