Martin Kusch, Psychologism


1

Kusch, Martin. Psychologism: A Case Study in the Sociology of Philosophical Knowledge. London; New York: Routledge, 1995. See also the online appendices:

Four Appendices to PSYCHOLOGISM (1995)

This book is fascinating. Abstruse as it is, for me it’s like reading a detective novel. I put this among the top half dozen books illuminating aspects of the history of philosophy that relate to my interests.

Kusch analyzes in great detail the point-for-point philosophical issues involved in the war over psychologism and the institutional turf that was fought over, and eventually with the First World War and the Weimar Republic, the overall social and ideological climate that liquidated the debate of earlier decades.

The war against psychologism was waged first by Frege and then by Husserl, who was accused of psychologism by Frege and later purged said elements from his philosophy. Frege as we know was the godfather of analytical philosophy, while Husserl became the progenitor of so-called continental philosophy. Understanding the dynamics of the battles of the time presumably helps to explain this split, but ultimately we learn more about the development of German philosophy from the controversies in which Husserl was engaged.

Kusch seeks to rescue the nature of this historical philosophical dynamic from the oblivion to which the victory of the anti-psychologistic tendency relegated it. This is, as he calls it, the victory of the anti-naturalistic perspective.

Now, this seems a bit odd to me, because the initial debate was over the status of logic. The abstract objects of logic and mathematics and the deductive necessity that renders them independent of the subjective wills of their human creators creates an ontological problem for anyone not committed to objective idealism but who nonetheless rejects subjective idealism. The notion that logic can be explained by human psychology seems to rob it of its objectivity. One strategy is to affirm logic’s normative character. Kusch presents all the various positions presented in these arguments. I must say I have no sympathy of any kind for psychologism, and I am on the side of Frege and Husserl here, but I would not call my world-view anti-naturalistic.

Experimental psychology was on the rise in the late 19th century. Institutionally it was ensconced within philosophy departments, and the psychologists’ purview intruded into what would properly be considered as philosophy, and given the institutional arrangements constituted a threat to traditional philosophy. (One of the main partisans of the psychologistic camp was Wilhelm Wundt.) Hence the war began, and was not in the end limited to logic and mathematics.

An interesting facet of these battles was how the term “psychologism” was deployed. At some point, everyone accused everyone else of “psychologism,” but one is hard-pressed to find a consistent application of the term.

Kusch, having reviewed the literature of the time, provides charts itemizing all the issues and charges on all sides of the debates, and summarizes them in the book.

I do not find the arguments in favor of psychologism convincing. Perhaps this could be a lesson in pitfalls of naturalizing epistemology (discussed at that time as well), though I would add that naturalizing logic and mathematics, despite their real-world correlates and applications, presents a much more daunting issue, given the non-uniqueness of formalized logics and axiomatic systems. The issue, from what I gather here, is not really a naturalistic world view in general, but rather the naiveté and limitations of empiricism, competing with . . . whatever Frege and Husserl ultimately represent. Among better alternatives I would count Popper’s “three worlds” schema. (I do not recall, however, how Popper differentiates (if he does or should) between the character of logic and mathematics and other shared artifacts of the human intellect and imagination.)

Note that, while up to this point the issues described involve the ontological status of logical and mathematical constructs, what we see from here on in is an all-out war over the relationship between the advocates of experimental psychology and “pure” philosophy.

An interesting chapter on the institutional conflicts involves what Kusch refers to as role hybridization. Psychology at the moment the conflict interrupts is to be found within departments of philosophy directed by “pure” philosophers. Added to the intrinsic intellectual issues was the possible threat of the eventual extinction of pure philosophy as (experimental) psychology advances.

If one wants to frame the limitations of all sides of the philosophical war, one might want to take a look at the larger sociocultural conflicts. Advocates of psychology such as Brentano and Heymans that psychology could counteract the cultural decline they perceived. Problems as they saw them included the divorce rate, religious displacement, job instability, and fragmentation in general. Brentano advocated a prominent role for psychology in politics. Marbe thought psychology could be the central axis for a range of endeavors. Advocacy of psychology for the military was not far behind. Furthermore, psychology could combat the plague of materialistic world views. (pp. 151-2)

The totally reactionary conception of society here (my judgment, not Kusch’s) may well be related to the limitations of the philosophies in combat. As to whom the plague of materialism applies, while I do not know what Brentano had in mind, my first thought is the German Social Democrats, i.e. Marxists.  We shall see eventually how badly all these people behaved in World War I.

Of interest also is the advocacy of psychology (note: not sociology or political economy) as the foundation of the Geisteswissenschaften, or human sciences. (153) Wundt, Lipps, and Lamprecht were behind this, for example. There were also arguments for psychology as the foundation of philosophy, or the condition of progress in philosophy. Note that, in addition to the dubiousness of these claims, one should beware of premature claims of naturalizing philosophy (epistemology) when both the naturalizing and the philosophy are so ideologically loaded.

The institutional stage following that of role hybridization Kusch names role purification: the “pure” philosophers retaliate. Kusch highlights Dilthey, Rickert, Windelband, and Husserl.

Dilthey objected to the utilization of the hypothetical-deductive method of the natural sciences, the inability (according to Dilthey) to adjudicate competing hypotheses, the premise of determining and interrelating atomic psychological elements, the presumption of psychophysical parallelism, and the presumption that all psychological phenomena could be derived from sensations and feelings, and the paucity of mental phenomena under investigation. Dilthey claimed that mental phenomena could be immediately rather than experimentally known. (163)  Dilthey also claimed that psychophysical parallelism was actually a form of materialism, whose narrow determinism constituted a danger to criminology. (164) Dilthey countered experimental psychology with a descriptive and analytical psychology, which would deploy all means of investigation including the works of geniuses and works of art. (164-5) Dilthey’s method involved introspection, and what looks to me like a holist rather than atomistic approach. To me his program looks like a different brand of psychologism, but it appealed to a variety of “pure” philosophers.

At first neo-Kantians were sympathetic to experimental psychology. Windelband, while acknowledging the importance of psychology, insisted that it constitutes a separate discipline and should be institutionalized entirely outside of philosophy departments. (170) His attitude towards psychology grew more negative with time. He blamed psychology, physiology, and historical relativism for what he deemed the decline of philosophy in the 1880s and 1890s. Windelband proposed (1894) his own classification of the sciences, rejecting the traditional distinction between Geisteswissenschaften and Naturwissenschaften (natural sciences), as psychology drew on aspects of both, proposing instead a schema of nomothetic (seeking general laws) and idiographic sciences (based on particular facts or events). Empirical psychology would then be a nomothetic science. (171-2) Windelband also argued that historical sciences proceed with natural knowledge of human nature in mind, not on the basis of scientific psychology. (172)

Rickert distinguished between Geisteswissenschaften and Naturwissenschaften on the basis of their natures of concept formation, i.e. concepts based on generality or particularity of the phenomenon under investigation. He went beyond Windelband, linking culture to values. (173) Thus empirical psychology was not a cultural science. The cultural sciences were concerned with values, not psychology. Scientific psychology was of little use to the historian. (174)

Rickert was also troubled by the prospects of downsizing the great men of history. He railed against a “materialistic historiography” that “depends for the most part on the specific wishes of social democracy”. With its “guiding cultural ideal” being “democratic”, “it creates the tendency […] to regard the great personalities as inessential and to accept only that which comes from the masses.” [175]

Well, well!

Rickert also saw the objectivity of values as the highest objectivity.

For Stumpf the catastrophe of German philosophy consisted entirely in the materialistic writings of Feuerbach, Vogt, Büchner, Marx, Engels, and Stirner. (175)

Well, well, well!

Schlick repudiated Windelband’s and Rickert’s distinctions between the Geisteswissenschaften and Naturwissenschaften, finding both generality and particularity in both. (177) Schlick disintguished between two kinds of concept formation on the basis of quantitative vs. qualitative methods.

Coming installment(s): Balance of chapter on role purification: Husserl’s relation to psychology, “pure” philosophy & the new psychology, the petition to exclude experimental philosophers from philosophy departments, ensuing controversies; why Husserl was influential and not Frege in these controversies. Then: World War I & the patriotic drum-beating of the German philosophers, the rise of Lebensphilosophie, the hegemony of irrationalism, and the triumph of phenomenology in the Weimar Republic, the fate of Cassirer and the appearance of the Vienna Circle. Kusch’s summary & conclusions; my conclusions.

Items of related interest:

Hanna, Robert. Review of Psychologism: A Case Study in the Sociology of Philosophical Knowledge by Martin Kusch (London: Routledge, 1995), Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, vol. 57, no. 4, December 1997, pp. 961-964.

Jacquette, Dale, ed. Philosophy, Psychology and Psychologism: Critical and Historical Readings on the Psychological Turn in Philosophy. New York; Boston; Dordrecht; London; Moscow: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2003. (Philosophical Studies Series; 91)


Originally posted on R. Dumain’s blog Studies in a Dying Culture on May 12th, 2014.
Categories:
academia, analytical philosophy, continental philosophy, empiricism, epistemology, Frege, German philosophy, historiography of philosophy, Husserl, idealism, irrationalism, Martin Kusch, naturalism, naturalized epistemology, Neo-Kantianism, phenomenology, philosophers, psychologism, psychology, reviews, sociology of knowledge, Wilhelm Wundt.


2

Kusch, Martin. Psychologism: A Case Study in the Sociology of Philosophical Knowledge. London; New York: Routledge, 1995. See also the Four Appendices to Psychologism (1995).

Husserl was preoccupied with psychology and himself was tarred with the label of psychologism. Descriptive phenomenology “serves to prepare the ground for psychology as an empirical science.” Husserl was aware of the pitfalls of his approach. He emphasized that he did not make logic dependent on psychological theories, but that phenomenology provides “a certain class of descriptions” from which to elaborate theories of logic and of empirical psychology. (p. 179-80) Wundt was not impressed. Husserl vehemently counterattacked in a posthumously published text and in a pubished article of 1911 in which he attacked naturalized philosophy and experimental philosophy.  (1) A science of fact cannot underwrite normative disciplines. (2) All of natural science is epistemologically naïve (cannot justify itself). (3) Experimental psychology is unscientific: it lacks a clarification of key concepts and a descriptive analysis of consciousness. Experimental work is conceptually crude and lacks theoretical guidance which could make sense of its results. (4) Experimental psychology mistakenly models itself on the natural sciences, but mental phenomena are different from physical objects. (5) Experimental psychology neglects the distinction between mental particulars and essences. Now phenomenology was based on the analysis of essences rather than facts, which is different from mere reliance on introspection. (6) Determining the essences of phenomena of pure consciousness is the foundation for descriptive psychology, which is then the foundation for experimental psychology (empirical consciousness). (181-4)

Other experimental psychologists took up the cudgels. Husserl then argued for transcendental phenomenology (186-7), and the disputation continued.

The “pure” philosophers had different orientations to the new psychology, though they disavowed it as a valid philosophical enterprise.

In 1913 a petition signed by 107 philosophers in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland opposed the hiring of any more experimental philosophers in philosophy departments. The events leading up to this petition are outlined. The full petition is reproduced and the subsequent disputes summarized. Note also the anti-Catholic element of the polemics. (193) Interventions by Wundt and Marbe are detailed, as is a controversy between Lamprecht and Simmel. Kusch summarizes the ongoing dispute as a superimposition of language games: refutation of psychologism à disallowance of philosophy chairs to experimental psychologists. (202)

Kusch ends the chapter on role purification addressing the question: why was Husserl influential in these controversies but not Frege? (203ff) Many German philosophers were threatened by “logical mathematicism.” Geyser objected to its pure formalism. Natorp viewed mathematical logic as circular: logic cannot justify itself, and its pure formalism is unworthy of logic. Rickert saw mathematical logic as a threat to logic and insisted on their distinction. Heidegger reiterated this position. But Husserl too regarded mathematical logic as unphilosophical, as merely technical. (204-5)

I find this most curious and perplexing. 34 years ago, when I was first introduced to category theory by one of its pioneers (this did not exist in the 19th century), I found it intriguing and no less philosophically interesting than logic, perhaps more so, given the power of its range. At some point I got the impression that mathematicians and logicians lived in separate and antagonistic worlds, but I never understood why.  I cannot see why mathematical logic is more formalistic, unless it neglects the verbal structures that traditional logic engages.

Back to Kusch. There were institutional and interactive differences between Frege and Husserl. Frege was more isolated at the University of Jena and did not attempt to form a school. Husserl on the other hand was extremely well-connected. Frege’s argumentative style was more dismissive and more cursory in his attack on psychologism. Husserl mixed his harsh criticisms with comments of praise. Frege sought the support of mathematicians rather than philosophers. Husserl referenced Kant and the neo-Kantians. Husserl’s concern with experimental psychology as an antagonist also mattered more to his colleagues. (206-9)

Chapter 8 is the most dramatic of all, as suggested by its title: “Winner Takes All: Lebensphilosophie and the triumph of phenomenology.” During World War I German philosophers buried the hatchet with one another and united in no-holds-barred patriotic drum-beating for the war, in some cases lacing their proclamations with racism and anti-Semitism. Psychologists too went to war. Wundt went on a tear about the national character of the English and French and their attendant national philosophies. (220-1) Others applied psychology to wartime pedagogy, while still others contributed to military psychology.

No mention is made of the German Social Democrats who supported the war or their arguments, but evidently even a materialist world view could not counter the war fever. However, the complete lack of social perspective on the part of all the parties in the aforementioned disputes—idealists all—highlights something fundamentally lacking and fundamentally rotten in their world view. But philosophically the situation gets even worse.

After the war there was no return to the pre-war philosophical hostility. To explain this, Kusch begins with the overweening anti-scientific mentality prevalent in the Weimar Republic. The German mandarins upheld the spiritual values of “culture” and hated the leveling tendencies of “civilization.” (Note the reference to Paul Forman’s article on the German physicists’ attraction to acausality, which I am not particularly endorsing.) The shabby life conditions of postwar Germany affected also the professoriat, now bitter and pessimistic. The language of decline and decadence, anti-science, anti-materialism, mysticism and occultism ruled the day. (225-7)

In this environment, Oswald Spengler, author of Decline of the West, is considered by many to be the key figure of Weimar philosophy. Spengler, however had no academic affiliation, poured scorn on academia, and thus the philosophical shift within academia has to be explained otherwise. The route to the eventual triumph of phenomenology lies through Lebensphilosophie (life-philosophy). Its key academic exponents were Max Scheler and Karl Jaspers. (227-8)

Scheler disdained popular philosophy. His prophets were Dilthey, Nietszche, and Bergson (three individuals high on my list of the worst villains in philosophy). Consistent in Scheler’s appropriation of all three are his anti-scientific attitude and touting of immediacy and experience. (229-231)

Spengler’s work is an orgiastic jeremiad against rationalism, technology, urbanism, democracy, cosmopolitanism, humanism, egalitarianism, etc. Spengler’s view of civilization was organismic, inspired by Goethe’s plant morphology. (Perhaps one could say something about Goethe’s retrograde view of science?) Spengler saw Goethe and Plato as the philosophers of intuition, i.e. akin to his own philosophy, as opposed to the philosophies of Kant and Aristotle. Spengler scathingly denounced both contemporary academic philosophy and psychology. (232-6)

Jaspers’ Psychologie der Weltanshauungen (1919) was different. Jaspers emphasized contingency, prophetic philosophy, and immediacy, distinguishing between intuition and the rational attitude, opposing value absolutism. (236-40)

Despite characteristic academic derision, Spengler was a spectacular success, also among academics. Husserl’s public denunciations of Spengler were ineffective. Attacks on Spengler included accusations of psychologism, but Spengler was more influential than Scheler or Jaspers, though they too gained acclaim. (240-2)

The rise of Lebensphilosophie uncoincidentally coincided with the decline of neo-Kantianism. Death and retirement thinned out key neo-Kantians, and younger philosophers deserted to phenomenology. Cassirer ignored the prevailing Weimar mentality and pursued his own interests, failing to inspire neophyte philosophers, confronting the irrationalist trend only in 1929 in the infamous Davos debate with Heidegger. (243-4)

Rickert both fought vigorously against and accommodated himself to Lebensphilosophie. Rickert attacked intuitionism, linking Husserl to Rickert’s other opponents, but most of all attacking Scheler, for biologism as well as intuitionism. But later Rickert accommodated himself to Lebensphilosophie, applauding the desire to overcome one-sided intellectualism, even embracing the philosophy of sexual love. (244-7) Rickert did not get as much mileage out of this as Husserl did in his attacks on naturalism. (Kusch’s explanation can be found on pp. 247-8.)  Scientific philosophy fared poorly in the anti-scientific Weimar climate. Scheler disposed of Wundt, albeit more mildly than he dispatched the neo-Kantians. (249-50)

Enter Neurath and the Vienna Circle. Neurath attacked Spengler in his Anti-Spengler of 1921. The Vienna Circle’s 1929 manifesto counterposed unified science to empty metaphysics. The academic establishment was not moved. The very word “circle” rather than “school” reflected the orientation of the time, as Lebensphilosophie too was a matter of circles rather than an organized school. (250-2)

Moritz Schlick (1927) curiously found the meaning of Lebensphilosophie and metaphysics in the play of youth, not disapprovingly (252)

Kusch now addresses the conundrum of how the rationalistic philosophy of Husserl’s phenomenology came to triumph due to the influence of irrationalist Lebensphilosophie. Kusch claims that phenomenology won out because Scheler and Heidegger aligned themselves with it and formulated the academic alternative to Spengler. (252) Husserl himself accommodated himself to the prevailing Zeitgeist, e.g. in a 1925 preface to a volume of the Buddha’s speeches, Husserl decrying cultural decay and hoping for a religious awakening. Husserl, however, attacked Spengler, Scheler, and Heidegger. (252-3) Scheler and Heidegger severely qualified their attachment to Husserl. Scheler had opposed both naturalism and Kantian transcendentalism along with neo-Kantianism. He found phenomenology an ally to his Catholicism and philosophical aims. He linked Husserl to Bergsonian intuition and to Sachphilosophie (philosophy of ‘real things’). (253-6) Kusch outlines the factors responsible for Scheler’s success. (256-7) Husserl’s early contributions could be acknowledged and then surpassed by the contemporary agenda.

Experimental psychology, as well as psychologism, ceased to be treated as a threat in the Weimar era. Experimental psychologists made no gains in philosophy departments. The psychologists presented their own petition demanding university positions. In the 1920s new positions were attained only in the field of applied psychology. A half-dozen chairs for full professors of psychology were attained by 1931, but mostly in technical universities and commercial academies. Applied psychology became the growing trend. This was not good for Wundt’s philosophically oriented psychology. (259-61) The antiscientific tenor of Weimar was not conducive to modeling psychology as a natural science. The watchword of the day was “crisis”. (261-2) Psychologists started to incorporate Husserl’s perspective. Gestalt psychology also contributed to the position of phenomenology within psychology. (263-6) The Weimar climate also saw a revival of Dilthey in psychology. Dilthey’s own Lebensphilosophie could be used as a weapon against rivals.

Pure philosophers, especially those adhering to Lebensphilosophie or phenomenology, could now welcome a certain type of psychologist that in their eyes smacked of the more Romantic and philosophical and less natural-scientific and experimental. (271)

Coming installment: Kusch’s summary & conclusions; my conclusions.


Originally posted on R. Dumain’s blog Studies in a Dying Culture on May 14th, 2014.
Categories:
academia, analytical philosophy, anti-Semitism, continental philosophy, Dilthey, epistemology, existentialism, fascism, Frege, German philosophy, Goethe, Heidegger, Henri Bergson, historiography of philosophy, Husserl, idealism, intellectual life, irrationalism, Kant, Karl Jaspers, Lebensphilosophie, logic, Martin Kusch, mathematics, Max Scheler, militarism, modernity, naturalism, naturalized epistemology, Neo-Kantianism, Nietzsche, Oswald Spengler, phenomenology, physics, positivism, psychologism, psychology, racism, relativism, reviews, Rickert, science, sociology of knowledge, Vienna Circle, Wilhelm Wundt, World War I.


3

Kusch, Martin. Psychologism: A Case Study in the Sociology of Philosophical Knowledge. London; New York: Routledge, 1995. See also the Four Appendices to Psychologism (1995).

Finally we come to Kusch’s summary and conclusions. Kusch summarizes the book and his approach to Sociology of Philosophical Knowledge (SPK). Kusch adheres to Bloor’s strong programme in the sociology of knowledge, but he does not practice sociologism, or the reduction of the intellectual content of intellectual disputes to personal or institutional interest. (274) Not all social variables are identifiable. All sides of an argument involve social variables, though some will see one side or another’s arguments as a smokescreen for personal interest. Social variables apply universally, not just to the losing or undesirable side.

The researcher’s neutrality is difficult to maintain, the more so the closer one approach’s issues endemic to the sociology of knowledge itself. (275) The arguments of the neo-Kantians are similar to those who oppose the strong programme today. Kusch’s only sympathies lie with the psychologisticists rather than with Frege or Husserl. Kusch finds two weaknesses in his field: adherence to the whiggish history of science, and failure to explain adequately the closure of scientific debates. Case in point is Shapin’s and Schaffer’s Leviathan and the Air-Pump (1985), to which Kusch’s work is nonetheless indebted. Kusch feels he has avoided said two weaknesses.

Based on this case study, Kusch offers a set of metaphilosophical hypotheses. (276-8) (1) Controversies in philosophy are much fuzzier than those in natural sciences. (2) Controversies in philosophy like those in science are often cases of boundary projects and policing. (3) A very small number of publications can and most often is the focal point of philosophical controversies. Candidates for focal points are texts which are boldly accusatory, short, and highly rhetorical. (4) Charges of relativism, irrationalism, extreme skepticism, etc. tend to be more central in philosophical controversies, especially as they influence a wider reading public. (5) Philosophical controversies are abandoned, not resolved. (6) The victors create the philosophical canon, determining who we read today and how we interpret the history of philosophy.

I see one mention of Marxism in the extensive bibliography, though I do not know what the text’s argument is:

Lewalter, E. ([1930], 1982), ‘Wissenssociologie und Marxismus’, in V. Meja and N. Stehr (eds.), Der Streit um die Wissenssociologie, vol. 2: Rezeption und Kritik der Wissenssociologie, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main, 551-83.

This book is invaluable, but here is a list of my concerns.

(1)   I do not see what is particularly “strong” in Kusch’s application of the strong programme. It seems eminently reasonable to me.

(2)   Taking sides overall is difficult, because all sides seem wrong to me.

(3)   The sense of inadequacy is heightened by the social and political illiteracy of all parties concerned, their reactionary politics above all. Quite clearly, taking psychology or logic as the foundation for an entire world view, let alone explanation of social institutions, is bankrupt.

(4)   Mathematics and logic form a special case in which in my view psychologism is completely wrong. The disputes end up being more wide-ranging, but Kusch’s narrative morphs from the case of logic and mathematics to the total gamut of psychology and epistemology and losing this vital distinction in the process.

(5)   Endemic to issues both in psychology and philosophy is the mind-body problem, but it is not clear that this foundational issue is adequately addressed in either discipline involved in the controversies covered in this book. Given the focus on the mental, experimentation notwithstanding, it is not clear to me from Kusch’s account how the psychologists relate the mental to the neurophysiological structure of the organism.

(6)   The broader issue in these controversies, relevant also today, is the question of naturalizing epistemology. As both traditional and naturalized epistemology are highly skewed and thus not necessarily reliable guides, how is this fusion to be accomplished? On the naturalistic side, there is not only the inevitable incompleteness of knowledge to be considered, but changing and ultimately ideological paradigms, e.g. behaviorism, sociobiology (evolutionary psychology), computationalism, or neurophysiology. Yet epistemology to escape from artificial and at this point fruitless concerns, e.g. what the Popperians call justificationism, must answer to advances in scientific knowledge. Also, scientific knowledge claims, though they must be adjudicated by scientists, nonetheless are subject to philosophical scrutiny for conceptual coherence and ideological bias.  Hence there remains a presently ineradicable creative tension between the two.

(7)   Kusch’s case study is fertile ground for the analysis of the dynamics of bourgeois philosophy, its vacillation between positivism and irrationalism (e.g. Lebensphilosophie), scientism and Romanticism—or however the dichotomy expresses itself.  This goes beyond Kusch’s apparent conscious awareness of what is ultimately at stake.

(8)   The ontological status of formal logic and mathematics, precisely because of the nature of formal systems, involves further considerations. But concerning epistemology generally, there is the peculiarity of the experiential gap between the world (and cognition itself) subjectively perceived and objectively measured, and thus the need to correlate if not merge the two. Philosophical speculation cannot alone settle the problem once and for all, but there can be a guiding thread connecting subject and object. Marx’s early concept of praxis provides a clue. Not actual praxis (as substitute for critical reflection), but the concept of praxis.


Originally posted on R. Dumain’s blog Studies in a Dying Culture on May 15th, 2014.
Categories:
academia, analytical philosophy, argumentation, continental philosophy, epistemology, existentialism, fascism, Frege, German philosophy, historiography of philosophy, Husserl, ideology, intellectual life, irrationalism, Lebensphilosophie, logic, Martin Kusch, Marxism, mathematics, militarism, modernity, naturalism, naturalized epistemology, Neo-Kantianism, phenomenology, philosophers, philosophical style, positivism, praxis, progress, psychologism, psychology, reflexivity, relativism, reviews, science, sociology of knowledge.


Anti-Bergson: Bibliography & Links

Neo-Kantianism, Its History, Influence, and Relation to Socialism:
Selected Secondary Bibliography

Vienna Circle, Karl Popper, Frankfurt School, Marxism, McCarthyism & American Philosophy:
Selected Bibliography

Philosophy of History of Philosophy & Historiography of Philosophy:
Selected Bibliography

Positivism vs Life Philosophy (Lebensphilosophie) Study Guide


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