Book Review // From a Logical Point of View, W. Quine [1953]

From a Logical Point of View¹ is a collection of essays by W. V. O. Quine, including his “On What There Is” (the “love of desert landscapes” one) and “Two Dogmas of Empiricism”, which remains one of the most influential essays in the Anglo-analytic tradition; a sledgehammer to the positivists’ machinery.

Twenty years ago we read this during our initial run through Kant’s First Critique, where it vindicated some of our vague critical prejudices.² It’s striking, then, to pick Quine back up after so long and realize that so many of our background assumptions³ have been tacitly shaped by the sort of pragmatism he facilitates with all of this leveling: a vague map bridging early and late Wittgenstein...

1. Quine, W. V. O. Two Dogmas of Empiricism. Harvard University Press, 2001.

2. It remains a fascination how “misunderstanding” and “critical recoil” often co-evolve in philosophical explosions - a curiosity that almost rhymes with Hegel’s famous Preface.

3. Web-like epistemic topologies, for one.