Uncorrected Papers: Diverse Philosophical Dissents

These incisive, witty, and completely accessible essays on a wide range of topics by historian of philosophy Wallace Matson admirably demonstrate that philosophy can still be based on careful reasoning and presented with clarity of expression. Against fashionable contemporary views, Matson asserts that philosophy is the most important subject in the college curriculum, because it is the investigation into what rationality is. Getting the answer wrong to the question What does it mean to be reasonable? is the most catastrophic of errors. The motivation for most of the essays in this collection is his perception that this error is being widely committed and that received opinion on many topics is dead wrong. Accordingly, he takes issue with the following beliefs: bodily resurrection is possible; zombies are logically possible (as David Chalmers claims); John Rawls wrote a book on justice; religion is an aid to morality; Zeno and Parmenides tried to prove that nothing really moves; the actual world is only one out of an infinity of possible worlds; and much more. Also included are two essays on Matson’s distinctions between high and low beliefs, four essays on Spinoza, and, in conclusion, ‘The Study of Philosophy as a Prophylactic against Bullshit’.