Synopsis

Abstract

CRATES: Lato, in the nearly two and a half millennia since you began to write down the philosophical thoughts and ideas that you and I evolved together, we have witnessed great transformations in our subject. But throughout much of this period, and until very recently, we have never felt able to conclude that what we established as fundamental in the study of philosophy—notwithstanding the contributions of our predecessors— had been superseded or that a genuinely new chapter had been opened. Indeed, it was with some satisfaction that we heard the words of a philosopher of the early twentieth century proclaim that the whole of philosophy to date had been merely ‘a series of footnotes’ to our own work.¹