Grad Seminar Research Questions on Method

Questions and Hypotheses about Method in Philosophy

1. Does philosophy have "its own" methods?
2. What, if anything, is distinctive about the problem of method in philosophy in comparison to other fields?
3. Does method define philosophy? If not, what does?
4. What is the difference between using a method from an historical tradition and working from that tradition?
5. What is the difference between naturalism or phenomenology as a movement and as a set of methods?
6. How would you approach a taxonomy of method in philosophy?
7. Is philosophy a kind of literature within culture, similar to other forms of cultural production, or does have a different relation to culture than other disciplines?
8. Do different philosophical methods produce philosophical writing with different temporal and geographic validity? Do some methods tell us something about the immediate conditions of the culture, even if they aspire to universality. Do some methods tells us something universal and objective?
9. Hypothesis: Philosophy is a much more of a national literature than we think it is. When we admire Gadamer are we admiring something from German philosophical culture. Appreciating Gadamer as philosophical literature is largely about understanding his meaning the context of a tradition.
10. Postulate?: Your method includes both the tools and traditions you tend to work from, as well as meta-beliefs about the status of those tools.
11. Are there interpretive methods that tell us about realities that no other method or approach can tell us about?
12. When, if ever, does the practice of a method require you to return to the original work that expresses it?
13. Does philosophy make progress?