Why Context Matters

<p>Why were so many luminaries of European philosophy — such as Bergson, Heidegger, Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, and Sartre, even Marx and Freud — kept out of the philosophy curriculum of Anglo-American universities for most of the 20th century? Why were the schools of philosophy they founded derided as <em>continental philosophy</em> and deemed more suitable for the departments of literature and psychology than philosophy? This book argues that the institutionally sanctioned contrast between allegedly <em>legitimate</em> philosophy and its spurious <em>continental</em> counterpart became entrenched thanks to two intertwined metaphysical presuppositions at the heart of positivism. The first is the principle that higher-level complex systems are epiphenomenal. The second is that all causes are mechanical.</p><p>In contrast to their continental European counterparts, Anglo-American metaphysicians and philosophers of science repeatedly resisted the idea that higher level phenomena might be, ontologically-speaking, <em>relational</em>. This book proposes that, had the alternative path that emphasizes context-dependence been selected, a scientifically respectable <em>relational ontology</em> might have come to inform Anglo-American metaphysics and epistemology as well as the actual practice of science — without falling prey to non-natural <em>deus ex machina</em> proposals.</p><p>Four female British philosophers at Oxford during WWII attempted to do exactly that. Anscombe, Foot, Midgley, and Murdoch raised serious objections to Oxbridge's Newton-inspired positivism as early as the 1940s. The four good friends advocated for a context-dependent worldview. This book situates the four women philosophers’ valiant challenge to the entrenched paradigm as a case study of exactly why and how context matters.</p>