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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 May 2018
What can examining the introductions to books in philosophy tell us about those books, and about that discipline? This article begins by differentiating ‘insider’ and ‘outsider’ perspectives on the discipline of philosophy, questioning the most likely understanding of this division as one between professional and ‘layman’, and emphasizing instead a basic distinction between ‘affirmative’ and ‘non-affirmative’. The introduction, I suggest, is productively symptomatic of the character of contemporary philosophy. Like an owl pellet, it can tell us a lot about the kind of creature that philosophy is and the environment it inhabits.
1 Note that conclusions are in many respects just backwards introductions: a summary of the contents of the book, followed by statements of the modesty of the contribution made, the enormity of the scope for further work.
2 The same norm manifests itself in the teaching of philosophy students, where there is a great emphasis on getting them to ‘signpost’ their essays. This is not merely a training exercise, stabilizer wheels that will later be discarded, but part-and-parcel of the demand that students be ‘mini-academics’ (the term used in an induction session to my then-university's master's programme, to convey the ideal to which graduate students were meant to aspire).
3 This article is an expanded version of the introduction to my 2015 book, The Political is Political: Conformity and the Illusion of Dissent in Contemporary Political Philosophy (Rowman & Littlefield International)Google Scholar.