The Ontic Return

Have I mentioned this book before? It will be coming out in late summer, I believe. Palgrave is the publisher.

The Ontic Return, edited by James Ford

It’s more or less the analytic philosophy version of The Speculative Turn, which will be published just slightly earlier. I can’t definitively say which analytic philosophers are included in the book, because people were still adding and dropping back at the stage when I was well-informed as to what was going on. But the last time I saw the list, it included the likes of D.M. Armstrong and Timothy Williamson.

Only two continental philosophers made the cut: Manuel DeLanda, and doctorzamalek.

DeLanda definitely writes in a style more compatible with analytic philosophy than most in our vicinity.

Not sure what to say about myself in this respect, though one of the weirdest and most strangely flattering pieces of feedback I’ve ever received was when one of the Tool-Being referees for a publisher (a pre-Open Court potential publisher) said that I was obviously an analytic philosopher who had adapted to the tasks of continental philosophy.

After that I spent a couple of years wondering why I would look like an analytic philosopher to anyone, given that almost none of my references are to analytics. Nor would I even consider myself competent to teach a good upper-level undergraduate class in analytic philosophy. Then, one morning in Messkirch (Heidegger’s hometown) I was criticized over breakfast as an “analytic philosopher” by someone in the thick of continental circles in the USA. So there must be something to it, but I still don’t quite get it. Is the mere fact of trying to make arguments rather than giving explications de texte enough to qualify one as an analytic philosopher?