Freud and the Philosophers

“Virtually all those who are not ignorant of Freud or totally skeptical of his findings believe that he altered, radically altered, our conception of the mind. He effected a change of what we think we are like, and it was a big change. Astonishingly enough, it is philosophers who have been of all people slowest to recognize this fact. They have been slowest to recognize that this fact has anything to do with them.”—Richard Wollheim, The Mind and Its Depths (1993): 91.

In addition to Wollheim himself (regrettably, no longer with us), among those I would count as exceptions to this generalization include Sebastian Gardner, the late David Sachs, Donald Levy, John Cottingham, Marcia Cavell,* the late Ilham Dilman, Jonathan Lear, Ernest Wallwork, John Deigh, and Jim Hopkins. I haven’t read much beyond his first book (only a few articles in edited volumes), but I was informed that Michael Stocker should be in this list as well and I agree.

* I'm not sure where Professor Cavell is currently teaching, it may be at U.C. Berkeley.