{"id":13331,"date":"2023-06-24T11:56:25","date_gmt":"2023-06-24T01:56:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rationalemagazine.com\/?p=13331"},"modified":"2023-06-24T11:56:25","modified_gmt":"2023-06-24T01:56:25","slug":"how-analytic-philosophers-sought-to-slough-off-the-dead-weight-of-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rationalemagazine.com\/index.php\/2023\/06\/24\/how-analytic-philosophers-sought-to-slough-off-the-dead-weight-of-history\/","title":{"rendered":"How analytic philosophers sought to slough off the dead weight of history"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nikhil Krishnan\u2019s intriguing and charming history,\u00a0A Terribly Serious Adventure: Philosophy at Oxford 1900-60<\/a><\/em>, is organised around anecdotes rather than arguments. Krishnan is interested not only in \u201cwhat people thought but what they were like\u201d.<\/p>\n

The two questions are not as separate as many assume: a penetrating portrait of a philosopher can do much to illuminate their thought.<\/p>\n

The range of thinkers surveyed is quite broad. Krishnan\u2019s history includes\u00a0R.G. Collingwood<\/a>,\u00a0Gilbert Ryle<\/a>,\u00a0Isaiah Berlin<\/a>,\u00a0A.J. ‘Freddie’ Ayer<\/a>,\u00a0J.L. Austin<\/a>,\u00a0Elizabeth Anscombe<\/a>,\u00a0Iris Murdoch<\/a>,\u00a0Peter Strawson<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Bernard Williams<\/a>. The portraits are for the most part sympathetically drawn, though naturally some of these philosophers have captured Krishnan more than others, Ryle and Austin especially.<\/p>\n

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Krishnan\u2019s tale is one of belated modernisation \u2013 a shift from a philosophical approach with a philological and historical focus to one that is anti-authoritarian and ahistorical. He portrays the old ways at Oxford in broad strokes, evoking an institution dominated by backward- and inward-looking men, all narrowly obsessed with the classical period of Greek antiquity, particularly the dialogues of Plato.<\/p>\n

This cloistered world finally gave out under pressure from an intransigent reality. Though the first changes came from within, via Oxford figures such as\u00a0John Cook Wilson<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0H.A. Prichard<\/a>, developments accelerated with the arrival of a younger generation increasingly interested in philosophical developments elsewhere, particularly Cambridge and Vienna.<\/p>\n

Slaying the Hegelian dragon<\/h2>\n

The prime mover at Cambridge had been\u00a0G.E. Moore<\/a>, whose example brought on a spate of conversions at the turn of the century. His colleague\u00a0Bertrand Russell<\/a> wrote:<\/p>\n

It was towards the end of 1898 that Moore and I rebelled against both Kant and Hegel. Moore, first, and I closely following him, climbed out of this mental prison and found ourselves again at liberty to breathe the free air of a universe restored to reality.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Both Russell and Moore had been under the spell of the Hegelian philosopher\u00a0J.M.E. McTaggart<\/a>. Their apostasy is a central origin story of analytic philosophy: slaying the Hegelian dragon and sloughing off the dead weight of history.<\/p>\n

Some of those at Cambridge, like\u00a0Maynard Keynes<\/a>, spoke of the conversion in religious terms. But Moore\u2019s new method was embraced not as a re-conditioning, but a de-conditioning. Converts thought they were now unencumbered by any particular way of seeing. In the words of Leonard Woolf, Moore had \u201csuddenly removed from our eyes an obscuring accumulation of scales, cobwebs, and curtains, revealing for the first time to us, so it seemed, the nature of truth and reality\u201d.<\/p>\n

This desire to strip back the encrustation of traditional assumptions and reach bare nature is a recurring theme in philosophical history. The two best known examples are Socrates and Descartes. Moore\u2019s followers thought he had finally pulled off this coup. Lytton Strachey wrote to Moore of his book\u00a0Principia Ethica<\/a><\/em> (1903):<\/p>\n

It has not only wrecked and shattered all writers on ethics from Aristotle and Christ to Herbert Spencer and Mr. Bradley, it has not only laid the true foundation of Ethics, it has not only left all Modern Philosophy bafou\u00e9e \u2013 these seem to me small achievements compared to the establishment of that Method which shines like a sword between the lines [\u2026] The truth, there can be no doubt, is really now upon the march. I date from October 1903 the beginning of the Age of Reason.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What was that method? In short, it was a matter of avoiding muddles. According to Woolf, all Moore demanded of his followers was \u201cto make quite certain that we knew what we meant when we made a statement\u201d.<\/p>\n

This emphasis on explicitness and precision were, and remain, two defining traits of analytic philosophy.<\/p>\n

Plain common sense<\/h2>\n

Woolf wrote that while McTaggart \u201cseemed to have entirely left the earth for the inextricably complicated cobwebs and\u00a0O altitudos<\/em>\u00a0of Hegelianism\u201d, Moore had his feet firmly planted on the ground and spoke with the \u201cdivine voice of plain common-sense\u201d.<\/p>\n

The intellectual sobriety, the return from the spiritual heights, was admired as a gritty, secure way forward. Under Moore\u2019s influence, Cambridge philosophy became deeply suspicious of anything loose and lofty; its task was to proceed at a testudineous pace on solid ground. Though it took some time to spread, this sensibility would eventually breach the \u201cdreaming spires\u201d of Oxford.<\/p>\n

J.L. Austin, who is given the most space of any thinker in Krishnan\u2019s history, declared \u201cMoore\u2019s my man\u201d. His work refined and extended Moore\u2019s project.<\/p>\n

Rather than deferring to common sense, Austin directs our attention to common language. In particular, he argued that we should distrust distinctions dreamed up by philosophers and instead pay attention to our \u201ccommon stock of words\u201d. He thought that while ordinary language was not an infallible guide to reality, it was much more likely to be truth-tracking than the jargon of academics.<\/p>\n

Moore\u2019s influence was exerted through his personal example, but also through his editorship of the premier philosophy journal\u00a0Mind<\/a>. When Oxford philosophers created the journal\u00a0Analysis<\/a>, it was modelled on Mind, only with a focus on even tighter, more honed papers. A paradigmatic Analysis essay is Edmund Gettier\u2019s\u00a0Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?<\/a>\u00a0(1963), which claims to debunk a long-held analysis of the concept of knowledge in just three pages.<\/p>\n

Considering only those questions which admit precise formulation and clear answers requires setting aside many of the traditional humanistic concerns of philosophy. But Krishnan is keen to establish that this is not (or not merely) a shift to the scientistic. He argues that the rigour of this philosophical approach has a deeply edifying aspect.<\/p>\n

Bringing people down to earth can be for their own good. It frees them from the seductions of apparent profundities, which lurk unquestioned behind a veil of ineffability. On Krishnan\u2019s reading, the deflationary approach creates a kind of freedom within the constraint of careful, stepwise reasoning.<\/p>\n

This is quite true, and Krishnan is right to emphasise it, given that \u201cthe fear of depth produced a culpable failure to appreciate what was deep in the Oxford tradition itself\u201d. The apparent impersonality of analytic philosophy has concrete effects on its practitioners \u2013 here, too, philosophy is a way of life.<\/p>\n

Many of the tradition\u2019s major figures realised this. Austin, for example, wrote that \u201cwe are using a sharpened awareness of words to sharpen our perception of, though not as the final arbiter of, the phenomena\u201d.<\/p>\n

But the point was generally left unstated, and Krishnan\u2019s view is that the analytical tradition has proved edifying precisely because it has not overtly tried to be.<\/p>\n

Accents of infallibility<\/h2>\n

There was also a less attractive side to the analytical tradition. To his credit, Krishnan attends to it in some detail.<\/p>\n

Keynes, who had seen the Moorean revolution as \u201cthe beginning of a renaissance, the opening of a new heaven on a new earth\u201d, wrote that its upshot was quite different. \u201cIn practice,\u201d he observed, \u201cvictory was with those who could speak with the greatest appearance of clear, undoubting conviction and could best use the accents of infallibility.\u201d He recalled Moore responding to remarks:<\/p>\n

…with a gasp of incredulity \u2013 Do you really<\/strong>\u00a0think\u00a0that<\/strong>, an expression of face as if to hear such a thing said reduced him to a state of wonder verging on imbecility, with his mouth wide open and wagging his head in the negative so violently that his hair shook.\u00a0Oh!<\/strong>\u00a0He would say, goggling at you as if either you or he must be mad; and no reply was possible.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Austin, too, mastered the \u201caccents of infallibility\u201d.\u00a0Stuart Hampshire<\/a> observed that it was a feature of analytical philosophy that ideas should always be discussed in a way that was:<\/p>\n

…very quiet and if possible ironical or at any rate unexcited and unrhetorical [\u2026] Austin carried this to an extreme. Even the most solemn questions, solemn in their associations, had to be disinfected by a very calm, committee man\u2019s tone of voice.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is a little misleading. Constraint of one\u2019s emotional register is as much a part of classical rhetoric as giving it free rein. The ability to affect a \u201ccommittee man\u2019s tone of voice\u201d is a rhetorical skill; it enables one to make others appear absurd for any show of pathos.<\/p>\n

Austin\u2019s mastery of his \u201ccalm and measured\u201d voice was so acute, according to Krishnan, that he was able to wield it to similar effect as \u201cthe birch on the insubordinate young\u201d. To chasten, to subdue, to silence were among the many things Austin knew how to do with words.<\/p>\n

The Austinian superego<\/h2>\n

Austin\u2019s need to dominate and win arguments conflicted with his ostensibly anti-authoritarian philosophical project. Krishnan writes of the \u201cabsence of adversarialism\u201d in Austin\u2019s Saturday-morning discussion group. But he also makes it clear that this was only so long as everyone agreed with Austin.<\/p>\n

Invitations were handed out to those of \u201crelative youth and juniority (professors were pointedly not invited)\u201d. Krishnan presents this as liberating, but it could equally have been to preserve Austin\u2019s dominance. One participant said of these Saturday meetings that \u201cit was always just a little as if the headmaster were present\u201d.<\/p>\n

Austin could only admit he was wrong \u201conce he had had the chance to sleep on it and could point it out himself, in his own way, without any concession that anyone else had got one over on him\u201d.<\/p>\n

To say that Austin \u201creally should have been better at conceding a point\u201d is a mild censure. His method of rule was that of the manager, rather than the magus or maestro. Krishnan never contrasts Austin\u2019s philosophical views with Wittgenstein\u2019s in any detail, but he does frequently contrast their manner of teaching.<\/p>\n

Whereas Austin had a \u201cco-operative ideal of philosophy\u201d, Wittgenstein created a \u201cstifling atmosphere\u201d, in which students acted as if they were in the presence of a \u201ccandidate for canonisation\u201d. They learned to imitate the \u201caccents of agony\u201d of their \u201cmage-like\u201d master:<\/p>\n

young men from across the oceans, born decades after he died, have been observed clutching their skulls in poses of agony, combing the vintage shops for open-necked shirts in just the right 1940s style, and cultivating the slightest hint of a Viennese cadence.<\/em><\/p>\n

No one, by contrast, has found much inspiration in Austin\u2019s \u201cliking for sound preparation and [his] disapproval of sloppy work and lazy efforts\u201d.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is a little facile, and contradicted by Krishnan\u2019s claim that \u201can entire generation of philosophers spoke in [Austin\u2019s] voice\u201d. His discussion of Austin is far from hagiography, but it does elide an issue that is both deep and of enduring relevance.<\/p>\n

Bernard Williams observed that Austin\u2019s \u201cterrible voice\u201d was internalised by those around him. Krishnan alludes to this when he says that the Oxford philosophers\u2019 \u201cintellectual consciences\u201d came to speak in Austin\u2019s voice, but he does not take up Williams\u2019 (I think profound) criticism here. Williams claimed that this \u201cAustinian superego\u201d \u2013 and in particular its mania for precision \u2013 has \u201ckilled more philosophical talents at this university than you\u2019ve had hot dinners\u201d. People birched themselves with Austin\u2019s voice.<\/p>\n

Williams\u2019 point is that there are legitimate ways of doing philosophy that are silenced by a voice that always demands \u201cwhat\u00a0precisely<\/em>\u00a0do you mean by that?\u201d For many, the practical upshot was that \u201cthe pen fell flaccidly from [their] hand and nothing was created\u201d.<\/p>\n

Williams was discussing his close friend Isaiah Berlin. He argued that Berlin\u2019s decision to quit philosophy in favour of the history of ideas was the result of Austin\u2019s influence. Berlin claimed he was convinced by Henry Sheffer that the only areas of philosophy capable of progress were logic and psychology. According to Williams, it was really because Berlin was, like others, \u201cunduly terrorised by Austin\u201d.<\/p>\n

Krishnan touches on this, saying that the reason Berlin \u201cleft philosophy\u201d was that he \u201cwas never entirely at home in the sorts of things Oxford philosophy was increasingly about\u201d. In truth, Berlin left neither Oxford nor philosophy. He kept doing what he had long been doing; he just stopped calling it \u201cphilosophy\u201d. It was the conception of what counted as philosophy that had narrowed.<\/p>\n

Krishnan takes Berlin at his word, but fails to consider the internal evidence against it. Take, for instance, one of only two works by Berlin that Krishnan mentions: his famous essay\u00a0Two Concepts of Liberty<\/a><\/em>. Krishnan calls the essay \u201ca masterpiece of Cold War rhetoric\u201d, and summarily dismisses its central distinction between \u201cpositive\u201d and \u201cnegative\u201d liberty. More importantly, he overlooks that it is a piece of meta-philosophy.<\/p>\n

At the outset, Berlin reproves philosophers who \u201cneglect the field of political thought\u201d because \u201cits unstable subject-matter, with its blurred edges, is not to be caught by the fixed concepts, abstract models and fine instruments suitable to logic or to linguistic analysis\u201d. He criticises the demand for \u201ca unity of method in philosophy\u201d, which leads people to \u201creject whatever the method cannot successfully manage\u201d.<\/p>\n

To look only at that which admits of precision is to court naivety about many phenomena which remain intractably vague.<\/p>\n

Krishnan also overlooks that the essay praises the political thought of, among others,\u00a0T.H. Green<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0F.H. Bradley<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 that is, the work of those apparently slain Idealist bogies of Oxford\u2019s past.<\/p>\n

The upshot of Berlin\u2019s sense of incommensurable values is, as Krishnan says, that \u201cnot all good things come together\u201d. Our habits of attention, our ways of looking, affect what we see. To look at things historically is to reveal a very different world than to look at them analytically. Berlin\u2019s argument for pluralism is not merely in favour of liberal democracy, but liberal philosophy.<\/p>\n

Williams argued that Austin worked in the manner he did \u201cbecause\u00a0that<\/em>\u00a0was what he was good at doing.\u201d It was a matter of sensibility.<\/p>\n

Berlin knew he did not have the constitution to be a \u201cfirst-rate\u201d analytic philosopher; he equally knew he was not a first-rate historian. He was far too little the careful scholar and pedant for the latter, and far too worldly for the former. He was also, in a sense, too unoriginal. As Krishnan puts it, Berlin was \u201cdependent on the provocations of earlier writers to set his pen going\u201d.<\/p>\n

On this view, the \u201ctrue philosopher\u201d is one whose ideas are not born of historical understanding, however perspicuous that understanding might be. Yet the quality of Berlin\u2019s thought is obvious, even if it is difficult to say\u00a0exactly<\/em>\u00a0what he was first-rate at.<\/p>\n

I am tempted to reach for Wittgenstein\u2019s phrase \u201cthat kind of understanding which consists in \u2018seeing connections\u2019.\u201d But no doubt that just won\u2019t do.<\/p>\n

A historical turn<\/h2>\n

All sensibilities have their limits. As Nietzsche put it, none of us can \u201clook around our own corner\u201d.<\/p>\n

However broad his intellectual tastes, Berlin could not see much value in studying Nietzsche. Similarly, Krishnan struggles to see the philosophical appeal of Berlin \u2013 a thinker whose style of speech he describes as \u201callusive and incontinent\u201d. Though he maintains an impartial tone throughout this book, Krishnan has shown his hand elsewhere,\u00a0arguing<\/a>\u00a0that Berlin\u2019s \u201csentences, for all their rhetorical virtues, left behind at most a mood\u201d.<\/p>\n

Krishnan is right when he says that how people react to a thinker \u201cmark[s] a deep difference between temperaments\u201d. But it is complacent to present the difference here as between those seduced by \u201crhetoric\u201d and those unimpressed with the arguments.<\/p>\n

Berlin belongs to (and influenced) a group of philosophers that includes Bernard Williams,\u00a0Alasdair MacIntyre<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Charles Taylor<\/a>. Each member of this group was to some extent influenced by Collingwood, another Oxford thinker given short shrift by Krishnan.<\/p>\n

Perhaps because Collingwood is presented as a throwback to the Oxford Idealist past, Krishnan fails to see that Collingwood has been instrumental to an increased awareness of the importance of history within analytical philosophy itself. Some have even claimed the tradition has undergone a \u201chistorical turn\u201d.<\/p>\n

I hope this is true, though the number of \u201cturns\u201d scholars have described of late make the tradition sound like a whirling dervish. From my own experience, a historical interest continues to be regarded by most professional philosophers as somewhere between a tolerably mild eccentricity and an unhealthy diversion.<\/p>\n

Given the historical nature of Krishnan\u2019s book, it is something of a surprise to find echoes of anti-historical sentiment:<\/p>\n

There is no defense for ignorance and porcine insensitivity, except those things can be, unwittingly, agents of intellectual emancipation from the weight of tradition. It was perhaps a shame that Oxford undergraduates weren\u2019t required to read [Plato, Aquinas, Spinoza, Pascal, Leibniz, Comte, Hegel, Schelling, Fichte, Schopenhauer, Marx, Nietzsche and Kierkegaard]. But how much of a shame it was depended on the value of what they were reading instead and, more generally, what they were doing other than reading.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There is a customary lauding of novelty here. The Oxford philosophers were doing something other than reading \u2013 that is, they were thinking, writing, talking. In other words, they were actually\u00a0doing philosophy<\/em>.<\/p>\n

But to read well\u00a0is<\/em>\u00a0to think. While tradition is certainly a weight, shirking it is not a virtue. It is not an obstacle but a precondition of originality. As Berlin\u2019s\u00a0b\u00eate noire<\/em>\u00a0George Steiner<\/a>\u00a0put it, \u201coriginality is antithetical to novelty\u201d. That, at least, is how it appears from here.<\/p>\n

This article was originally published in <\/em>The Conversation<\/a>.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Photo by Ben Seymour<\/a> on Unsplash.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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