1239. Whitehead appears to hold . . .

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Whitehead appears to hold that the reason why philosophy exists is the existence of subtle perplexities arising from the common obviousness of speech (AI: 285; I say he appears to hold this, because, having spoken of philosophy as "a difficult subject," he speaks in the immediately succeeding sentence, not of "the subject," but of "the topic," even though the most plausible way of construing the second phrase is as referring to the same thing referred to by the first). 

"Thus the very purpose of philosophy is to delve below the apparent clarity of common speech"—which could serve as well as any other statement as an appropriate definition of philosophy in its analytic function, indeed, as "transcendental deduction," or "presuppositional analysis," which is quite precisely a matter of "delving below" to analyze and explicate the "deep meaning" of "the current expressions of human experience" (286; cf. 287: "the very purpose of their [sc. philosophers'] science" is "to surmount the delusive clarities of detached expressions").

20 October 2000