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A Finite Task?

An end presupposes a task that can be finished. Whether philosophy has one is a question of its own in metaphilosophy, which asks both “Is philosophy historical in some special or deep way?” and “Is philosophy, in some sense, over – or should it be?” (IEP).

• One philosophy, developing. Hegel states the difficulty: philosophy “aims at understanding what is unchangeable, eternal”, yet it has a history. His answer is that the succession of philosophies is the development of one philosophy, the latest “the most developed, richest and deepest” (Lectures on the History of Philosophy, tr. Haldane).
• Questions handed over, and questions kept. Russell (1912) has philosophy hand over to the sciences whatever becomes answerable (see Philosophy and the special sciences), while some questions stay open, studied “for the sake of the questions themselves”.
• No eternal problems. Collingwood (1940): “there are no ‘eternal’ or ‘crucial’ or ‘central’ problems in metaphysics”, and those who believe in them “are bad historians”.
• Got over, not solved. Dewey (1909), after Darwin: old questions are not answered but abandoned, “We do not solve them: we get over them.”
• Rationality with a history. MacIntyre (1988): rationality “is a concept with a history”, and there are “rationalities rather than rationality”, traditions that progress or fail by their own lights.
• No criterion outside vocabularies. Rorty (1989): “there is nothing beyond vocabularies which serves as a criterion of choice between them”.