ABSTRACT
McDowell’s book consists of versions of the six John Locke lectures he delivered in Oxford in 1991, together with a four part “Afterword” elaborating on and defending various of their themes. It displays a level of philosophical ambition that, in both scale and general direction, is nothing short of Hegelian-indeed the author remarks1 that he would like to view his text as a prolegomenon to a reading of the Phenomenology of Spirit. McDowell’s agenda, like Hegel’s, is shaped through and through by the challenge of overcoming the Kantian legacy of minds’ alienation from an unknowable noumenal reality. But this is an essentially modern work. The approach is fashioned by a deeply respectful, if profoundly unsympathetic, reaction to certain fundamental epistemological themes in the writings of Donald Davidson and Gareth Evans. The Sellarsian and Strawsonian influences on McDowell’s thinking are also very evident, and acknowledged. Quine and Rorty are extensively criticized. Wittgenstein and Gadamer are important allies.
