John McCumber's "Time in the Ditch"
Time in the Ditch
John McCumber
Northwestern, 2001
McCumber’s book includes a history of American philosophy up until
2001, a criticism of analytic philosophy, and proposals for what
philosophy should be like instead. I have my own ideas on the third
point, but much of what he says on the first two points meshes with
my own opinion.
The red meat here is McCumber’s claim that analytic philosophy
became dominant in the American university in part because of
McCarthyism. During the Fifties the various sorts of accusers seemed
to have especially focused on philosophers, and a number of careers
were ended. Because analytic philosophy was politically innocuous,
it was less dangerous and became more attractive both to individual
graduate students and to departments.
I would change McCumber’s emphasis slightly. First, the primary
target was not Marxism or Communism, but politically engaged
pragmatism of the John Dewey sort. (Many of the analytic
philosophers were politically left, notably the logician Irving Copi).
Pragmatism is America’s main indigenous contribution to philosophy,
and before 1950 it had been a powerful if not a dominant influence
in the American philosophical world; but after 1950 pragmatism
almost disappeared. Pragmatists differed from analytic philosophers
(some of whom were pragmatists in some abstract sense) by their
willingness to involve themselves, as philosophers, in
social issues and social movements. (Similar takeovers led to the
marginalization of the study of political economy and of the
institutionalists in economics, the disappearance of the tradition
of C. Wright Mills in sociology, and the rise to dominance of the
Straussians in political theory). Pragmatists were public
philosophers, and analytic philosophers weren’t, and for me that's
the big quiestion.
Second, while I think that the negative impact of McCarthyism was
important, at least during the early stage, after a certain point
positive incentives did all the work. After political neutrality was
written into the work-rules of the profession, aspiring philosophers
stepped into their roles without the awareness that anything was
missing. Those who were interested in the kind of things analytic
philosophy did would enter the field, while those who were not went
elsewhere. For those who entered the field, philosophical engagement
in politics had been written out of their job description from the
start – it was no longer a personal choice, and if they wanted to,
philosophers could still continue their political activities on
their own time. (A
45-year-old philosopher of today entered college as an undergraduate
in about 1979, when analytic dominance was already
well-established).
A second point of McCumber’s is that analytic philosophy has
dominated the field through an institutional arrangement which gives
control of the whole profession, ultimately including hiring, to
about sixty professors at top universities. (In this he follows
Bruce Wilshire: Fashionable Nihilism, SUNY, 2002.) His
argument looks good to me, though not everyone agrees, but I think
that it can be somewhat expanded.
What’s ultimately is at issue is jobs. Philosophy is proud of having
become a profession, and professions are defined in terms of the
kinds of qualifications they require for hiring. Analytic philosophy
dominates philosophy to the extent that it controls hiring. There
are still non-analytic departments, but they have trouble placing
their graduates in jobs, since they are (more or less by definition)
low-ranking departments. McCumber mentions that deflationary forces
on the profession over recent decades mean that almost all hiring
comes from about twenty top schools, almost all of which are
analytic, so that the minority tendencies can only place students in
departments they themselves control. (He also mentions a pluralism
revolt led by Wilshire around 1980, but seems to feel, as does
Wilshire, that this revolt was not very successful).
This sounds like a cynical, quasi-Marxist smear, but it’s just a
consequence of professionalism, and their professionalism (on a
scientific model) is something that analytic philosophers are proud
of. (Leiter’s
Philosophy Gourmet Report
makes it pretty clear that philosophy is, first and foremost, a
job).
Thinking professionally also helps us answer the question, “What is
analytic philosophy?” Defenders of the status quo often deny that
there’s any such thing as analytic philosophy, pointing to the
diversity within the field. Quine even once denied that the term
philosophy has any meaning at all – though the effect was to allow
him to exclude people from philosophy who had till then been
regarded as philosophers; he did not mean to say that philosophy
departments could hire just anybody.
However, a non-trivial extensive
definition of "analytic philosophy" can be given simply by listing a
handful of teaching lineages, and it is also easy to define by
exclusion and list a very large number of philosophers and schools
which are just plain not analytic. (Of course,some of these schools
barely exist any more, and the non-analytic philosophers driving
taxis can hardly be called professionals, and thus are not
philosophers any more.) Analytic philosophy has a definable inside
and a definable outside, so we can say that it exists.
(More later)
Holbo on McCumber /
Ogged defends McCumber /
Holbo responds to Ogged
/
McCumber defends himself
Thirteen cases of McCarthyism in
philosophy, including at least six cases in which careers were ended
Pragmatism and the McCarthy Era
(Link corrected. Piece by John
Capps, Rochester Institute of Technology, 29th Annual meeting of the
Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy).
Review (not very favorable) of
Wilshire’s “Fashionable Nihilism”
Bertrand Russell and the Cold War
Russell, Wittgenstein, and
Hartshorne on Nuclear War
First posted at:
http://www.adamkotsko.com/weblog/2006/02/john-mccumbers-time-in-dit_114087987433321329.html
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