Sprog-worship in Oxford
May 25, 2014 8:15:01 GMT -5
Post by Deleted on May 25, 2014 8:15:01 GMT -5
A.N. Wilson wrote this not so long ago. It is a potted history of recent British philosophy:
"The Oxford Movement was a phenomenon of the 1830s. A tiny number of dons, religious conservatives by temperament, wrote a number of Tracts for the Times, in which they discussed ways of reviving the ancient practices of Christendom within the nineteenth-century established Church. They deplored, above all things, the dangerous influences of German philosphy on the study of the Scriptures. Indeed, it was said at this date that there were only two men in the whole of Oxford who knew German.
"Within a few years the leader of this movement, John Henry Newman, had decided that the task of recalling the Church of England to its 'Catholic' essence was a hopeless one and he had joined the Church of Rome. Thereafter, the younger dons breathed a sigh of relief. The 'Tractarian' vision of things became the preserve of a churchy sect, and the university could, about thirty years later than any comparable learned body in Europe, begin to read the great continental philosophers, above all Hegel. The grand British Hegelian tradition, which produced such philosophers as T.H. Green and F.H. Bradley, was born, and it would continue to dominate the British philosophical scene, really until A.J. Ayer published Language, Truth and Logic in 1936.
"As mentioned before, this book popularised the central doctrines of Logical Positivism advanced by the Vienna Circle surrounding Moritz Schlick, and it was basically a 'scientific' view of knowledge. Propositions that could not be verified by sense data, or by physical experiment (excepting the a priori truths of mathematics and formal logic), were in the strict sense meaningless.
"Ayer - who was only twenty-five when his book was published - and his followers managed to do two things to the Oxford philosophy school. First, they persuaded the next generation that the writings of the neo-Hegelian Idealists were to be consigned to the history books. There was to be no more talk of the Absolute. And the second thing which followed from this was that, with the abandonment of a metaphysic that could embrace 'everything which is', philosophy became much more modest in its aims. Gilbert Ryle's book The Concept of Mind was in its way as influential as Ayer's, with its dismssal of the notion of the human mind as a 'ghost in the machine' and its discovery that God had been no more than 'a category mistake.'
"In the late forties and fifties there was a sense that Oxford philosophy was dominated by analytical or linguistic philosophy. If every philosopher in Oxford was not a logical positivist, there were many - and they were nearly all male, of course - who delighted in positivism's narrowness, and if they were not positivist, they looked about for some 'other 'ole' which was equally constricted in outlook.
"No one was less like a Tractarian clergyman than A.J. Ayer, but in the wholesale dismissal of the major philosophical development in Europe since the 1920s, there was a sense of Oxford history repeating itself. Just as Dr. Pusey kept the young High Church enthusiasts innocent of the slightest knowledge of Hegel in the 1830s, so there was no one in the Oxford philosophy faculty (except Iris Murdoch) who appeared to have read, or mastered, or considered important, the central texts and tenets of continental existentialism."
I think this explains a good deal. Instead of being educated by serious persons, it has been the misfortune of a whole generation of philosophically inclined youths to get caught up in the mass adoration of a 25-year-old sprog called "Freddie"; "worship Ayer or else!" cried the deluded dons.
"The Oxford Movement was a phenomenon of the 1830s. A tiny number of dons, religious conservatives by temperament, wrote a number of Tracts for the Times, in which they discussed ways of reviving the ancient practices of Christendom within the nineteenth-century established Church. They deplored, above all things, the dangerous influences of German philosphy on the study of the Scriptures. Indeed, it was said at this date that there were only two men in the whole of Oxford who knew German.
"Within a few years the leader of this movement, John Henry Newman, had decided that the task of recalling the Church of England to its 'Catholic' essence was a hopeless one and he had joined the Church of Rome. Thereafter, the younger dons breathed a sigh of relief. The 'Tractarian' vision of things became the preserve of a churchy sect, and the university could, about thirty years later than any comparable learned body in Europe, begin to read the great continental philosophers, above all Hegel. The grand British Hegelian tradition, which produced such philosophers as T.H. Green and F.H. Bradley, was born, and it would continue to dominate the British philosophical scene, really until A.J. Ayer published Language, Truth and Logic in 1936.
"As mentioned before, this book popularised the central doctrines of Logical Positivism advanced by the Vienna Circle surrounding Moritz Schlick, and it was basically a 'scientific' view of knowledge. Propositions that could not be verified by sense data, or by physical experiment (excepting the a priori truths of mathematics and formal logic), were in the strict sense meaningless.
"Ayer - who was only twenty-five when his book was published - and his followers managed to do two things to the Oxford philosophy school. First, they persuaded the next generation that the writings of the neo-Hegelian Idealists were to be consigned to the history books. There was to be no more talk of the Absolute. And the second thing which followed from this was that, with the abandonment of a metaphysic that could embrace 'everything which is', philosophy became much more modest in its aims. Gilbert Ryle's book The Concept of Mind was in its way as influential as Ayer's, with its dismssal of the notion of the human mind as a 'ghost in the machine' and its discovery that God had been no more than 'a category mistake.'
"In the late forties and fifties there was a sense that Oxford philosophy was dominated by analytical or linguistic philosophy. If every philosopher in Oxford was not a logical positivist, there were many - and they were nearly all male, of course - who delighted in positivism's narrowness, and if they were not positivist, they looked about for some 'other 'ole' which was equally constricted in outlook.
"No one was less like a Tractarian clergyman than A.J. Ayer, but in the wholesale dismissal of the major philosophical development in Europe since the 1920s, there was a sense of Oxford history repeating itself. Just as Dr. Pusey kept the young High Church enthusiasts innocent of the slightest knowledge of Hegel in the 1830s, so there was no one in the Oxford philosophy faculty (except Iris Murdoch) who appeared to have read, or mastered, or considered important, the central texts and tenets of continental existentialism."
I think this explains a good deal. Instead of being educated by serious persons, it has been the misfortune of a whole generation of philosophically inclined youths to get caught up in the mass adoration of a 25-year-old sprog called "Freddie"; "worship Ayer or else!" cried the deluded dons.