Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction. Analytic versus continental: arguments on the methods and value of philosophy
- PART I FORMATIVE ENCOUNTERS: A SHORT HISTORY OF THE “DIVIDE”
- 1 Frege and Husserl
- 2 Russell versus Bergson
- 3 Carnap versus Heidegger
- 4 The Frankfurt School, the positivists and Popper
- 5 Royaumont: Ryle and Hare versus French and German philosophy
- 6 Derrida versus Searle and beyond
- PART II METHOD
- PART III INTERPRETATION OF KEY TOPICS
- Conclusion
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
4 - The Frankfurt School, the positivists and Popper
from PART I - FORMATIVE ENCOUNTERS: A SHORT HISTORY OF THE “DIVIDE”
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction. Analytic versus continental: arguments on the methods and value of philosophy
- PART I FORMATIVE ENCOUNTERS: A SHORT HISTORY OF THE “DIVIDE”
- 1 Frege and Husserl
- 2 Russell versus Bergson
- 3 Carnap versus Heidegger
- 4 The Frankfurt School, the positivists and Popper
- 5 Royaumont: Ryle and Hare versus French and German philosophy
- 6 Derrida versus Searle and beyond
- PART II METHOD
- PART III INTERPRETATION OF KEY TOPICS
- Conclusion
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Of course, the formative years of the emergence of a divide weren't one-sidedly characterised by analytic philosophers projecting certain despised characteristics onto their continental philosophical “others”! In different ways, both Bergson and Heidegger targeted calculative thinking and logicism (as Hegel had done before them), and often with more than a nod in the direction of the emerging analytic movement. Soon after Being and Time, Horkheimer was appointed director of the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt, and in the early 1930s he put forward his own critique of logical positivism, while also attacking Lebensphilosophie and early forms of existentialism. For Horkheimer, it is not just the positivist fetishism of facts that is objectionable, but also the reliance on formal logic. He suggests, in essays collected in Critical Theory, that to see logic and mathematics as privileged disclosers of truth reduces both to a series of tautologies with no real meaning in the historical world. Moreover, Horkheimer claims that logical positivism remains securely bound to metaphysics despite its attempts to leave it behind, since the absolutizing of facts also entailed a reification of the existing order (1975: 140). Indeed, the bald claim is made that logical positivism is connected to the existence of totalitarian states. In regard to the positivist deference to science, Horkheimer also brings in the charge of conservatism:
With respect to the future, the characteristic activity of science is not construction but induction. The more often something has occurred in the past, the more certain that it will in all the future. Knowledge relates solely to what is and to its recurrence. New forms of being, especially those arising from the historical activity of men, lie beyond empiricist theory.
(Ibid.: 144)- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Analytic versus ContinentalArguments on the Method and Value of Philosophy, pp. 31 - 34Publisher: Acumen PublishingPrint publication year: 2010