Précis of Lewin, M. 2023. Metaphilosophie als einheitliche Disziplin, Berlin: Springer/Metzler. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-66704-0.

The frequent use of the term ‘metaphilosophy’ and the corresponding research in the 1960s may lead to the conclusion that there has been a development of a new discipline, a formation of a new kind of philosophical discourse. Such questions as, “What is philosophy?”, “What kind of questions does philosophy ask?”, “Which methods does it adopt to answer them?” and “Is there progress in philosophy?” are put at the center of attention. They constitute a separate research field. Just as the laws of logic, nature and natural sciences, epistemology, morals, freedom and law, philosophy is one of its own normal topics. Several sources of the need for metaphilosophy can be named, such as the re-orientation in philosophy due to its diversity and possible dissent within itself, justification of philosophy and its relevance against the backdrop of the progress in sciences, or the re-evaluation of a research tradition, such as analytic philosophy or phenomenology. The overall goal of metaphilosophy could be understood as the development of theoretical means for a better understanding of philosophy and for a better philosophical practice.

The book aims at providing a current picture of metaphilosophy and its possible future design. The leading thesis is that statements about philosophy in the history of philosophy and in recent metaphilosophical debates are dependent on first-order philosophical commitments and backgrounds, which poses both a threat and a chance for metaphilosophy as a discipline. The book explores the problem of first-order philosophical preconceptions in metaphilosophy as well as established discourse structures and suggests a strategy for the further disciplinary development of metaphilosophy.

The first part discusses perspectivism as the underlying epistemology of the book. It offers a new account of perspectivism based on conceptual analysis of ‘perspective’ and corresponding interrelated concepts such as ‘context’, ‘relation’, ‘position’, ‘direction’, ‘picture’ and ‘horizon’. It is argued that they constitute a weak a priori conceptual matrix, into which each epistemic act of an epistemic agent is embedded. This matrix can be used to analyze each epistemic situation, including metaphilosophical positions, beliefs, and statements.

The second part is dedicated to analysis of implicitly metaphilosophical positions, i.e. examples of statements about philosophy in the history of philosophy. Using the perspectivist toolkit developed in the first part, it is shown that Camus’, Husserl’s and Carnap’s statements about philosophy do not correspond to the generality of the concept of philosophy, although they are valid contributions to metaphilosophical debates.

The third part discusses explicit metaphilosophical discourse formations that concern three levels: individual metaphilosophical questions (such as whether the concept of philosophical progress must be abandoned), systematic metaphilosophy (as in analytic or pragmatic-contextualist perspectives), and meta-metaphilosophy. Selected examples are used to show by means of perspectivism that recent contributions do not satisfy the generality of the concepts of philosophy and metaphilosophy.

From this, several conclusions for the understanding of metaphilosophy as discipline are drawn in the fourth and last part. Metaphilosophical positions are uncircumventably dependent on first-order philosophical commitments and background factors—there can be no neutral metaphilosophy. Nevertheless, a descriptive account of metaphilosophy acknowledges some disciplinary unity, i.e. the placement of metaphilosophy and established discourse structures despite preconceptions and dissent. This unity can be secured and expanded with recourse to meta-metaphilosophical normative ideals such as philosophy-oriented metaphilosophical practice, universality, inclusivity, and exchange between different philosophical traditions. These ideals offer prospects for a progressive further development of metaphilosophy, which includes effective discourse formations, problem-solving, and knowledge maximization.