Author Description

During the years covered in this edition, Wilfrid Sellars gave lectures at Notre Dame for the Notre Dame philosophy club from which many subsequent papers were drawn. In addition to extensive Q&A for each lecture, the oral presentation captures a certain spontaneous informality which is absent from Sellars' printed works on the same topic. Sellars' writings are notoriously difficult and obscure but as he puts voice to his words, his philosophical vision comes to life in a way that his published works do not. David Landy's careful reconstruction of Sellars' candid responses to questions as well as the questions themselves adds a dimension of dramatic dialogue that cannot be found elsewhere. His insight into his own thinking about his system occasionally leaves his philosophically sophisticated audience dumbfounded while it gives us the sense that we are breaking the fourth wall and really getting to know the person behind the system.