title: Tales of the Mighty Dead: Historical Essays in the Metaphysics of Intentionality
author: Robert B. Brandom
description: Just as Kant managed to recast a good bit of the history of philosophy as a struggle between rationalism and empiricism (thus leading to his synthesis of the two), Brandom has recast a substantial portion of modern philosophy as a struggle over the consequences of inferentialist approaches. The way he shows that there is a coherent line to he traced from Leibniz to Spinoza to Kant to Hegel to Frege to Heidegger to Wittgenstein to Sellars is brilliant; it will quite naturally also he controversial (in all the best senses). This is one of those books that will force even the people who disagree most with him to have to take his position all the more seriously. If nothing else, this shows that the usual ways of drawing the (by now tired) "continental/analytic" distinctions are in serious need of rethinking. Brandom's is an original voice. Brandom's work, obviously analytical in orientation, also claims to take its inspirations from figures normally shunned in analytic circles. This makes him a key figure in the effort to "overcome" the dichotomy. (Terry Pinkard <i>Northwestern University</i>)
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  Table of Contents
  
  
  [Title Page](part0003.html)
  
  
  [Copyright Page](part0004.html)
  
  
  [Foreword](part0006.html)
  
  
  [Editor’s Preface](part0007.html)
  
  
    
  
  
  [PART ONE - Prologue](part0008.html)
  
  
  [Literature and Philosophy: A Conversation with Bryan Magee](part0009.html)
  
  
    
  
  
  [PART TWO - Nostalgia for the Particular, 1951-57](part0010.html)
  
  
  [Thinking and Language](part0011.html)
  
  
  [Nostalgia for the Particular](part0012.html)
  
  
  [Metaphysics and Ethics](part0013.html)
  
  
  [Vision and Choice in Morality](part0014.html)
  
  
    
  
  
  [PART THREE - Encountering Existentialism, 1950-59](part0015.html)
  
  
  [The Novelist as Metaphysician](part0016.html)
  
  
  [The Existentialist Hero](part0017.html)
  
  
  [Sartre’s The Emotions: Outline of a Theory](part0018.html)
  
  
  [De Beauvoir’s The Ethics of Ambiguity](part0019.html)
  
  
  [The Image of Mind](part0020.html)
  
  
  [The Existentialist Political Myth](part0021.html)
  
  
  [Hegel in Modern Dress](part0022.html)
  
  
  [Existentialist Bite](part0023.html)
  
  
    
  
  
  [PART FOUR - T