Michael Friedman has a book on the Davos debate, The Parting of the Ways, Pretty interesting, also talking about the revolutionary socialist roots of logical positivism (!) (Carnap was also at Davos).
I like Gombo, say what you will. He was a great scholar, though very formalistic. --jks
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Justin, why do you have to sound so damned reasonable?
If I can remember, and if I can find a copy of Art and Illusion (which I actually read once, but can't remember enough anymore) I'll try to put together why Gombrich is a far lesser light than Cassirer, and how Gombrich's writing worked through my academic experience to defeat a certain level of interest I had in art history---while at once, Cassirer exercised exactly the opposite impulse---at least for me. As simply as I can recall this ancient thought, Gombrich murdered art, while Cassirer, Malraux, Hauser, and Paz lived it---made it live (evil Hegel's wretched offspring, one and all). It was through reading them, that the entire spectrum of western thought opened to me, like looking through so many pictures at an exhibition. Gombrich in his class ridden old curatorial and chatty way, some how managed to shut every door, darken every corridor, and cover over every painting---all the while promising to enlighten me.
To be fair(?), I should say, that Gombrich and others were used badly in my academic context to mask over and obscure or filter out the entire continental tradition of cultural philosophy. Erasing Hegel was just the tip of the iceberg. To mention Hegel or Nietzsche in Art History was something like quoting Marx in an Econ class (circa 1960s). So, in a sense the theoretical concern for academic scholarship and formalism was used as a filtering tool to discredit most other european philosophies of art and art history. It was part of a conspiracy of silence and I think of it as an example of cold war intellectual brain washing. As hard as it might be to imagine now, reading Hegel, Nietzsche, Sartre, or Cassirer, Malraux, Paz and Hauser was actually an act of rebellion, back then.
In an indirect way, these experiences account for why, when I first heard Feyerabend rail on against Popper, I felt a deep affinity and graditude toward Feyerabend---even though now, after reading him again, much later, he seems a bit of a crank. Oh, well, a very lovable crank he was. And, like Cassirer, he opened up philosophy, rather than closed it down.
Anyway, I'll chase down a copy on the Davos debate. Thanks.
Chuck Grimes