ABSTRACT

Where did philosophy go wrong? How, within a century, at a time when there has never been more need for philosophical ideas that could challenge the status quo, off er new ways of understanding the world and new visions of the future, has philosophy degenerated from its central place in education and culture into a marginal discipline consisting of developing formal languages to serve the information technology industry, apologetics for mainstream science, fragments of abstruse arguments within specialized sub-disciplines addressed only to other academics, or eff orts to keep abreast of the latest intellectual fashions coming out of Paris? To comprehend the parlous state of philosophy in the modern world it is necessary to understand the triumph of analytic philosophy that now not only dominates philosophy departments in Anglophone countries, but is invading countries that traditionally have off ered alternatives, even France. In doing so, it is necessary to look at the opposition between analytic and speculative philosophy.