Making It Explicit: Reasoning, Representing, and Discursive Commitment

Everything went good.

Everything went smooth: the delivery was fast, the packaging was good and the book... just wonderful, Brandom is one of the greatest philosopher of the century.You can't fail with this puppy.

This book shines a new light on everything that matters in 20th century philosophy and, hence, on almost everything that matters in modern philosophy before it. Juergen Habermas rightfully recommends it (in "Wahrheit und Rechtfertigung"). It fruitfully brings together the linguistic turn and pragmatic philosophy, continuing in this sense the work of Richard Rorty, but in much more detail, und hence offering a deeper understanding of the topics at issue. It is not an easy read. But, as Wittgenstein used to say: Philosophy is not (that) easy.I think this book should be would as a must read for students of contemporary philosophy. Wahrheit Und RechtfertigungWahrheit Und Rechtfertigung

Robert Brandom has written an outstanding book of language philosophy. However, it is not an easy read.

In this massive work, Brandom presents a truly original approach to language. Essentially, this project consists of an attempt to account for the workings of language without relying on the traditional concepts of reference and representation, which so often present us with seemingly unsolvable puzzles. He begins with an account of language in social life and then describes how processes of social interaction, and mental organization & tracking of conceptual commitments of other individuals (what he calls "deontic scorekeeping") can explain the emergence of semantic meanings. In doing so he attempts to bridge the gap between semantics and pragmatics, describe how individual words contribute to sentence meaning, account for the behavior of indexicals, explicate the nature of logic, and explain what the actual cognitive effects of a language are insofar as the language is understood by its interlocutors. He does all this with varying degrees of success, but one things for sure: his views are unique and stimulating, especially when one realizes that in recent decades the philosophy of language has really stagnated. The best way to briefly describe his style is to characterize it as sociologically or anthropologically oriented philosophy of language (with a cognitive bent). Its not at all like the work of say Kripke or Chomsky, but more akin to say Searle or Lakkoff.As for his influences, Brandom's theories are heavily informed by Kant, Frege, Wittgenstein, Michael Dummet, Wilfrid Sellars, Donald Davidson, and John McDowell. I would recommend that one be rather familiar with the work of at least a couple of these philosophers, and analytic philosophy of language in general, before delving into this book.Although this is a great book, its not a true masterpiece. For one thing the writing is needlessly difficult, even more so that many continental philosophers. He never really achieves or even aims for clarity, and his arguments are often difficult to follow. Reading the work, I often had the impression that he was attempting to sound poetic and deep, but he just comes off like a high school student who is simply trying to hard, if you know what I mean. Also, his account of logic seems to be an implicit form psychologism, verging on social constructivism, which doesn't at all sit right (thankfully his theory of logic isn't particularly convincing). He also never really brings all his disparate ideas together. One can certainly see a common theme in all his claims, but he never really relates them to one another or unifies them into a single theory, even though this is quite obviously what he's attempting to do.