Nicholas Rescher, The Strife of Systems: An Essay on the Grounds and Implications of Philosophical Diversity (University of Pittsburg Press, 1985), pp. 205-206:
The history of philosophy is akin to an intellectual arms race where all sides escalate the technical bases for their positions. As realists sophisticate their side of the argument, idealists sophisticate their counterarguments; as materialists become more subtle, so do phenomenalists, and so on. At the level of basics, the same old positions continue to contest the field -- albeit that ever more powerful weapons are used to defend increasingly sophisticated positions.
The context is an argument for the thesis that philosophy is susceptible of technical but not doctrinal progress. The nature of philosophy precludes consensus. Resolution of "the substantive issues in such as way as to secure general approbation and assent" (206) is out of the question. Such consensus is impossible and therefore not even an ideal.
Strife of Systems is essential reading for anyone interested in metaphilosophy.
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