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A Social History of Analytic Philosophy: How Politics Has Shaped an Apolitical Philosophy
Analytic philosophy is the leading form of philosophy in the English-speaking world. What explains its continued success? Christoph Schuringa argues that its enduring power can only be understood by examining its social history. Analytic philosophy tends to think of itself as concerned with eternal questions, transcending the changing scenes of history. It thinks of itself as apolitical. This book, however, convincingly shows that the opposite is true.
The origins of analytic philosophy are in a set of distinct movements, shaped by high-ly specific sets of political and social forces. Only after the Second World War were these disparate, often dynamic movements joined together to make 'analytic philosophy' as we know it. In the climate of McCarthyism, analytic philosophy was robbed of political force.
To this day, analytic philosophy is the ideology of the status quo. It may seem arcane and largely removed from the real world, but it is a crucial component in upholding liberalism, through its central role in elite educational institutions. As Schuringa concludes, the apparently increasing friendliness of analytic philosophers to rival approaches in philosophy should be understood as a form of colonization; thanks to its hegemonic status, it reformats all it touches in service of its own imperatives, going so far as to colonize decolonial efforts in the discipline.
The origins of analytic philosophy are in a set of distinct movements, shaped by high-ly specific sets of political and social forces. Only after the Second World War were these disparate, often dynamic movements joined together to make 'analytic philosophy' as we know it. In the climate of McCarthyism, analytic philosophy was robbed of political force.
To this day, analytic philosophy is the ideology of the status quo. It may seem arcane and largely removed from the real world, but it is a crucial component in upholding liberalism, through its central role in elite educational institutions. As Schuringa concludes, the apparently increasing friendliness of analytic philosophers to rival approaches in philosophy should be understood as a form of colonization; thanks to its hegemonic status, it reformats all it touches in service of its own imperatives, going so far as to colonize decolonial efforts in the discipline.
456 pages, Kindle Edition
Published May 13, 2025
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June 26, 2025I hated this book. Not because it's a bad - first, I don't know whether it really is, in the grand scheme of things; second, I read plenty of bad books and promptly forget that I did - but because it's SO close to being extremely good and seemingly, willfully turns away at every available junction.
The tone of the vast majority of the book is that of a a drive-by smear. The advantages of this are that it can be entertaining if you're in a mood of low epistemic virtue (hey, I decompress every so often with an ep of Chapo too), and if you think that analytic philosophy is the only good philosophy because you saw a bunch of similar such drive-bys at the alternatives, maybe you'll roll up your sleeves and read 2000 pages of Agamben or something. The downside is that this is a tone almost allergic to giving arguments; it almost always involves an appeal to the *obviousness* of its targets being ridiculous, or bigoted, or willing slaves of the Man.
That this sort of *ad lapidem* has a tendency to be baked into analytic philosophy is one of the charges at the very promising core of the work. That is, analytic philosophy essentially conceives itself a set of discourse norms for avoiding ponderous nonsense or sloppy reasoning; but in fact these discursive restrictions serve as a cage preventing escape from hegemonic assumptions, which in the world of the American or American-influenced academy have been liberalism. Methodological naturalism, ordinary language philosophy, the reduction of speech to "language games," and the *in-practice* dominant methodological moves of "I don't know what you mean" and "my intuitions are..." are all ways of essentially precluding any philosophical insights from disrupting liberal forms of life. Analytic philosophy serves then essentially the role of recuperation.
This is an intruiging critique whose pursuit, even if it ended up in some kind of dead end, would be valuable. The enterprising reader will have to provide it for herself. In one of the best chapters, we see that proponents of modal or intensional logic tended to be nonliberals, typically of the left but in one prominent case of the right, while its extensionalist opponents led by Quine tended to be liberals; and it's heavily implied but never really argued that the purely extensional, non-modal form of logic advocated by Quine and friends is a prop in liberalism. And I think this can be supplied! Within a Quinean "web of beliefs" you can really only revise any belief peicemeal, and it's quite easy to end up trapped within a self-reinforcing system of beliefs where each fact has a sufficient reason for it without having the resources to question the system as a whole - Fischerian "capitalist realism" embedded into language like Newspeak. Further, our understanding of revision and logical implications is fully *procedural*, about how we legitimately get from one set of accepted states to another. Maybe I read the book too hastily, and I missed these or more powerful arguments.
Likewise, there's something intriguing in the critique of the centrality of the appeal to intuitions, but it's unclear what the alternative is. My, uh, intuition is that you *have* to stop at some intuition somewhere and proceed provisionally from there, and that the alternative is just enthymatically (rather than explicitly) doing the same thing (which is certainly what Schuringa does.) More research is needed, as they say. Likewise, I'm willing to believe there is something about mere assertion in the case of the "I don't know what you mean"-type anti-Continental stuff (and Shuringa is surely right that "Continental" has only ever really meant "not analytic" in practice,) but while the book cites a lot of such potentially groundless sneers, we never get an example of just what they were dismissing. (The closest case is far from a slam dunk; a sneering letter condemns Derrida for arguing via "puns" like "phallusies," and Shuringa notes that Derrida used no such word (I assume he is correct here) and that perhaps they were thinking of "phallogocentrism," which he says is clearly not a pun but idk, maybe this is an appeal to intuition again but sure looks like a pun to me?)
Probably the line that most infuriated me - and I cannot emphasize enough that absolutely nothing philosophical depends on what follows - occurs in the chapter on Russell and Moore, epitomizing my concerns about the style and (by quantity) content of the writing:
"From this point on, Russell's efforts went in new directions. For example, he began to pursue a vociferous campaign against the French philosopher Henri Bergson, who was enviably famous, irritatingly popular with women, and Jewish."
Now, you'll note, nowhere in this is it explicitly stated that Russell went aggro on Bergson *because* the latter was Jewish, or for that matter the other two reasons. But that his being famous would be "enviable" and his popularity with women "irritating" to Russell, an inveterate publicity hound and womanizer, is entirely plausible, the kind of psychological speculation that depends on that old friend intuitions again but is hard to avoid in writing biography. The unsubtle implication is that this episode, which is never mentioned again, has also to do with Russell's antisemitism. Now, is there evidence that Russell was an antisemite? If so, perhaps it could have been discussed w/r/t his relationship with Wittgenstein, which this is *right in the middle of*, and in the later reception of the various Vienna Circle refugees. If not, uh, what the fuck?
Pissed me off productively; may piss you off less if you wanted to like it less than I did; may be useful to inspire other critiques or to cast skepticism on stylistically similar attacks on different targets; not recommended as a reliable first exposure to any of its targets.
The tone of the vast majority of the book is that of a a drive-by smear. The advantages of this are that it can be entertaining if you're in a mood of low epistemic virtue (hey, I decompress every so often with an ep of Chapo too), and if you think that analytic philosophy is the only good philosophy because you saw a bunch of similar such drive-bys at the alternatives, maybe you'll roll up your sleeves and read 2000 pages of Agamben or something. The downside is that this is a tone almost allergic to giving arguments; it almost always involves an appeal to the *obviousness* of its targets being ridiculous, or bigoted, or willing slaves of the Man.
That this sort of *ad lapidem* has a tendency to be baked into analytic philosophy is one of the charges at the very promising core of the work. That is, analytic philosophy essentially conceives itself a set of discourse norms for avoiding ponderous nonsense or sloppy reasoning; but in fact these discursive restrictions serve as a cage preventing escape from hegemonic assumptions, which in the world of the American or American-influenced academy have been liberalism. Methodological naturalism, ordinary language philosophy, the reduction of speech to "language games," and the *in-practice* dominant methodological moves of "I don't know what you mean" and "my intuitions are..." are all ways of essentially precluding any philosophical insights from disrupting liberal forms of life. Analytic philosophy serves then essentially the role of recuperation.
This is an intruiging critique whose pursuit, even if it ended up in some kind of dead end, would be valuable. The enterprising reader will have to provide it for herself. In one of the best chapters, we see that proponents of modal or intensional logic tended to be nonliberals, typically of the left but in one prominent case of the right, while its extensionalist opponents led by Quine tended to be liberals; and it's heavily implied but never really argued that the purely extensional, non-modal form of logic advocated by Quine and friends is a prop in liberalism. And I think this can be supplied! Within a Quinean "web of beliefs" you can really only revise any belief peicemeal, and it's quite easy to end up trapped within a self-reinforcing system of beliefs where each fact has a sufficient reason for it without having the resources to question the system as a whole - Fischerian "capitalist realism" embedded into language like Newspeak. Further, our understanding of revision and logical implications is fully *procedural*, about how we legitimately get from one set of accepted states to another. Maybe I read the book too hastily, and I missed these or more powerful arguments.
Likewise, there's something intriguing in the critique of the centrality of the appeal to intuitions, but it's unclear what the alternative is. My, uh, intuition is that you *have* to stop at some intuition somewhere and proceed provisionally from there, and that the alternative is just enthymatically (rather than explicitly) doing the same thing (which is certainly what Schuringa does.) More research is needed, as they say. Likewise, I'm willing to believe there is something about mere assertion in the case of the "I don't know what you mean"-type anti-Continental stuff (and Shuringa is surely right that "Continental" has only ever really meant "not analytic" in practice,) but while the book cites a lot of such potentially groundless sneers, we never get an example of just what they were dismissing. (The closest case is far from a slam dunk; a sneering letter condemns Derrida for arguing via "puns" like "phallusies," and Shuringa notes that Derrida used no such word (I assume he is correct here) and that perhaps they were thinking of "phallogocentrism," which he says is clearly not a pun but idk, maybe this is an appeal to intuition again but sure looks like a pun to me?)
Probably the line that most infuriated me - and I cannot emphasize enough that absolutely nothing philosophical depends on what follows - occurs in the chapter on Russell and Moore, epitomizing my concerns about the style and (by quantity) content of the writing:
"From this point on, Russell's efforts went in new directions. For example, he began to pursue a vociferous campaign against the French philosopher Henri Bergson, who was enviably famous, irritatingly popular with women, and Jewish."
Now, you'll note, nowhere in this is it explicitly stated that Russell went aggro on Bergson *because* the latter was Jewish, or for that matter the other two reasons. But that his being famous would be "enviable" and his popularity with women "irritating" to Russell, an inveterate publicity hound and womanizer, is entirely plausible, the kind of psychological speculation that depends on that old friend intuitions again but is hard to avoid in writing biography. The unsubtle implication is that this episode, which is never mentioned again, has also to do with Russell's antisemitism. Now, is there evidence that Russell was an antisemite? If so, perhaps it could have been discussed w/r/t his relationship with Wittgenstein, which this is *right in the middle of*, and in the later reception of the various Vienna Circle refugees. If not, uh, what the fuck?
Pissed me off productively; may piss you off less if you wanted to like it less than I did; may be useful to inspire other critiques or to cast skepticism on stylistically similar attacks on different targets; not recommended as a reliable first exposure to any of its targets.
January 2, 2026
A difficult book for me to assess. I am interested in the biographical background to various things in philosophy, especially Plato and (my specialty) Wittgenstein. I think this can sometimes be crucial to understanding some of their positions. And that is a sort of social factor I guess. So I am sympathetic to the general idea of this book. But the subtitle of the book is "How Politics has Shaped an Apolitical Philosophy," so the author has an axe to grind--He thinks that analytic philosophy embodies the worldview of 18th century Liberalism.
I found the book very unsatisfying. I identify as an analytic philosopher. The book turns out to be a critique of analytic philosophy, so I risk being defensive about all this, yet I want to be fair-minded. And I will acknowledge from the start that the author has done a great deal of research and is familiar with a wide range of analytic philosophy. My concern is what is done with all this.
The first thing that bothered me is the author's use of terminology to characterize philosophical conflict. So, much is made to sound more like a fight than a debate:
The opening sentence (p. 1): "Analytic philosophy [is] the hegemonic form of academic philosophy in the English-speaking world." (p. 4): "a cult of personality" (p. 20): "the reign of J.L. Austin" (p. 114, concerning reactions to Gellner's critique): "went on the defensive and closed ranks" (p. 120): "analytic philosophers took over philosophy departments and journals" "remarkably swift and successful takeover of American philosophy" (p. 154): "analytic philosophy expels its challengers" (p. 156): "they have successfully colonized" (p. 167): "throw...sand in the eyes of the radicals" (p. 169): "the stranglehold of analytic philosophy" (p. 200): "heroic assaults" ....
What bothers me about these phrases is that they imply that some kind of hidden force is behind all of this, rather than there being any good reasons. This problem clearly surfaces when the author complains (p. 259) of the "'culture of justification' to which anyone coming with an alternative approach is subjected." In other words, it is oppressive to be asked for reasons (i.e., justification).
Now I myself have shown sympathy for the relevance of some non-cognitive factors in philosophy, especially as it shows itself in Wittgenstein's work Wittgenstein's Artillery: Philosophy as Poetry. But the author gives the impression that this is all there is.
There is a long discussion of the role and treatment of intuitions in philosophy (Ch 9). Largely this is presented as a criticism. Intuitions are treated like experimental evidence, but intuitions are socially influenced rather than independent inputs. The author is right to criticize older ordinary language philosophy for depending on "what we would say" about something, since the "we" tended to be a narrow set of people. Recent "experimental philosophy" has tried to go beyond that narrow set by inquiring from a wider range of people, but it is still true that intuitions are not independent indicators of the truth so much as indicators of how people think. Philosophers are sometimes interested in the nature of our concepts, and intuitions are relevant to understanding the shape of our concepts. Of course, not everyone shares the same concepts--something we should learn especially when we learn a foreign language. No doubt a set of concepts can embody a worldview, and so studying certain concepts can seem like buying into a certain worldview--like "classical liberalism" I suppose. Karl Marx famously said: “The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it.” (11th Thesis on Feuerbach, and the epitaph on Marx's grave). Being a student of Marx I think the author wants philosophy to do Marx's work. Maybe some of our concepts are problematic and are in need of change. But the author never offered any positive suggestions along this line.
Intuitions are also relevant when they are marshaled as evidence in support of a theory. This can seem problematic because, again, our intuitions often may depend on our background or culture. So it is hard to see how they can be indicators of truth. Instead philosophers generally appeal to reasons and arguments to lead them to truth. The author makes the point, however, that (pp. 236-7): "reliance on intuitions...is a form of dogmatism, and thus the antithesis of philosophy. Philosophy advances grounds for claims. To appeal to intuitions is to admit that explanation has run out...and this is no support at all if philosophy is what is supposed to be happening." This is an interesting point, yet it fails to offer an alternative. Far from having to shamefully admit that "explanation has run out," it is a truism. Otherwise explanation would have to go on endlessly or to be circular. The fact is that explanation and all argument has to come to an end at some point. An argument depends on premisses. They can be argued for, of course, but that can't continue endlessly. So Wittgenstein often reminded his readers that reasons come to an end. We can debate when they should come to an end, but they can't just keep going. That's true for everyone--not just analytic philosophers. So, then what? Well, ultimately intuitions, or something like them, enter in. Unfortunately the author never explains what his alternative is....
Well, he does seem to think that (p. 237) thought experiments might be used not to elicit intuitions but to produce "more imaginative, expansive, productive" thoughts. And the author seems to think this is done well, not by analytic philosophers, but by Galileo, Mach, Einstein, Plato and Descartes. I have to agree that vignettes of various sorts can serve useful purposes in philosophy. In fact Chapter 6 of my book on Wittgenstein, mentioned above, looks at 15 such things and examines what they try to achieve and how others have attempted to achieve those aims. But the idea that this is a way of avoiding intuitions is doubtful. The author claims (p. 239, footnote 24) "that Descartes, in securing his conclusion [that I exist as a thinking thing], does not appeal to intuitions at all." That's ridiculous. One of the first criticisms of Descartes' cogito argument came from Lichtenberg, who pointed out that all Descartes established was that "there is thinking". That there is an "I" that is doing the thinking is an intuition that comes naturally to us, perhaps, but was not held by Buddhists, or even by David Hume. This is an example of how the author's criticisms of analytic philosophy are not followed by alternatives that avoid the problems presented.
The last chapter of the book is "Colonizing Philosophy," which addresses the many cases where analytic philosophers have indeed addressed some of the social factors that the author cares about, but have done so in analytic ways that presumably miss the point. This is "colonizing" because they engage the issues but then take them over for their own benefit. I had trouble understanding this criticism (which I guess the author expected!). For example, while I am an analytic philosopher, 11 times over about 30 years I taught Sartre's Being and Nothingness along with analytic texts in an advanced course on Metaphysics. I did it because I wanted to expose my students to a wider range of viewpoints, and I found a lot in B&N that I could appreciate. But I guess this was colonizing, because I did it as an analytic philosopher. But actually I went beyond that. Marjorie Grene, a famous philosopher who was analytic but extremely familiar with continental philosophy (she spent 1933 and 1934 studying with Heidegger and Jaspers), spent the last 20 years of her life in retirement living in Blacksburg, and I always invited her to come talk to the class about Sartre and his philosophical background. She was the closest I knew to a bilingual philosopher--conversant in analytic and continental traditions. Her favorite continental was Merleau-Ponty, but she hated Heidegger and considered him a corrupting influence. Was I colonizing by teaching Sartre? Another example would be Brian Leiter, an analytic philosopher who works on Nietzsche. In fact he thinks there are a lot of good philosophers working on post-Kantian figures--but they aren't generally in "continental" departments, according to him.
The final issue I'll raise is not directly addressed in the book, and that is the impact of post-modern philosophy on the notion of truth. This connects up with my other foray into continental philosophy--a graduate seminar I co-taught in which I taught Singer and bioethics while the other prof taught Foucault and biopolitics. Foucault is all about power, and it is not hard to make the case that what we believe is influenced by power dynamics. But the problem is that this is then reframed as the idea that truth is a function of power, and so there is no legitimate notion of (objective) truth. Not only is this a bad inference, but it has had devastating consequences for our political system, where someone like Trump can say whatever he wants to and people act like there is no truth to which he can be held accountable, there is only the power of the supreme court, or the department of health, or the defense department...and if they are on his side, then that's all there is to the matter. We can try to fight back, but there is nothing deeper at stake than the (im)balance of power.
So what bothered me most about the book was that the author spelled out no positive program that could be given a social history. If classical liberalism is the worldview of analytic philosophy, that is at least better than the worldview that has grown out of post-modern philosophy. Perhaps the author wishes that Marxism would grow out of non-analytic philosophy--but I don't see that happening. If anything I see Trumpism.
[Thank you for enduring my long sermon.]
I found the book very unsatisfying. I identify as an analytic philosopher. The book turns out to be a critique of analytic philosophy, so I risk being defensive about all this, yet I want to be fair-minded. And I will acknowledge from the start that the author has done a great deal of research and is familiar with a wide range of analytic philosophy. My concern is what is done with all this.
The first thing that bothered me is the author's use of terminology to characterize philosophical conflict. So, much is made to sound more like a fight than a debate:
The opening sentence (p. 1): "Analytic philosophy [is] the hegemonic form of academic philosophy in the English-speaking world." (p. 4): "a cult of personality" (p. 20): "the reign of J.L. Austin" (p. 114, concerning reactions to Gellner's critique): "went on the defensive and closed ranks" (p. 120): "analytic philosophers took over philosophy departments and journals" "remarkably swift and successful takeover of American philosophy" (p. 154): "analytic philosophy expels its challengers" (p. 156): "they have successfully colonized" (p. 167): "throw...sand in the eyes of the radicals" (p. 169): "the stranglehold of analytic philosophy" (p. 200): "heroic assaults" ....
What bothers me about these phrases is that they imply that some kind of hidden force is behind all of this, rather than there being any good reasons. This problem clearly surfaces when the author complains (p. 259) of the "'culture of justification' to which anyone coming with an alternative approach is subjected." In other words, it is oppressive to be asked for reasons (i.e., justification).
Now I myself have shown sympathy for the relevance of some non-cognitive factors in philosophy, especially as it shows itself in Wittgenstein's work Wittgenstein's Artillery: Philosophy as Poetry. But the author gives the impression that this is all there is.
There is a long discussion of the role and treatment of intuitions in philosophy (Ch 9). Largely this is presented as a criticism. Intuitions are treated like experimental evidence, but intuitions are socially influenced rather than independent inputs. The author is right to criticize older ordinary language philosophy for depending on "what we would say" about something, since the "we" tended to be a narrow set of people. Recent "experimental philosophy" has tried to go beyond that narrow set by inquiring from a wider range of people, but it is still true that intuitions are not independent indicators of the truth so much as indicators of how people think. Philosophers are sometimes interested in the nature of our concepts, and intuitions are relevant to understanding the shape of our concepts. Of course, not everyone shares the same concepts--something we should learn especially when we learn a foreign language. No doubt a set of concepts can embody a worldview, and so studying certain concepts can seem like buying into a certain worldview--like "classical liberalism" I suppose. Karl Marx famously said: “The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it.” (11th Thesis on Feuerbach, and the epitaph on Marx's grave). Being a student of Marx I think the author wants philosophy to do Marx's work. Maybe some of our concepts are problematic and are in need of change. But the author never offered any positive suggestions along this line.
Intuitions are also relevant when they are marshaled as evidence in support of a theory. This can seem problematic because, again, our intuitions often may depend on our background or culture. So it is hard to see how they can be indicators of truth. Instead philosophers generally appeal to reasons and arguments to lead them to truth. The author makes the point, however, that (pp. 236-7): "reliance on intuitions...is a form of dogmatism, and thus the antithesis of philosophy. Philosophy advances grounds for claims. To appeal to intuitions is to admit that explanation has run out...and this is no support at all if philosophy is what is supposed to be happening." This is an interesting point, yet it fails to offer an alternative. Far from having to shamefully admit that "explanation has run out," it is a truism. Otherwise explanation would have to go on endlessly or to be circular. The fact is that explanation and all argument has to come to an end at some point. An argument depends on premisses. They can be argued for, of course, but that can't continue endlessly. So Wittgenstein often reminded his readers that reasons come to an end. We can debate when they should come to an end, but they can't just keep going. That's true for everyone--not just analytic philosophers. So, then what? Well, ultimately intuitions, or something like them, enter in. Unfortunately the author never explains what his alternative is....
Well, he does seem to think that (p. 237) thought experiments might be used not to elicit intuitions but to produce "more imaginative, expansive, productive" thoughts. And the author seems to think this is done well, not by analytic philosophers, but by Galileo, Mach, Einstein, Plato and Descartes. I have to agree that vignettes of various sorts can serve useful purposes in philosophy. In fact Chapter 6 of my book on Wittgenstein, mentioned above, looks at 15 such things and examines what they try to achieve and how others have attempted to achieve those aims. But the idea that this is a way of avoiding intuitions is doubtful. The author claims (p. 239, footnote 24) "that Descartes, in securing his conclusion [that I exist as a thinking thing], does not appeal to intuitions at all." That's ridiculous. One of the first criticisms of Descartes' cogito argument came from Lichtenberg, who pointed out that all Descartes established was that "there is thinking". That there is an "I" that is doing the thinking is an intuition that comes naturally to us, perhaps, but was not held by Buddhists, or even by David Hume. This is an example of how the author's criticisms of analytic philosophy are not followed by alternatives that avoid the problems presented.
The last chapter of the book is "Colonizing Philosophy," which addresses the many cases where analytic philosophers have indeed addressed some of the social factors that the author cares about, but have done so in analytic ways that presumably miss the point. This is "colonizing" because they engage the issues but then take them over for their own benefit. I had trouble understanding this criticism (which I guess the author expected!). For example, while I am an analytic philosopher, 11 times over about 30 years I taught Sartre's Being and Nothingness along with analytic texts in an advanced course on Metaphysics. I did it because I wanted to expose my students to a wider range of viewpoints, and I found a lot in B&N that I could appreciate. But I guess this was colonizing, because I did it as an analytic philosopher. But actually I went beyond that. Marjorie Grene, a famous philosopher who was analytic but extremely familiar with continental philosophy (she spent 1933 and 1934 studying with Heidegger and Jaspers), spent the last 20 years of her life in retirement living in Blacksburg, and I always invited her to come talk to the class about Sartre and his philosophical background. She was the closest I knew to a bilingual philosopher--conversant in analytic and continental traditions. Her favorite continental was Merleau-Ponty, but she hated Heidegger and considered him a corrupting influence. Was I colonizing by teaching Sartre? Another example would be Brian Leiter, an analytic philosopher who works on Nietzsche. In fact he thinks there are a lot of good philosophers working on post-Kantian figures--but they aren't generally in "continental" departments, according to him.
The final issue I'll raise is not directly addressed in the book, and that is the impact of post-modern philosophy on the notion of truth. This connects up with my other foray into continental philosophy--a graduate seminar I co-taught in which I taught Singer and bioethics while the other prof taught Foucault and biopolitics. Foucault is all about power, and it is not hard to make the case that what we believe is influenced by power dynamics. But the problem is that this is then reframed as the idea that truth is a function of power, and so there is no legitimate notion of (objective) truth. Not only is this a bad inference, but it has had devastating consequences for our political system, where someone like Trump can say whatever he wants to and people act like there is no truth to which he can be held accountable, there is only the power of the supreme court, or the department of health, or the defense department...and if they are on his side, then that's all there is to the matter. We can try to fight back, but there is nothing deeper at stake than the (im)balance of power.
So what bothered me most about the book was that the author spelled out no positive program that could be given a social history. If classical liberalism is the worldview of analytic philosophy, that is at least better than the worldview that has grown out of post-modern philosophy. Perhaps the author wishes that Marxism would grow out of non-analytic philosophy--but I don't see that happening. If anything I see Trumpism.
[Thank you for enduring my long sermon.]
July 30, 2025
followed a friend to his book launch and even tho i understood as little as a washed up cookiecutter shark, the author was wearing the kind of oversized beach cotton shirt i like and he was funny so 5/5
December 26, 2025
A deeply frustrating, blinkered, and silly book.
Though occasionally informative and most enjoyable when gossipy, the extent of its ‘radical’ critique rests in locating a heresy of liberalism in individual analytic thinkers. A cardinal sin, because liberalism = bad, apparently.
Though occasionally informative and most enjoyable when gossipy, the extent of its ‘radical’ critique rests in locating a heresy of liberalism in individual analytic thinkers. A cardinal sin, because liberalism = bad, apparently.
July 18, 2025
Have a lot to say about it. Maybe one day I'll type it out.
June 25, 2025
Hate is sometimes good. I don't know who hurt Schuringa, but he is full of hate towards analytic philosophy. That makes for an entertaining read. It seems that in its history, nothing good came from those anglo philosophers, and who can blame Schuringa for feeling that way.
Ok, maybe some people would point as hypocrisy that Schuringa questions again and again the disdain analytic philosophers feel towards continental philosophers. Some others would question why a book that is clearly an intellectual history is called "social history". And probably they will be right.
But on the other hand, the feeling of Schuringa's take down of a 70?80? year old tradition with "facts and logic" is satisfying enough that one never feels the need to ask him "what do you exactly mean by 'social history'?"
Ok, maybe some people would point as hypocrisy that Schuringa questions again and again the disdain analytic philosophers feel towards continental philosophers. Some others would question why a book that is clearly an intellectual history is called "social history". And probably they will be right.
But on the other hand, the feeling of Schuringa's take down of a 70?80? year old tradition with "facts and logic" is satisfying enough that one never feels the need to ask him "what do you exactly mean by 'social history'?"
October 4, 2025
يتلخص النقد الأقوى والأكثر وجاهة لهذا الكتاب في إخفاقه بالنهوض بمطلب عنوانه (تاريخ اجتماعي للفلسفة التحليلية). رغم أن الكتاب يقدم نقدًا أيديولوجيًا مُحقًا وقويًا (من اليسار) يكشف الفلسفة التحليلية بوصفها إيديولوجيا نخبوية طبقية، إلا أنه لم ينجح في تتبع المسارات الاجتماعية التي شكلت تياراً متنوعاً وغير متجانس، "جماعة متخيلة للفلاسفة التحليليين" في مواجهة "جماعة متخيلة للفلاسفة القاريين"، حيث جاء التاريخ الاجتماعي الموعود أشبه بتنويعة من السير الذاتية الموجزة (البيوغرافيات) لأبطال وأساطير الفلسفة التحليلية—مور، وراسل، وفتغنشتاين—مُرفقة بـخلفيات اجتماعية ضبابية تفتقر إلى العمق التحليلي.
عن الجذور الطبقية والنخبوية في كامبريدج، اقتصر المؤلف على الإشارة إلى أن الفلاسفة الأوائل، مثل مور وراسل وفتغنشتاين، كانوا ينحدرون من **منابت ثرية**. ففي كامبريدج، يجد النقد الطبقي أرضه الخصبة في تشكيل **نخبة من الأساتذة والطلبة البيض ميسوري الحال** (مع إقصاء واضح للنساء والملونين في تلك المرحلة)، والذين ورثوا التقليد الإمبريقي فلسفياً من سلالة **برجوازية ليبرالية**. في هذا السياق، عمد المؤلف إلى **التقليل من شأن الثورة الفكرية** التي قادها راسل ومور ضد المثالية السائدة آنذاك، واضعاً جهودهما في سياق أضيق، في **سجال نقدي داخلي** بين أروقة الأكاديميا، وليس تحولاً اجتماعياً أو ثقافياً واسع النطاق.
يعود المؤلف إلى "إمبريقية هيوم" وفلسفة "الحس العام" بوصفها الإطار الفلسفي الذي يعكس نظرة النخبة البرجوازية الليبرالية للعالم. فالحقائق، في هذا الإطار، هي "معطيات خاملة" ومستقلة عن الذاتية، ما يعني عزل الذات وتحييدها وتحويلها إلى مجرد شيء محايد وخامل يتلقى الحقائق بدلاً من التفاعل بسلبية بدلا من التفاعل معها وصناعتها. من هذا المنظور السياسي، تُقرأ الجهود المنطقية والتحليلية الأولى كـ**فلسفة للوضع القائم البرجوازي**، حيث يُفهم العزل والتحييد للذات كركيزة طبقية. إن هذه الرؤية تكشف عن جوهر **اللاتاريخية واللااجتماعية** الكامنة في الفلسفة التحليلية؛ فهي متجذرة، من جهة، في **نخبويتها الطبقية**، ومن جهة أخرى، في **ذهنيتها ومنهجيتها الفكرية** التي ترتكز على التجريد المنطقي.
وتُقدم النزعة الوضعية والمنطقية واللغوية، التي تتبناها الفلسفة التحليلية، على أنها **قوة تحييد لا سياسية ولا تاريخية**. إنها آلية فكرية تعمل على **نزع الطابع التاريخي والاجتماعي** عن المشاكل والأحداث والأشخاص، بحيث تُصبح قضايا العالم إما **"قضايا مزيفة"** لا معنى لها، أو مجرد **"قضايا منطقية لغوية"** يمكن حلها بالتحليل اللغوي الدقيق بمعزل عن الواقع المعيش، أو مشاكل لا عقلانية لها طابع ميتافزيقي أو خرافي.
المفكر التحليلي شخص يمارس **كلبية نقدية** متعالية منطقياً بشكل دائم، يفهم نفسه بوصفه [تقليد اللا-تقليد] ويتعالى فوق كل السياقات الذاتية والاجتماعية والتاريخية والواقعية الحقيقية التي تحيط بالمشاكل والقضايا. ففي أشد المناظرات والندوات حدة، يجلس التحليلي "مكتفيا بنفسه وتذاكياته"، ويبدي فنه في الرد على أشد الانتقادات حرارة بمنطق بارد، مستخدما ردوداً نمطية [علمية ومحايدة] لا تعني شيئاً في السياق سوى الإحالة إلى فضيلة الاختلاف العامة، والتعبير عن الاختلاف بوصفه عرضا لسوء الفهم: **"لعلي لم أفهم ما تعني لكن..."** أو **"لا أعتقد أن فهمتك لكن..."**. وغالباً ما يُورد التحليلي مثالاً سخيفاً يهدف من ورائه إلى **تجريد المنتقد من وجاهة فكرته ومدرسته برمتها**. هذه الردود نمطية ومنتشرة بين التحليلين، تعبر عن ممارسة سلطوية نخبوية، أكثر مما تعكس نقاشا حقيقيا يسعى لتسويات حقيقية بين متساويين أو نظراء، وأكثر مما تعبر عن معركة بين خصوم إيديولوجيين في ساحات الصراع الحقيقية بين نظراء متساويين في وجاهة قضاياهم.
إن مفهوم **"الوضوح"**، الذي بدأ كفكرة ديكارتية حديثة، ومفهوم **"الحس العام"**، هما ادعاء وفضيلة تحليلية عامة، يستخدمها "فرسان التحليلية" ببراعة بوصفها **"سلاحاً شاملاً"**. ويُفترض أن هذا الوضوح يمثل **سلطة مدججة بالقوة**، وهي أداة يُعاد بها تأكيد الهيمنة الفكرية والأخلاقية في كل مرة يستخدمها "الشخص المناسب ضد الشخص المناسب" لتأكيد أن الخلل يكمن في غموض الآخر.
الفلسفة التحليلية ما بعد الحرب: تحالف مع السلطة الاستعمارية.
بعد الحرب العالمية الثانية، يفترض الكاتب أن الفلسفة التحليلية شهدت تمايزاً أكبر وانتشاراً واسعاً، خاصة بعد موجات الهجرة إلى **الجامعات الأنغلوفونية** (البريطانية والأمريكية)، متجاوزة حدود حلقة فيينا وجامعة كامبريدج.
لكن هذا الانتشار لم يكن بريئاً من التدخل السياسي؛ فقد لعبت **الماكارثية** و**جهود الدولة الأمريكية** الهادفة إلى الحد من **الخطر الشيوعي** دوراً محورياً في **تعزيز ودعم الأبحاث التحليلية**. بعبارة أخرى، تلاقت الجهود السياسية والإيديولوجية المناهضة للفاشيات والشيوعية مع **"اللاتاريخية" و"اللااجتماعية"**، مع حيادية وأدواتية الذخيرة الفلسفة التحليلية. وهكذا "دفعت الماركسية بالتحليلية" ونجحت الفلسفة التحليلية في **"استعمار"** الأكاديميا الغربية الأمريكية والأوروبية. فكرة **"الاستعمار"** هنا هي فكرة محورية وكاشفة، إذ تُلمح إلى وجود **تحالف ضمني** بين الفكر التحليلي، المتسم بـ"اللاتاريخية" و"اللااجتماعية"، وبين قوى وسلطة الأمر الواقع المهيمنة والاستعمار. إن هذا الفكر لا تاريخي وذهني بطبعه، وبالتالي فهو **"غير واع"** بجذوره الاجتماعية والطبقية، و**"غير واع"** بتحالفاته السلطوية، حتى في تاريخه الخاص؛ فكيف له أن يكون واعياً بتاريخ أوسع، سواء كان أوروبياً أو غربياً أو مرتبطاً بالآخر الشرقي أو الجنوبي؟
تحييد حركات التحرر: الامتداد الاستعماري المعاصر
يصل بنا نقد الكاتب إلى نقطة أكثر راهنية وخطورة، وهي امتداد فكرة الاستعمار إلى **استيلاء التحليليين المعاصرين على حركات سياسية واجتماعية حيوية** مثل **النسوية، والماركسية، وحركات إنهاء الاستعمار (الديكولنيالية)**.
يلاحظ الكاتب أنه عند تمدد التحليليين إلى هذه الحركات التي هي سياسية واجتماعية وتاريخية بامتياز، فإنهم يستخدمون أدواتهم التحليلية والمنطقية للعمل على **"تحييد" (Neutralizing)** هذه الحركات، وتحويلها إلى مجرد **"حقول بحثية"** أكاديمية أو إيدولوجية نخبوية أو طبقة بامتيازات. هذا التحييد الفكري يمثل شكلاً من أشكال **الاستيلاء** والسيطرة من قبل السلطة، ويخدم في نهاية المطاف **إيديولوجيا الواقعية الرأسمالية** التي تُسكت النقد الجذري وتُذيب حركات المقاومة ضمن الأطر الأكاديمية المجردة وضمن "نبالة الفكر والأكاديميا"، التي تمارس نقدًا مكتفيا بذاته، يعمل على إعادة انتاج ما ينقده، لإعادة انتاج نفسه ومراكمة رأسماله الخص.
في الختام، وعلى الرغم من إخفاق الكتاب في تقديم التاريخ الاجتماعي المتكامل الذي وعد به، فإن قيمته الحقيقية تكمن في كونه **نقدًا أيديولوجيًا جريئًا وكاشفًا** يُفضح الأصول الطبقية والنخبوية والآليات الفكرية للفلسفة التحليلية بوصفها خادماً فعالاً للهيمنة البرجوازية الليبرالية تاريخيا وللواقعية والايديولوجيا الرأسمالية متجذر في الأكاديميا الغربية.
October 4, 2025
less a social history, more of a character study that mostly successfully does the work of ideology critique; falters a bit in the chapters addressing post-1970s analytic philosophy. a pretty good read and I find Schuringa's polemical style well suited to the subject matter (unlike some detractors).
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October 4, 2025It's good to be critical, especially considering movements like analytic philosophy which is perpetuated uncritical without an alternative being offered or even seen as possible. Generally the tone was one of arrogance and I wouldn't take this work as a holistic view of these particular philosophies and the work would be generally better if the author could suspend their disbelief for a second or two but I understand one book can't dismantle the Gordian knot that is liberal hegemony. Entertaining and interesting read
August 20, 2025
This book is so catty I love it
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