Peter Olen, Wilfrid Sellars and the Foundations of Normativity

Abstract

In many ways, the figure of Wilfrid Sellars personifies the second half of xxth century American philosophy. He lied at the crossroad of three powerful traditions: German rationalistic phenomenology, as Marvin Farber’s scholar; logical empiricism, as a philosopher grown up in the golden age of neo-positivism; and classical pragmatism, as an intellectual deeply inspired by the need of keeping a synoptic vision and finding practical and behavioral solutions for conceptual oppositions. In his la...