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The Missouri Review

Nonfiction | June 01, 1984

Coming to an Understanding of Understanding

Reed Way Dasenbrock

The full text of this essay is not currently available online.

A few years ago philosophy was widely perceived (by non philosophers, of course) as having become an irredeemably irrelevant intellectual enterprise.  No longer a discipline with any semblance of unity, philosophy was conceived of quite differently in English speaking countries and on the continent.  The existence of this split led to the circulation of rather unflattering pictures of each philosophical traditon: on the one hand, Anglo-American philosophy was caricatured as a minute inquiry into grammatical subtleties that no one without such an analytical training can see the point of; on the other hand, Continental philosophy was caricatured as an ineffable and incomprehensilbe search to say what cannot be said. The analytical traditon produced trivial clarity; the Continental tradition produced profound nonsense.

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SEE THE ISSUE

7.3 Cover

ISSUE

spring 1984

7.3 (Spring 1984)

Featuring work by Russell Banks, Bruce Beasley, George Bogin, Christopher Buckley, Dino Campana, Rene Char, Fred Chappell, Reed Way Dasenbrock, Glover Davis, Robb Forman Dew, Katherine Estill, Kathy Fagan, Carol Frost, Margo Glantz, Daniel Halpern, Laura Hendrie, Katherine Kane, Hank Lazer, Michael Milburn, Ricardo Pau-Llosa, Omar Pound, Pattiann Rogers, Philippe Soupault… as well as an interview with Charles Simic and a special feature on Tennessee Williams.

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