>
>>>Justin said:
>>>
>>>>Wittgenstein was a product of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
>>>
>>>And worked for most of his career in England. Maybe I should have also
>>>claimed Marx and Engels for liberal democracy on the same grounds, so I
>>>will. They surea s hell couldn;t have done what they did on the
>>>contintent....
>
>
>By what conceivable standard was the British Empire c.1850 a
>"liberal democracy" but pre-Nazi 20th-century Austria was
>not?
>
Well, I didn't say anything about the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Chris Doss did, but as a matter of fact I think that mid 19th C Britain was one of the few countries in its day that was a rough approximation of lib dem by the standards of the day, not as much as America for whites of those days, maybe, and more liberal than democratic to be sure. Vienna while W was growing up wasn't particularly liberal or democratic; it had a space for deviant speech if you were Bohemian or aristocratic, and W was both, of course, but it was in fact an absolutist monarchy. Those could provide some room for Enlightenment, as the French and even Frederickian Prussian examples show. Be that as it may. My point, though, is that repressive censorship and required beliefs tend to repress the quality of philosophy. The flourishing of philosophy in Austro-Hungary under condition of tolerance as opposed to liberalism, same with Wilhemine Germany, btw, is a nonliberal example of the advantages of freedom of speech (realtive) for philosophy. jks
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