Filozofia jako diagnoza. Barry Stroud o naturze filozofii i znaczenia
Philosophy as a Diagnosis. On Barry Stroud’s Conception of Philosophy

Summary/Abstract: The main goal of this article is to outline Barry Stroud’s conception of philosophy.Philosophy, in his opinion, aims at understanding of various kinds of phenomenaand our attitude towards them, but this understanding doesn’t manifest in a set ofphilosophical theses. A philosopher should become aware of a peculiar character ofunderstanding which he wants to reach, and in consequence, admit that a metaphilosophicalreflection is integral part of philosophical investigations. An understandingof the nature of philosophical investigations is not possible without pointing to theirsources. Thus the task of a philosopher is to diagnose philosophical problems byshowing from which earlier questions and theories they have arisen. On the otherhand, philosophical reflection must be always confronted with the things which areaccepted by all of us, otherwise understanding caused by that reflection wouldn’trefer to phenomena belonging to our world. Stroud thinks that a description of one’sconception of philosophy requires looking at the manner in which that philosopherapproaches to a given problem. Acknowledging the rightness of his remark I considerhis approach to philosophy using as an example his treatment of the question “whatis meaning?”. I point out that Stroud looks into the source of the Wittgensteinian slogan “meaning of the expression is its use”. The main Stroud’s conclusion is thatif a description of a use of a certain expression is to explain the meaning of thatexpression, semantical terms have to appear in that description. This statementcould be abandoned, Stroud claims, only if we rejected the things which all of usacknowledge as obvious.

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