In this concise text, Roy Bhaskar sets out to diagnose, explain and resolve the "e;problems of philosophy"e;. Plato Etc. reviews all the main areas of the subject: the theory of knowledge and philosophy of science; the philosophy of logic and language; the philosophies of space, time and causality; the philosophy of the social and life sciences and of dialectic; ethics, politics and aesthetics; and the history and sociology of philosophy.Among the issues discussed are the problems of induction and universals, the question of relativism, Heidegger's "e;scandal of philosophy"e; (the search for a proof of the reality of the external world), the nature of moral truth and the conundrum of free will and determinism. The last two chapters consist of a synoptic account of the development of Western philosophy from the pre-Socratics to poststructuralism.Plato Etc. seeks to revindicate the philosophical project, and to demonstrate that the author's "e;dialectical critical realism"e; has the categorical power to remedy the problem fields of philosophy. The book serves both as a critical introduction to philosophy and as an invaluable resource for the scholar.
