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The Library of Living Philosophers

Willard V. Quine

by Rob Stainton

Willard van Orman Quine (1908-) is arguably the single most influential American philosopher of the 20th Century. He pursued his teaching career at Harvard University, after studies with Rudolf Carnap and Alfred North Whitehead. His (mostly salutary) influence has been both direct – having authored more than 20 crisply-written books about, among other things, logic, epistemology, ontology and philosophy of language – and indirect, via students such as Donald Davidson, Daniel Dennett and Burton Dreben.

Quine is emphatically not a ‘one note’ philosopher. He has multiple, and mutually reinforcing, philosophical commitments that form a complex whole.

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