The "non-philosophization" here does not mean that philosophers are engaged in work unrelated to philosophy, but as Rorty said, philosophers are "writing philosophy in a non-philosophical way" and "looking at philosophy from the outside". Specifically, philosophers' working style is no longer traditional academic research, but more open and inclusive, and they are more willing to marry other humanities or social sciences and discuss some issues of interest to all parties. However, such problems are often not raised by philosophers, but by writers, jurists, political scientists or sociologists. Their working style has changed from personal meditation to open round-table meetings, and people put forward opinions or suggestions on issues of common concern from different angles. Moreover, the purpose of discussion is not to establish a certain theoretical system or publicize a certain philosophical proposition, but only to exchange ideas and reach some knowledge.

At the same time, the language forms used by philosophers to express philosophical thoughts have also changed. On the one hand, analytical philosophers use a large number of logical symbols or formulas for their own analysis and argumentation, and some philosophers directly use natural science to express their views. For example, in Philosophy of Mind, analytical philosophers mainly use the research work of empirical psychology to illustrate the important role of the stimulation of empirical materials in psychological activities. These philosophical analyses are full of empirical descriptions of psychological activities. In a positive sense, philosophers pay more and more attention to the opinions of psychologists and neurophysiologists who study the human brain and human behavior, but from a philosophical point of view, this use of psychological materials leads to the philosophy of mind becoming more and more empirical psychology and behavioral science aimed at studying human behavior. On the other hand, when discussing problems, historians of philosophy and other philosophers gradually use some conceptual terms in literary criticism theory, cultural anthropology and political theory, or directly use the views of some literary theorists to explain their views. For example, postmodernism, which is mainly prevalent in literary criticism theory, is introduced into philosophy, which makes philosophers take the thoughts of Derrida, J-F Lyotard, G. Drezet, E. Levinas and others as the main research objects, so when discussing their thoughts, there are a lot of vague concepts. Because of Rorty's work, postmodern philosophy has become an important ideological trend in the United States. Even the thoughts of J Baudrillard, F Jameson and d·r· Griffin have been discussed in philosophical journals, not to mention Foucault and MacIntyre (A). The core idea of this postmodern philosophy is to dispel the so-called basicism, logic centralism and dichotomy between subjective and objective, psychology and physics, and value and fact in traditional philosophy.

According to the statistical data in 1998 Index of American Philosophers, the number of papers on famous philosophers published in American philosophy journals in that year was far more than that of Russell and Strawson, with 55 papers and 123 papers respectively, while there were only 36 papers on Russell and 28 papers on Strawson. Similarly, among the 23 papers published in International Philosophical Quarterly 1999, 4 discuss postmodernism, 3 discuss religious philosophy, 3 discuss the history of philosophy, 2 discuss ethics, 2 discuss technical philosophy, 2 discuss James, 2 discuss oriental philosophy, and others discuss mathematical philosophy, aesthetics, Wittgenstein philosophy and so on. It can be clearly seen from the distribution of these articles that even the core periodical of American philosophy, such as International Philosophy Quarterly, puts the research on postmodernism and other philosophical trends that are regarded as an alternative in the traditional philosophical classification in a more important position, and the discussion mode of these articles directly reflects the tendency of American philosophers to write philosophy instead of writing philosophy.

The non-philosophical tendency of contemporary American philosophy is mainly reflected in: the problems discussed by philosophers are no longer limited to the scope provided by traditional philosophical metaphysics, but expand their research horizons beyond philosophy, especially paying attention to practical problems and public affairs, trying to explain the problems raised in the real world from the philosopher's point of view. For example, the Journal of the American Philosophical Society devoted a whole issue (No.2 in June) from No.65438 to No.0999 to discussing the globalization of the world economy. This practice is still rare in philosophical journals. Similarly, Philosophy Forum Quarterly published by new york State University, Philosophy Quarterly published by Columbia University and American Philosophy Quarterly published by Blackwell Publishing Company all published a large number of articles on postmodernism, business ethics, political philosophy, psychology, feminist philosophy, economy and culture in 1999. Because American philosophy magazines are mostly quarterly, there are only four issues a year, so they are very strict and cautious about the topic selection of articles. Therefore, the basic situation of contemporary American philosophy research can be seen from the titles of papers published in these magazines.

An in-depth analysis of the causes of this situation is closely related to the changes in the philosophical views of contemporary American philosophers, that is to say, American philosophers at the end of the century have a completely different understanding of what "philosophy" is. The article Quine, Derrida and Philosophical Problems published by David Golumbia of new york State University in September, 1999, the third issue of Philosophical Forum Quarterly, 65438+/KLOC-0, fully reflects the differences among philosophers in their philosophical views. The author thinks that Quine is the representative of maintaining the analytical tradition, and Derrida's thought is the representative of post-modern philosophy. According to Quine's orthodox view, "philosophy" in scientific spirit should be the pursuit of truth, so clarity and strictness should be the basic requirements of philosophical work; In Derrida's view, not only terms such as philosophy, science and truth are questionable, but also words such as spirit or pursuit, because they are often considered to be closely related to religious theology, and this blood relationship between philosophy and theology is one of the important reasons why philosophy or traditional philosophy should be abandoned. It is precisely because of the difference in philosophy that Quine thought Derrida was not a philosopher at all, so he signed with other 18 world philosophers in the famous "Cambridge Incident" to oppose the awarding of Derrida an honorary degree by Cambridge University. An important reason for the opposition is that Derrida's works "do not meet the recognized clear and strict standards at all." However, Derrida also pointed out that the so-called "clear and strict standard" is only a special form of proposition when refuting Quine and others' accusations. It is obviously a slander to regard his deconstruction as nonsense without argument, because the key to argument lies in discussion and questioning.

Interestingly, in the "Cambridge Incident", Derrida finally got an honorary degree from Cambridge University. Similarly, in the ideological debate with Quine and others, his thoughts always seem to have the upper hand: his followers use various opportunities to defend him and prove in various ways that he should be regarded as a philosopher, especially to interpret Derrida in an ethical way, hoping to use his thoughts as a life guide to guide philosophers' work. For example, Simon Cricelli, Benington, caputo, Saris and Cornell; In addition, his opponent's attitude has changed in recent years. They no longer oppose Derrida's thought from a philosophical point of view, but take deconstruction as a philosophical activity with a tolerant attitude, but at the same time hope to distinguish this activity from the use of philosophical language and the clarification of meaning. Colombia even thinks in the article that Derrida's open attitude towards philosophical issues is similar to Quine's point of view to some extent, because they all admit that our language and reference are not enough to be determined by evidence; Derrida believes that the historicity, constructiveness and linguistics of philosophical practice are not enough to be determined by observation, while Quine directly denies this possibility in advance. The author draws the conclusion that Quine's philosophy is constructed to contain the deconstruction energy released by his philosophy; His philosophical system shows that it has systematically mastered the deconstruction actually released by his philosophy of language. Therefore, Quine's work fully embodies the deconstruction activities in Derrida's philosophy. "

It should be said that an important reason for the non-philosophical tendency of contemporary American philosophy is that philosophers re-recognize the essence of philosophy. If philosophy is no longer regarded as a kind of "king of science" and has a superior position beyond other humanities and social sciences, is no longer a pure speculation used to build a theoretical system, and is no longer a science that pursues the accuracy and rigor of language meaning, then this philosophy will be more open and easier to accommodate all activities that people use to think about language or discuss problems. This philosophy may not be a "proposition" with theoretical form, or even an idea of putting forward a certain concept. It only criticizes the existing theories, or gives new explanations or reading methods to philosophers' works. The so-called "openness of philosophy" means that there are no restrictive conditions for understanding the essence of philosophy, and you can question everything that is regarded as philosophy and ask questions from different angles or positions; Similarly, the purpose of this philosophical opening is not to establish a new philosophical theory, because according to this open spirit, such a theory does not exist.

From a historical perspective, it is no accident that contemporary American philosophers rethink the essence of philosophy, which reflects a psychological complex at the end of the century. 1At the end of the 9th century and the beginning of the 20th century, philosophers also questioned what philosophy was. Brentano, a German philosopher, pointed out that "there is no universally accepted theorem; The comprehensive revolution that philosophy has experienced one after another; From the experimental point of view, it is impossible to achieve its chosen goal; And the impossibility of practical application ",which makes philosophy in most people's minds just similar to astrology or alchemy, but not a science. Because Hegel's philosophy has occupied the dominant position of philosophy for a long time, coupled with the rise of naturalism based on psychology, philosophy has become more and more incredible to ordinary people, and philosophers have new doubts about the nature of philosophy.

With the great development of natural science in the19th century, especially the discovery of the three laws, philosophers have two completely different attitudes towards the future of philosophy in the new century: optimism and pessimism. In the eyes of some philosophers, the development of natural science provides the most effective mode for the transformation of philosophy, so only by following the mode of natural science can philosophy finally become science. The result of this optimistic attitude is the analytical philosophy we see now and the resulting philosophy of science and language. On the other hand, some philosophers believe that philosophy and natural science should be strictly distinguished because they are completely different in research objects, purposes and methods. However, once this distinction is made, the future of philosophy is not as optimistic as the development of science, because philosophy has lost its foundation of existence. As Eier pointed out, "philosophy lacks the capital of self-reliance". However, the history of the evolution of western philosophy in the 20th century shows us that philosophers finally chose to make philosophy scientific, that is, to transform philosophy with scientific methods based on science. However, this change in philosophy has caused the loss of philosophy itself. The non-philosophical tendency in American philosophy at the end of the 20th century is the result of this philosophical transformation.

At the same time, the non-philosophical tendency of contemporary American philosophy is directly related to analytical philosophy's overemphasis on logical argumentation, the rigor and accuracy of philosophical propositions and the close relationship between philosophy and science. American philosophy in the 20th century was dominated by analytical philosophy, which combined logic with experience and tried to clarify and solve all philosophical problems with logical analysis, which really brought new vitality to American pragmatism. The combination of logical positivism and pragmatism from Europe has produced logical pragmatism with American characteristics. However, because the emergence and development of analytical philosophy are closely related to the development of logic, mathematics and linguistics, with the development of these disciplines, analytical philosophy gradually tends to pay too much attention to analytical skills and stick to specific logical arguments. For example, the study of philosophical logic has gone deep into the complete formal modal theory, and the analysis of meaning has also entered the study of different usages of different language expressions. This meticulous analysis and research is of great significance to analytical philosophy, but it has not played a positive role in the development of the whole philosophy. On the contrary, philosophers worry that philosophy has lost its particularity. In fact, the non-philosophical tendency in contemporary American philosophy is, to some extent, a rebellion against the increasingly technical analytical philosophy. As a result of this rebellion, a new pragmatism has emerged.