Roth, Paul A. Review of Robert Piercey, THE USES OF THE PAST FROM HEIDEGGER TO RORTY. NDPR (OCtober 2009).

Piercey, Robert. The Uses of the Past from Heidegger to Rorty: Doing Philosophy Historically. Cambridge: CUP, 2009. Philosophy of history has been undergoing a revival in recent years after languishing too long at the margins of the discipline. Its themes include historical explanation, the reality of the past, history as a science -- in short, issues attending explanations of what now remains and what happened previously. How the reconstruction of a history influences an understanding of the present, and implicitly how one's understanding of the present shapes one's reconstruction of the past, emerge as the central themes of Robert Piercey's account of what he terms "doing philosophy historically". As he states at the outset, "the aim of this book, then, is to understand the nature of the activity that we call doing philosophy historically and to describe this activity's distinguishing features" (2). That this represents a distinctive philosophical approach Piercey has no doubts: "It [doing philosophy historically] has a distinctive object . . . It also employs a distinctive method and has a different set of goals" (ibid.). The burden the book thus assumes consists of making good on these three claims. Piercey undertakes this task by developing an initial outline of what he takes doing philosophy historically to be (Chapters 1-3), and then filling in the outline with three case studies that he claims exemplify the theory in practice. Thus, Chapter 4 examines what he terms the "critical approach" of Alasdair MacIntyre, Chapter 5 details the "diagnostic approach" attributed to Martin Heidegger, and Chapter 6 offers what Piercey terms Paul Ricoeur's "synthetic approach". If successful, Piercey could be credited with identifying and characterizing a genre of philosophical inquiry that has grown and prospered in the last century. Indeed, this genre has emerged, it would seem, without much notice being taken or (and especially) any appreciation being given (see 3-5). Piercey portrays doing philosophy historically as a meta-philosophical endeavor. He writes, "But its goal -- or at any rate, its hope -- is to broaden our conception of what philosophy is" (8). What exactly does Piercey imagine has passed under the philosophical radar? For certainly at least two of Piercey's own examples -- Rorty and Heidegger -- hardly make it a secret that "overcoming the tradition" in philosophy lies on their agendas. What links the philosophers whom Piercey discusses involves not their philosophic aspirations, but their use of the history of philosophy in furthering their metaphilosophical project. Each constructs a history of the discipline to further his case. In this regard, to do philosophy historically is to construct what Piercey terms a "philosophical picture". Every picture tells a story, albeit a different story, about the world seen philosophically. The first three chapters explore the nature of philosophical pictures as Piercey conceives them. . . . Read the whole review here: http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=17947.