It is always risky to make sweeping statements about the development of philosophy,
but if one were nevertheless asked to describe twentieth century philosophy in
broad strokes, one noteworthy feature might be the following: Whereas important
figures at the beginning of the century, figures such as Frege and Husserl, were very
explicit in their rejection of naturalism (both are known for their rejection of the
attempt to naturalize the laws of logic, that is, for their criticism of psychologism),
the situation has changed considerably. Today many philosophers – not the least
within analytical philosophy – would subscribe to some form of naturalism. In fact,
naturalism is seen by many as the default metaphysical position. If you don’t sub-
scribe to naturalism you must be subscribing to some form of Cartesian substance
dualism. Thus, whereas 20 or 30 years ago one might have been inclined to char-
acterize the development of twentieth century philosophy in terms of a linguistic
turn, a turn from a philosophy of subjectivity to a philosophy of language, it might
today be more apt to describe the development in terms of a turn from anti-naturalism
to naturalism.
What are the implications of this turn? It has some rather decisive metaphilo-
sophical implications, that is, it has implications for the way we view the relation
between philosophy and positive science. According to some readings, a commit-
ment to naturalism simply amounts to taking one’s departure in what is natural
(rather than supernatural), but I think it is fair to say that the use of the term in the
current discourse mainly signals an orientation towards natural science. As Sellars
famously put it, “in the dimension of describing and explaining the world, science
is the measure of all things, of what is that it is and of what is not that it is not”
(Sellars 1963, 173). However, insofar as naturalists would consider the scientific
account of reality authoritative, a commitment to naturalism is bound to put pres-
sure on the idea that philosophy (including phenomenology) can make a distinct
and autonomous contribution to the study of reality.
Naturalized Phenomenology
Dan Zahavi
3
DOI 10.1007/978-90-481-2646-0_1, © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010
D. Zahavi
Department of Media, Cognition and Communication & Center for Subjectivity Research,
University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark
S. Gallagher and D. Schmicking (eds.), Handbook of Phenomenology and Cognitive Science,