Religion, Ethnicity, and Politics in American Philosophy: Reflections on McCumber's Time in the Ditch

Abstract

McCumber does not sustain with evidence his claims about the role of McCarthyism in the triumph of analytical philosophy. A balanced history would attend to other considerations potentially relevant to that triumph, including the connection between Anglo-Protestant cultural hegemony in the United States and the styles of philosophy — especially metaphysics and normative ethics — repudiated by the analytical philosophers. The crucial transition in the professional culture of philosophy in the United States is not that from pragmatism to logical empiricism and ordinary language philosophy, but from philosophy that was engaged with Christianity to philosophy that was not.