In Hook’s survey of German philosophy circa 1930, which I discuss here, we saw that for Hook Husserl’s phenomenological movement (or school) is "the strongest analytical group in Germany and closest to the English and American school of neo-realism." In his follow-up post (here), Eric challenged my claim that Hook had Russell in mind but rather was thinking of “an American movement of scientific philosophers” – namely, Montague, Barton, and others who set forth their platform of neo-realism in a 1910 issue of JOP (and which Eric cites [the essay is here]). I wholeheartedly accept Eric’s claim that this is indeed who Hook had in mind when he refers to the American school of neo-realism, but I’ll stick to my guns that Russell is who is being thought of when he refers to the English school. Eric would probably accept this point, for what he is arguing is that it was only a consequence of Nagel’s successful “philosophic prophecy” which has led us to think only of Russell (and subsequently Frege) and not of the American school Hook also had in mind. Eric’s use of the concept philosophic prophecy to understand the contingencies of the history of philosophy is an important and challenging contribution to those of us who struggle to think through the historical relationships that come to constitute various philosophical “traditions” and “schools.” My only hesitation with this concept is that it seems to rely too strongly on an individualist, or great man, understanding of intellectual history. So when Eric attributes to Nagel the power to determine “The way we think about the origins of analytic philosophy,” or that Nagel was “so successful in recoining the concept “analytical philosophy”…[that most people, myself included] can’t see what he has wrought,” the Foucauldian in me becomes skeptical of attributing such authorial control over consequences. Nagel’s 1936 essay does stand as an interesting testament to the processes of inclusion/exclusion. I will grant that. But an adequate accounting of the eventual success of the narrative that legitimizes these exclusions/inclusions needs to do more than address the prophet but also look as best one can into the dialogue behind the scenes as well as the institutional and structural factors that make some inclusions/exclusions viable and others not. I have already suggested that Nagel was in dialogue with Hook but I would add another, and perhaps even more important example: Morris Cohen, who was Nagel’s former teacher and the author of the influential Reason and Nature: An Essay on the Meaning of Scientific Method (1931) and, with Nagel, An Introduction to Logic and Scientific Method (1934).
Cohen is important not only for the personal working relationship he had with Nagel but also for the fact that in the JOP issue where the neo-realist program was published the essay that immediately follows it is by Cohen, “The Conception of Philosophy in Recent Discussion” (here). One could also say that in this essay Cohen prophesies both the failure of the neo-realist program as well as, by extension, the Vienna Circle program and manifesto the neo-realists anticipate, and Cohen's piece prefigures some of the moves that will come to be made within “continental” philosophy.
In his essay Cohen lists three distinct historical periods in recent American philosophy (that is, recent from the perspective of 1910) – there is the “theologic, metaphysic, and the scientific.” (401). Cohen then dates these periods with the beginnings of three different journals: the Journal of Speculative Philosophy for the theological period, the Philosophical Review for the metaphyshical, and the Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific Methods (now simply the Journal of Philosophy) for the scientific. Cohen signals Dewey’s 1903 book Studies in Logical Theory (here) as the beginning of the third period, and cites as paradigmatic Dewey’s claim that we ought “to give up the old idea of philosophy as a critique of the special sciences, and, on the other hand, to make philosophic discussion itself scientific, i.e., to narrow it down to certain definite and decidable issues.” (402). This echoes the neo-realist platform in that a crucial, and shared position of the signatories was to avoid, as Ralph Barton Perry puts it, the consequence where “philosophical problems and their solutions are essentially personal,” and this goal is achieved the neo-realists believed through cooperation and the adoption of a “scientific approach [whereby] genuine problems will be revealed, philosophical thought will be clarified, and a way opened for real progress.” (393)
But then Cohen comes down against such a view of philosophy. He states quite baldly that “There is no such thing as a definite philosophy which can be taught impersonally. There are still only philosophies of different schools, and the choice between them is largely a matter of vital or temperamental preference” (406). Cohen then goes on to state that it has “been only too obvious to the rest of the world” that there has been a lack of consensus among philosophers, there are just schools and traditions and “those who maintain the scientific character of philosophy have had a hard time trying to minimize or explain away the fundamental differences of the different schools” (406). And then in what must clearly be a challenge to the “platform” that just preceded his own essay, Cohen almost mockingly points out that “From time to time, however, some conscientious person suggests the other alternative, viz., the construction of a philosophic platform which will bring into clearness the fundamental agreements” (ibid.). This is not to say that philosophy should not aspire to being scientific; rather, as Cohen understands it, philosophy “would aim to be scientific, but it would not be afraid to go beyond science just as life and conduct must go beyond knowledge” (409).
Cohen then goes on to compare philosophy with literature. Both literature and philosophy, he states, “work by appealing to certain reigning idols. These idols come into vogue in different ways. They are seldom refuted or directly overthrown. Generally they are simply outlived, or they do not survive the change of fashion” (408). And thus while Cohen will encourage philosophy to be rigorous, or “as scientific as possible,” philosophers must not “forget [their] strong kinship with literature” (409).
Although he was clearly and prominently associated with one of the central figures of analytic philosophy (namely, Nagel), Cohen cautions against what he sees as the hubris of a scientific philosophy and claims there are just differnt philosophical schools that one associates with largely as a result of "temperamental preference." Nagel, then, to use Eric's concept, was perhaps in dialogue with Cohen and prophesying a distinctive philosophical school, and perhaps he didn't refer to the neo-realists because, as Cohen might put it, they were simply out of fashion while Russell was not. And in Cohen, finally, one also finds him making claims one might expect to find more commonly within the continental tradition, namely the recognition of the parallels between philosophy and literature.
Cohen’s reservations concerning the neo-realists anticipates and articulates some of the motives for Husserl’s neo-Kantian moves and the work that would become the Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenonomenology, a theme I’ll discuss in part II.
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