The primacy of the practical in the history of philosophy

Philosophy is something that we do: it is a way of dealing with the questions and concerns that arise as we live our lives. Because of this, philosophy inevitably reflects our perspectives ; these perspectives make philosophy possible---even as they constrain what philosophy can say. This is the tension at the heart of philosophy; the point of this dissertation is less to resolve this tension than to explore it---specifically, by recovering insights from Plato, Immanuel Kant, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Alasdair MacIntyre.;First, this dissertation explores the insight that our perspectives constrain what philosophy can say. For we are situated within the world that our philosophical theories describe---and so those theories must describe a world in which, one way or another, we arrive at justified theories. Our theories must presuppose this regardless of how the world is---lest our practice of philosophy undermine itself. Contemporary philosophers often forget to reflect on their own practice in this way---and so forget that philosophy is a practice; because of this, they fall into performative contradiction.;Second, this dissertation explores the insight that our perspectives make philosophy possible. For philosophy is a practice---and, because practices are irreducibly normative, no practice occurs outside of some linguistic perspective or other. Now, these linguistic perspectives sometimes contradict one another---but, because our linguistic perspectives inevitably constrain our conclusions, there is no neutral way to decide among them. Nonetheless, the decision of one rather than another is sometimes justified..;Third, this dissertation refutes an objection to its foundation. Many contemporary philosophers hold that philosophy should not reflect any perspective at all---and certainly should not address the questions and concerns that arise as we live our lives. Even if philosophy could avoid reflecting our perspectives, however, it should not do so: it is because contemporary philosophy does not address the questions and concerns that arise as we live our lives that it so often seems irrelevant to our students---and to our society. If philosophy is to survive the crisis in the humanities, it must recover this relevance; my dissertation strives to do precisely this.