The Unity of Content and Form in Philosophical Writing

Jon Stewart's impressive erudition illuminates the mosaic of philosophical writing's diverse forms and styles against the backdrop of the history of philosophy and its occasional cross-pollination with literary form. From Plato to Rorty, Lessing to Borges, Seneca to Sartre, The Unity of Content and Form in Philosophical Writing directs our attention to the dialectical relationship between the content of form and the form of content. The result is at once a harsh indictment of form and style in contemporary Anglo-American philosophy and a celebration of that tradition's rich potential. Like Soren Kierkegaard's pseudonym Vigilius Haufniensis, Stewart is a watchman: his book warns of the dangers of conformity and bears witness to the abundant and varied tools of written philosophical expression, the manifold of which may just be one of philosophy's greatest truths. -- J.D. Mininger, Associate Professor of Social and Political Theory at Vytautas Magnus University, Kaunas, Lithuania
Jon Stewart mobilizes the history of philosophy with its various modes of writing against external and internal limitations, caused by institutional conventions or presupposed concepts of science - pointing to and exemplifying impressively the relation between philosophy and literature, which does not affect each characteristics, but rather ensures philosophy's vitality. -- Dr. Markus Kleinert, Max Weber Center for Advanced Cultural and Social Studies, University of Erfurt, Germany