Analytic Philosophy Sucks

Case Closed: Analytic Philosophy Sucks

"In earlier eras, when it was not obvious that the scope of human knowledge far exceeded what could be encompassed by a single mind, the challenge of explaining how everything hung together was not transparently unmanageable. Today – when single minds cannot encompass substantial sub areas of any established discipline – it is. The solution is not to do badly what cannot be done, but to do well what can – to construct a series of limited, but accurate and overlapping, syntheses that together illuminate reality as we know it. This, I argue, is what we should ask of analytic philosophy."

In other words, Soames makes it a matter of principle not even to try to come up with an overall view, since the overall view would not be perfect. For him, the analytic movement is everything, and the synthetic movement is to be abandoned entirely. The criterion of perfection is absolute, and criterion of comprehensiveness should be aggressively rejected. And for Soames, this perfectionistic defeatism is something to be proud of.

This is exactly what I've been trying to say about analytic philosophy, and exactly what I object to. (And note that Soames still uses the term "analytic philosophy", which I've been told is an archaic bugaboo of my own imagination.) According to Soames' reasoning, there could be no general theory of "physics" or "chemistry" either, but just scattered and overlapping subfields, and it would be a foolishly wasted effort to try to bring these subfields under one umbrella.

Rorty's review of Soames

Discussion of Rorty and Soames at Crooked Timber

Thoughtful professional explanation (twice in 119 words) that anyone who doesn't like analytic phlosophy is just plain ignorant -- in part, but only in part, because analytic philosophy does not really exist.

Scab Philosophy

My philosophy archive

Me on Rorty and philosophy

Me on analytic philosophy and ethics

Me on relativism

Hello Bitch Persons

A belated welcome to anyone coming here from Bitch PhD. I thought I'd take this opportunity to sum up my relationship to the academy.

1. I've always had an obsession with scholarship, but a combination of the vicissitudes of life, my personal weaknesses, and certain aversions I feel kept me from going to grad school. I am presently retired and trying to do scholarly work outside the university, using the internet as my way of slipping past the gatekeepers.

2. I think that the liberal arts are in crisis. A liberal arts B.A. might be intrinsically a nice thing, but it's probably not worth going in debt for unless you plan on professional schooling later. Many in teaching, including the adjuncts but not only them, are dissatisfied with their lot. (As "Zizka", I spent many months on the late lamented Invisible Adjunct site, and IA has my best wishes wherever she may be). The system seems to work best for a thin layer of research PhD's with small or no teaching loads at the best schools. I have no animus against PhD's and professors per se -- though I do think that Ivy League wunderkinder have too much weight in the present Democratic party, and should be balanced by people with broader life experience.

3. I think that professionalization via paradigm-enforcement has had a very negative effect on the humanities and the social sciences). I would hope for a broader, opener, more engaged, more generalist, more imaginative, and more constructive discourse. My role models include Montaigne, John Dewey, and Nietzsche. I feel that disciplinary narrowing has been especially harmful in analytic philosophy, as you can read below, but postmodernism and "theory" often seem just as bad.

Many thanks, B.P.! (Comments are invited).

I am emersonj at gmail dot com.

Original materials copyright John J Emerson

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