Setting Sail: The Development and Reception of Quine’s Naturalism

Contemporary analytic philosophy is dominated by meta-philosophical naturalism, the view that philosophy ought to be continuous with science. This naturalistic turn is for a significant part due to the work of W. V. Quine. Yet, the development and the reception of Quine’s naturalism have never been systematically studied. In this paper, I examine Quine’s evolving naturalism as well as the reception of his views. Scrutinizing a large set of unpublished notes, correspondence, drafts, papers, and lectures as well as published responses to Quine’s work, I show how both internal tensions and external criticisms forced him to continuously develop, rebrand, and refine his meta-philosophy before he eventually settled on the position that would spark the naturalistic turn in analytic philosophy.