Words and Worlds

What is Philosophy? Reason, Expression, and the Philosophic Enterprise

What is the task of philosophical investigation? Robert Brandom’s talk, part of our series Words and Worlds, investigates.

In this talk I try to answer the question in my title. What is the task of philosophical investigation? How is it different from the inquiries pursued in the natural sciences, the social sciences, and other humanistic disciplines? Part of the Royal Institute of Philosophy’s 2022-3 London lecture series Words and Worlds: New Directions in the Philosophy of Language.

Please note this talk will be live-streamed to an in-person audience.

  • About the speaker

    Robert Brandom is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the British Academy. His books on the philosophy of language include Making It Explicit (Harvard, 1994) and Between Saying and Doing (Oxford, 2008). His books on German Idealism include A Spirit of Trust (Harvard, 2019), and Pragmatism and Idealism (Oxford, 2022).