Steven Cahn (one of the editors of the publication that includes David Foster Wallace's philosophy thesis, Fate, Time, and Language: An Essay on Free Will) has written a letter to the New York Times Sunday book review challenging the part of Tom McCarthy's review of The Pale King that address Wallace's philosophy thesis. Cahn writes:
Contrary to McCarthy’s claim, Columbia University Press did not publish Wallace’s thesis as a “kind of tie-in” to “The Pale King.” The publication is justified not by Wallace’s later literary accomplishments but by the high quality of his philosophical thinking. The issues he explores were not created, as McCarthy suggests, in the world of “analytical philosophy,” but extend back to Aristotle. They do not concern, as McCarthy unsympathetically puts it, “bean-counting,” but whether statements about our future actions are already true or false, a controversy that has its theological counterpart in the age-old conundrum of whether God’s omniscience is compatible with free will. [Continue reading]
The single best review of the thesis is by Daniel Speak from Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. It addresses the importance of Wallace's work, its position in the world of philosophy, and some of the things that DFW could have improved.
| < Prev | Next > |
|---|
