Abstract

Today, most professional philosophers understand philosophy as the analysis of concepts and ideas. Still, there are two critical philosophical concerns which can, for several reasons, not really be resolved by professional philosophy today. First, a critique of the bifurcation of knowledge which resulted from the increasing specialization of the sciences. Second, a critique of importance, i. e. a contesting of what people, knowingly or unknowingly, take to be important or not. In his impressive «Experience and Nature» John Dewey presents these unresolved concerns as a kind of philosophical manifesto. I argue that, for several reasons, Dewey’s idea of philosophy can hardly be realized, the reason being that his claims for philosophy are both over-ambitious and overmodest. Still, there are various philosophical traditions which, by widely differing methods, emphasize certain aspects of the critical task. These include the revisionary metaphysics of Leibniz and Whitehead, the untimely meditation – as Nietzsche called it –, and the late philosophy of Stanley Cavell. Although these traditions differ widely with regard to their emphasis on construction and deconstruction, they concur in emphasizing the development of new encompassing ways of viewing things and understanding importance