Quietism in philosophy

Philosophy

Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...

 is an approach to the subject that sees the role of philosophy as broadly therapeutic or remedial. Quietist philosophers believe that philosophy has no positive thesis to contribute, but rather that its value is in defusing confusions in the linguistic and conceptual frameworks of other subjects, including non-quietist philosophy. By re-formulating supposed problems in a way that makes the misguided reasoning from which they arise apparent, the quietist hopes to put an end to man's confusion, and help return to a state of intellectual quietude.

Quietist philosophers

Quietism is by its very nature not a philosophical school in the traditional sense of a body of doctrines, but can still be identified by its methodology

Methodology

Methodology is generally a guideline for solving a problem, with specificcomponents such as phases, tasks, methods, techniques and tools . It can be defined also as follows:...

, which is to focus on language and the use of words, and its objective, which is to show that most philosophical problems are only pseudo-problems.

The genesis of the approach can be traced back to Ludwig Wittgenstein

Ludwig Wittgenstein

Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein was an Austrian philosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language. He was professor in philosophy at the University of Cambridge from 1939 until 1947...

, whose work greatly influenced the Ordinary Language philosophers

Ordinary language philosophy

Ordinary language philosophy is a philosophical school that approaches traditional philosophical problems as rooted in misunderstandings philosophers develop by distorting or forgetting what words actually mean in everyday use....

. One of the early Ordinary Language works was Gilbert Ryle

Gilbert Ryle

Gilbert Ryle , was a British philosopher, a representative of the generation of British ordinary language philosophers that shared Wittgenstein's approach to philosophical problems, and is principally known for his critique of Cartesian dualism, for which he coined the phrase "the ghost in the...

's The Concept of Mind

The Concept of Mind

The Concept of Mind is a book by the philosopher Gilbert Ryle. It argues that the concept of "mind" is "a philosophical illusion hailing chiefly from Descartes and sustained by logical errors and 'category mistakes' which have become habitual." Richard Webster praises its "lucidity and vigour",...

, an attempt to demonstrate that dualism

Dualism

Dualism denotes a state of two parts. The term 'dualism' was originally coined to denote co-eternal binary opposition, a meaning that is preserved in metaphysical and philosophical duality discourse but has been diluted in general or common usages. Dualism can refer to moral dualism, Dualism (from...

 arises from a failure to appreciate that mental vocabulary and physical vocabulary are simply different ways of describing one and the same thing, namely human behaviour. J L Austin's

J. L. Austin

John Langshaw Austin was a British philosopher of language, born in Lancaster and educated at Shrewsbury School and Balliol College, Oxford University. Austin is widely associated with the concept of the speech act and the idea that speech is itself a form of action...

 Sense and Sensibilia took a similar approach to the problems of scepticism and the reliability of sense perception, arguing that they arise only by misconstruing ordinary language, not because there is anything genuinely wrong with our empirical knowledge. Norman Malcolm

Norman Malcolm

Norman Malcolm was an American philosopher, born in Selden, Kansas. He studied philosophy with O.K. Bouwsma at the University of Nebraska, then enrolled as a graduate student at Harvard University in 1933....

, a friend of Wittgenstein's, took a quietist approach to sceptical problems in the philosophy of mind. More recently, two other philosophers to take an explicitly quietist position are John McDowell

John McDowell

John Henry McDowell is a South African philosopher, formerly a fellow of University College, Oxford and now University Professor at the University of Pittsburgh. Although he has written extensively on metaphysics, epistemology, ancient philosophy, and meta-ethics, McDowell's most influential work...

 and Richard Rorty

Richard Rorty

Richard McKay Rorty was an American philosopher. He had a long and diverse academic career, including positions as Stuart Professor of Philosophy at Princeton, Kenan Professor of Humanities at the University of Virginia, and Professor of Comparative Literature at Stanford University...

.