My point is that because many Marxist philosophers, especially in the SU took the lead of Engels and Lenin, and since Lenin and probably Engels were well aware of the late 19th Century "Back to Kant" movement in professional philosophy in Germany, that many ( more than one out of 100) Marxist and Soviet philosophers were aware of and probably some did specialized work on those neo-Kantians.
I doubt it, but that's not a criticism of the Soviets or other Marxist philosophers. There's no particular reason they should have been interested.
>CB: The point here was you were claiming that the general population in the
>SU didn't take to Marxist philosophy because the Soviet philosophers were
>so dull and brainless.
Actually more because it was forced on them (and dull, etc.).
>However, as we see, the North American or whatever category of philosophers
>you want to call it have no more success than the Soviet philosophers at
>interesting the general population in philosophy , so it raises questions
>about you inference that Soviet philosophy is duller or whatever than your
>schools of philosophy.
I pointed out that Western philosophers have at various times, and I will
add, in other countries, have had more success. Philosophy "matters" more in
England, for example, where people like Bernard Williams (who has now moved
here) were regularly asked to serve on important government commissions, and
where the likes of Roger Scruton (yukko) are actually quoted in the press.
There was a national flap in the quality media about "structuralism" (what
we'd today all psotmodernism) when I was in school there. In France, there's
a long tradition of philosophers as important public figures--Sartre,
Merleau-Ponty, Foucault, Derrida, etc. Germany too, goes without saying.
>From what I hear (though I don't know much about it) ditto. It's America
that is peculiarly anti-philosophical. And not always, as I say: Dewey was a
real public intellectual.
^^^^^^^
>
>CB: What is your evidence that this was more true of diamat than of your
>school of philosophy ? Almost no one reads your school.
Analytical philosophy is generally quite dull, and almost no one raeds it apart from analytical philosophers. But it is also extremely rigorous and carefully argued, often deep, and carried out at an intellectally very high level.
>You are admitting as much on this thread when you claim that no one knows
>about neo-Kantianism but you and a few others.
I do not, and did not, and hereby disclaim, any expertise in neo-Kantian philosophy. Because I have a competence in German philosophy, and real expertise in Marxist thought, and a lot of general curiosity. I have read some neo-Ks, which is a lot more than most analytical philosophers, and more than most Marxist philosophers.
> Seems we could hypothesize that that's true because what you are doing is lethally dull. ( Nothing personal , just there are no Soviet philosophers to raise the reply to you).
Charles, there are no more Soviet philosophers.
I don't take it personally. Analytical philosophy is dull for two distinct reasons. One is that a lot of it is tedious logic chopping, extremely careful, thorough, precise, cautious distinction-making abot stuff that it's hard to get excited about, or about stuff that one could get excited about, but which is made dull by excessive care. Even when the stuff is exciting, it is very hard and requires a degree of concentrated attention: it's very demanding. You yourself commented on how "packed" was the writing in some of papers that I sent you,a nd I'm unsually accessible for an analytical philosopher. I take special efforts to be accessible. And yet it's still very hard.
Thhediamat, hwoever, was a refuge of second-raters, hacks, and dimwitw who could parrot the Party line but not think their way out of a wet paper bag.
>
>CB: Whereas there are more than a handful of your school of philosophers
>who manage to do some decent work ?
>
Oh, yeah. AP is philosophy done at the very highest level of argument. There are probably more good philosophers, and most of them are analytical, than ata ny time in the history of humanity. I don'tsay giants like Marx or Wittgenstein, but just highly competent professionals.
>Try this on for size. The Soviet philosophers have a different philosophy
>than you do, so of course you don't like their work.
>
Bzzt, try again. You can't make me out to be an analytical bigot. I love Hegel and Marx, am open-minded about different styles of philosophical argument, am not (unlike some APs) dismissive of unfamiliar approaches. I've taught classes in continental philosophy, existentialism, Hegelian Marxism, the Frankfurt Schoo, etc. But I am real expert on Marxism in particualr, and I can recognize what's different but good or great of its kind (e.g., Lukacs) and what's just dreck (the diamat).
>
>
>CB: You are the one who made the claim that no one in the SU had a brain
>after Stalin killed everybody with a brain.
I didn't say that. What I said was that he killed almost everyone with a brain, and terrorized everyone else. There were, I said this before a lot of smart people in the Sovieta cadaemy. Most of them covered in terror under Stalin, did their real work in Aesopian terms, and professed allegience to something they despised in order to get by and to avoid losing their jobs or worse.
>This is sort of begging the question. The Soviet position would be that
>your philosophy is not as good as theirs, don't you think ?
This argument gets you nowhere. The Nazi philosophersw ould say the same about both of us, but they'd bew rongt. Fact is, if the Soviet philosophers said that ,for trhe most part they'd be wrong.
>CB: Those aren't comments [on Kant]. They are references.
Look Charles, you haven'ta clue what you are taking about. I could tell you about Heinrich's take on Kant's doctrine of affection, which I think is pretty interesting, but you wouldn't have the faintest idea. That's not an insult either: you have to bang your head against Kant work by work for years to get anywhere, and I don't believe you've done that. I've had five classes on the First Critique with great scholars. That doesn't begin to make me an expert. It makes me someine who can appreciate some, not all, of what the real experts have to say. So I'm not going to spoon-feed you Kant, I couldn't, and itw on't go down. If you want to find out what modern Kant scholars have to say that is interesting, you have to go out and learn it. The internet is not the place for that.
>
>CB: Actually, [Lenin] specifically and very clearly differentiates Kant and
>Hume from Berkeley. Berkeley is a "stone" subjective idealist. Kant is a
>dualist, sort of half idealist /half materialist, a shamefaced materialist,
>an agnostic, in Engels' categories.
>
>Lenin says that Mach and Avernius started out as neo-Kantianism with the
>trend in late 19th Century Germany, and ended up more Berkeleyians.
That's generally going in the right direction, though Mach would noy have accepting this characterization.
>
>CB: And there are the Marxist philosophers like Ilyenkov , Cornforth,
>Lawler, Politzer, Hampsch , Philip Moran, Howard Parsons, Hu Xinhe, Li
>Tieyang etc. , etc. etc. who follow dialectical materialism, Marx , Engels
>and Lenin, whom you dismiss as dull and brainless. Those are the one's
>with a different philosophy than you.
>
>
Well, I don't lump Jim Lawler or (as you know) Marx and Engels, or even Lenin, in with the rest of that lot: the ones on your list I know, Cornforth and Parsons are nth rate publicists and party-liners. Jim's an able philosopher. We all have different philosophies, but it's an insult to all of us to suggest that we can't tell the difference between different and no good.
jks
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