Following the suggestion of Greg Frost-Arnold (as discussed by Catarina), I explored Ernest Nagel as a philosophic prophet who invented analytic philosophy as we know it in 1936. In response, Jeff called attention to an important paper by Sidney Hook. Now, I fully accept Jeff's point that Nagel's two papers are a clear response to Hook. Jeff offers five important observations on Hook's paper in which he tries to suggest that Hook and Nagel (who, as the splendid Melissa Zinkin pointed out, were close friends) were offering a shared response to German philosophy. But Jeff's reading is based on a misunderstanding of what Hook is saying--and the misunderstanding is caused by the success of Nagel's way of framing things. (So much so that Hook's philosophic universe becomes almost unimaginable to us.) To see what I am getting at, let me first quote the crucial third point in Jeff's post, and then show how even a sophisticated philosopher like Jeff becomes less than sure-footed: "3. In his observations concerning Husserl, Hook makes two points that are especially relevant considering contemporary discussions within and outside continental philosophy regarding realism. First, Hook identifies the phenomenological tradition spearheaded by Husserl as "the strongest analytical group in Germany and [secondly] closest to the English and American school of neo-realism." (p. 152). Whether justified or not, Hook sees Husserl as closely aligned with the Russellian tradition in anglo-american philosophy. What is important for Hook's fourth point is that the same is not true of Heidegger."
Now, I agree with Jeff's treatment of Hook on Heidegger. (Hook criticizes attempts to turn Heidegger into some kind of Rorty/Dreyfuss style pragmatist avant la-lettre.) [Incidentally, I think Hook had read Carnap's treatment of Heidegger.] But Jeff is mistaken into thinking that "neo-realism" should be identified with Russell. In fact, Hook is referring to an American movement of scientific philosophers (Edwin Bissell Holt (Harvard University), Walter Taylor Marvin (Rutgers College), William Pepperell Montague (Columbia University), Ralph Barton Perry (Harvard), Walter Boughton Pitkin (Columbia) and Edward Gleason Spaulding (Princeton University)) that, not unlike, the later (!) scientific philosophy of Russell and the Vienna Circle believed in division of labor, shared problem solving that would allow for progress in philosophy to find a common set of doctrines (axioms, etc). Their 1910 (!) manifesto can be read here. (It is uncanny how much they anticipate the Vienna Circle manifesto, although there are also interesting differences that I hope to explore soon. All are reacting to the authority of science in ways I have tried to understand in terms of "Newton's challenge to philosophy.") The neorealists also share a focus on problems with the hero of Hook's piece, Hartmann (159).
Moreover, by "analytical" (see above) or "analysis" (142; 149) Hook doesn't mean what Nagel (and thus, we) mean by it. It's not just that Hook identifies Husserl's program with analysis (on 152ff). But also Heidegger is treated as somebody who engages in "analysis" (154), as do the students of Dilthey (153). Rather to be an analyst in in Hook's lingo means, besides adopting a taxonomic (or whatever you wish to call it) method, that one keeps one's eyes on "the object" (152). It means that one rejects the idealism (still so pervasive in Germany by Hook's lights, while going out of fashion in the UK and Stateside by mid 30s). But the "analytic tradition of American and English philosophy" that Hook praises is the now invisible community of scientific philosophers dominated by now forgotten neorealists. Nagel was so successful in re-coining the concept "analytical philosophy" that even one of our most sophisticated contemporary philosophical historians (i.e., Jeff!) can't see what he has wrought.
This is not to deny that Hook's paper deserves close re-reading if only for the amusing thought that Hegel seems to anticipate Wittgenstein (144); that the focus on the autonomy of philosophy undermines its authority (145); that Max Weber may not have been influential at all (note 4 149); and that Reichenbach is in debate with Keynes and Broad (159). In fact, we can understand's Nagel's two-fold Impressions and Appraisal paper as an attempt to not merely successfully efface Keynes and Broad from the center of philosophy (and I have argued he did so deliberately), but also to displace Reichenbach (and Hartmann) from the future of philosophy and put Carnap in their place, at least temporarily (because Nagel has an agenda that is at odds with Carnap).
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