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 PHILOSOPHY IN A NEW KEY beginning draft(s):

Chapter 1: The New Key –An intellectual age is not defined by the answers given, but by the questions asked. Questions determine the range of possible answers, and the development of an intellectual age is synonymous with the exploration of various thinkers to flesh out that range of possible answers. The end of an intellectual age has certain recurring symptoms, e.g. the people dismiss philosophy and all theoretical knowledge as impractical because the thinking class seems incapable of answering the important questions in life and simply offer various ideologies. After the framework (i.e. the set of questions that define and are defined by the intellectual era) has been thoroughly explored, the framework necessarily changes. Langer uses the distinction between Socrates and the pre-Socratic philosophers as an illustration. Before Socrates, the question was what: "What is the world made of?" was the question that Democritus, Heraclitus and others pursued. Socrates shifted the question to why: Not what things are, but what their value is. Langer sees in the modern era the end of an intellectual age. In 1940, Logical Positivism was the dominant philosophy in the Anglo-American philosophical world...