Essential Society (PDF)

There are greatly divergent modes of thinking and widely differing problems subsumed as belonging to the domain of eontemporary philosophy. Some philosophers may weil find that they have little more in eommon with their coileagues than their interest in exposing a problem on the level of thought, systematically, and with the optimum regard for the validity of their argumentation. The traditional confliet between philosophie schools lies in the solution different thinkers propose to a problem. In our day, however, there is a deeper schism between the exponents of different sehools than a difference in the problem's solution. The conflict involves already the formulation of the problem. There are at least two general modes of pursuing philosophical investigation where no conflict in the solution of problems not beeause there would be agreement among the thinkers, is possible, but because the problems attacked by the thought of one school are not taken into consideration by the adherents of the other. In general, it may be said without fear of serious opposition that the kind of problems dealt with by neo-positivists and positivistic analysts are seldom if ever closely examined by ontologists, metaphysicians, existentialists and certain other schools of the speculative branch of philosophy, while these philosophers deal with problems which are generally regarded to be outside the scope of philosophie inquiry by positivists and analysts.