Episode 64: James Conant and Jay Elliott discuss the analytic tradition
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What is the Norton Anthology of the Analytic Tradition and how did the project begin?
Hey, Matt Teichman here from Elucidations. Before we get going today, I just thought I'd ask if you're a fan of the show to maybe go to our iTunes page and leave a rating and a review, and that way more people can discover it. All right, thanks.
Hello and welcome to Elucidations, a philosophy podcast recorded at the University of Chicago. I'm Matt Teichman. And I'm Daniel Smith. With us today are James Conant, Chester D. Tripp Professor of Humanities, Philosophy, and Professor in the College at the University of Chicago, and Jay Elliott, Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Classical Studies at Bard College. And they are here to talk about the analytic tradition. James Conant and Jay Elliott, welcome. Thank you. Thank you. So the two of you are editing a volume entitled The Northern Anthology of Western Philosophy. It's volume five and subtitled The Analytic Tradition. Could you tell us a little bit about where this project came from, how you became involved with doing it?
So I think it was 1995, my God, let's see, 19 years ago now, Richard Schacht, who's the series editor for the whole Norton Anthology of Western Philosophy, asked me if I would be willing to edit this volume. I'd been asked to do some other volumes before and since and never been interested in doing anything like that. But when I was a high school student and a college student, I did have a copy of the Norton Anthology of Western Literature, as it was called then, I think, yes, because it had Ibsen and people in translation as well. That book sort of accompanied me through my years as a student and was for me sort of the repository of all things that at some point in my life I felt I should have read.
And anybody who was in it I knew was a great name and someone I should get around to reading someday and finally did. And at this point my copy of that book looks like it's been through the wars. It's fell into a couple of bathtubs, but it's also something that has a great deal of sentimental significance. The idea of having a Norton anthology devoted completely to the analytic tradition was exciting to me in a different sort of way. It was the idea that here was the chance to have a book that's almost 5,000 manuscript pages long, over 1,200 pages in the volume of Bible paper, small print, double columns, where just in a single doorstop of a volume, which is not too expensive and which you can buy for paperback and a professor can order for a single course, you could really sort of stake out an overview of this whole tradition of philosophy that I care about.
I don't know of anything else like that for the analytic tradition. Most volumes that try to say what the analytic tradition is in a volume do it through a few excerpts, and it's an extremely partial story, and usually one that's informed by a very particular ideological slant. And this seemed like an opportunity to really think about the tradition and create a volume that people could use for their entire time as students and beyond and keep going back to. And so that was exciting to me in a different kind of a way. At a certain point, however, I realized that this job was just much too big for one person. I kind of got through the part of getting advice and selecting things and figuring out what should go into it, but then
The actual editing of the volume, writing the introductions to the parts and the volume as a whole, and the head notes and the bibliographical essays, and figuring out just what to select and how to excerpt them, and write particular explanatory notes for difficult terms or issues in the individual selections. The actual job of producing the volume, I realized, was enormous, and I'd gotten myself into a much larger project. then I appreciate it. I needed help with this. I also needed somebody, I realized at a certain point, who had forms of expertise where my competence was limited, especially in the ethical and moral and political and legal aspects of the tradition of analytic thought. And I had a wonderful graduate student at Chicago named Jay Elliott, and I asked him if he'd do this volume with me.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the Norton Anthology of the Analytic Tradition and how did the project begin?
0:00–6:14
2
How did James Conant become involved and why did he need a co‑editor?
6:14–13:47
3
What challenges did the editors face when selecting texts and writing introductions?
13:47–20:41
4
How did the editors decide between a “God’s‑eye” view and a more pluralistic representation of the tradition?
20:41–28:12
5
Why do the editors emphasize the historical context and the role of ethics, politics, and law in analytic philosophy?
28:12–36:10
6
What arguments exist about whether a unified analytic tradition still exists today?
36:10–43:00
7
How do contemporary debates about the future of analytic philosophy shape the anthology’s final sections?
43:00–49:19
8
What conclusions do the editors draw about the vitality and ongoing evolution of the analytic tradition?
49:19–51:55
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