Actually I agree with your point that many analytical philosophers were progressive, and it would be more precise to claim that their image, rather than what they are, is .conservative A frther point is that the analytical philosophers genereally deny dialectics, which is a core element in Marxism (at least in Marx).
------- Original message----------------------- Message: 2 Date: Tue, 11 Aug 2009 23:01:34 -0400 From: Jim Farmelant <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [Marxism] A critique of G.A. Cohen To: [email protected] Message-ID: <[email protected]> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii On Tue, 11 Aug 2009 17:41:38 -0400 [email protected] writes: > I agree with you Jim. I think this was one of the main reasons. Most > > analytical philosophers were quite conservative, so that analytical > > philosophy is taken as conservative in continental Europe (that is > more > or less Europe except Britain), so that most of the 'continental' > Marxists rather reject it a priori. Phul Gasper forwarded to me an article by Alex Callinicos that makes rather similar points: http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/art.php?id=18754 As for analytical philosophers being conservative. They certainly have had that image, but it is one that's not always been supported by the facts. Neither Bertrand Russell nor A.J. Ayer were exactly conservatives. Among the logical positivists, Otto Neurath, Rudolf Carnap, and Philipp Frank, were all20socialists, with Neurath calling himself a Marxist. Among leading American analytical philosophers, Wilfrid Sellars was a self-proclaimed admirer of Engels, and Hilary Putnam, not unlike Jerry Cohen, was a red diaper baby. Back in the 1960s and early 1970s, he belonged to the Progressive Labor Party (and while he gave up on radical politics, a number of students of his from that period have remained radical leftists). Noam Chomsky, when he philsophizes, is rather close to analytical philosophy, and nobody thinks of him as a conservative. Of course one can pick out any number of analytical philosophers who were conservatives (i.e. W.V. Quine), but there have been some notable ones who leaned leftwards. Still one has to agree, that rightly or wrongly, analytical philosophers have had that image, and that has undoubtedly effected the reception of their work. (Of course we go into the reasons why analytical philosophers acquired such an image. One reason being that rival schools like the Frankfurters were prone to paint them as such). ________________________________________________________________________ Reçevez AOL Mail sur votre téléphone. Vos e-mails accessibles à tout moment! Créez un e-mail gratuit aujourd’hui. ________________________________________________ YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. Send list submissions to: [email protected] Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
