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October 18, 2005
I've could not agree more with Dylan's this account of analytic philosophy. Dylan says it very well. Much better than I could in my current flu-ridden state of being. Do go and have a read. He is grappling with a serious issue.
Analytic philosophy in Australia in the second part of the 20th century has traditionally meant scientific materialism: a naturalist, systematic philosophy aligned with natural science, based on a mechanistic metaphysics of nature and science on the path to Truth. So you would not expect it to say much about the Holocaust. Society as such did not exist. Neither did social practice. That was the extent of the reduction undertaken by Anglo-American philosophy as it worshiped at the feet of science. The reduction was so severe that this philosophy did not recognize its own Enlightenment tradition of thinking for ourselves (instead of allowing the priests to do it for us) and its conception of the progressive mastery of nature through science as historical.
Analytic philosophy did eventually develop social, ethical and political philosophies; albeit one's that turned away from the historical. They were seduced by Rawls and a social contract tradition that stripped history away and ended up a bracketing of all the events, all the traumas, of our own history.
Yet philosophy does need to think about itself in the light of Auschwitz in the form of a critical reflection against iself; against its silence and indifference to the hell of Auschwitz. Analytic philosophy sidestepped, avoided or discounted trying to make sense of Auschwitz, even though some of its philosophy courses were about the problem of evil; and even though that form of human savagery---an administrative, industrially organized murder of millions---- could not fit into the caterories of an affirmative philosophy of attaining Truth through science.
Not only were millions murdered but before their extermination their humanity was systematically eradicated while their bodies were left alive. That treatment cannot be detached from the rational method and the industrial means employed. Yet analytic philosophy remains silent. It bracketed history altogether. As Derrida observes analytic philosophers philosophize as if nothing has happened. Derrida says that:
It must be emphasized that this philosophical disinterest or indifference (I do mean philosophical, in philosophical discourse, because some individuals may as individuals be interested in the Holocaust, but they do not integrate this interest in the Holocaust into their philosophical discourse. So, it must be emphasized that disinterest) in the Holocaust often co-habits in American academic culture, probably for reasons of a bad conscience, with a prosecutorial attitude towards the least offence committed by European intellectuals, as the de Man or the Heidegger affairs have revealed.
Or we can add the prosecutorial attitude towards "postmodernism", which is seen in terms of the suppression of reason and the denial of the possibility of truth in the name of philosophy. Derrida spells the ethos of this academic culture out:
That is to say that the Americans, who were basically strangers to what happened in Europe, well, far away, American intellectuals and professors are often de-politicized, unlike many European intellectuals, they are shut up in their academic institutions, and they don't have any space for political intervention, and very often, all too often they are not interested even in the politics of their own country. They concern themselves very little with racism in the United States, with economic deprivation, with the homeless, etc, but are in big rush to set up trials concerning literary fascism in France: the de Man affair, or Blanchot, etc. And I believe this should be seen as a sign of the bad conscience of abstract, powerless intellectuals who often, how should I say it, are not too active in their own country.
And we can add Australian analytic philosophers.
The conversation continues over at Pas Au-Dela
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That's just bullshit. Rawls as well as say Russell did more for promoting a sane, rational ethics than any postmod or marxist ever did (and like most poseurs you keep forgetting marx aligned himself with materialism and was not opposed to Darwin nor the sciences).
Rawls contracturalism is not history, but it's a realist and materialist ethics based on self-interest: and he surely was opposed to fascism and totalitarianism as a whole ( and of course this discussion conveniently overlooks Stalins' murders of millions)
And an emphasis on verification and careful language is to the advantage of history and preserving historical knowledge. Osiris help us if postmod history were to repalce the factual-based type.
And you may recall an analytical thinker, Turing (cambridge math, Wittgenstein's student, and queer) cracked the nazi radar code and did a great deal to saving Britain and the allies from bombing raids and air strikes.
And when did postmodernist become ethicists?