Re: Analytical philosophers and the witch-hunt

[ScottH9999@xxxxxxx]

This reminds me of a little poem entitled "Analytic Philosophy" that I wrote 
some years back, and which I have posted on my "Philosophical Doggerel" 
website at http://members.aol.com/Philosdog:

To analyze is to figure out
What the world is all about.
But to do it safely and not offend,
Analytic philosophy came in the end
To work on trivial concepts which
In no way could upset the rich.  


--Scott Harrison



In a message dated 4/4/01 3:13:52 PM Pacific Daylight Time, lnp3@xxxxxxxxx 
writes:

<SNIP>
> 
>  McCumber, a professor of German at Northwestern University, suspects that
>  American philosophy is harboring a dark secret about its past. In his new
>  book, Time in the Ditch: American Philosophy and the McCarthy Era
>  (Northwestern), he argues that American philosophy, having borne the brunt
>  of the anti-communist purges of the academy in the 1950s, "largely remains,
>  even today, what Joe McCarthyâs academic henchmen would have wanted it to
>  be." Specifically, he suspects that the pressures of McCarthyism helped to
>  turn American philosophers away from broad social and cultural reflection
>  and toward analytic philosophyâthe highly technical and specialized
>  discipline concerned with logic, language, and the exact sciences.
>  
<SNIP>