Abstract
This final chapter traces a trajectory from Ayer’s response to Sartre to his later polemical statements concerning the divide between analytic and continental philosophy. Ayer’s 1946 ‘The Claims of Philosophy’ develops an account of philosophy as divided between two approaches: that of the ‘pontiffs’, and the technically minded work of the ‘journeymen’. Repeating many of the tropes initially developed in Russell’s and the Vienna Circle’s responses to Bergson, Ayer conjures an image of continental philosophy as organised around schools where disciples dogmatically follow a Master. This same image is repeated in similar later polemics by Oxford philosophers, especially Ryle and R.M. Hare. Thus, earlier criticisms of Bergsonism become embroiled in proclamations concerning the existence of a divide that separates ‘analytic’ from ‘continental’ philosophy.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
See Rogers (2002, 195).
- 3.
See Rogers (2002, 195).
- 4.
- 5.
See also Akehurst (2013, 246).
- 6.
See also Akehurst (2013, 246–247).
- 7.
Ayer (1977, 285) later repeats the claim about the existentialist misuse of ‘to be’ in his autobiography.
- 8.
The lecture presented in 1946 was first published in Polemic in 1947, and subsequently republished various times (e.g. Ayer 1949).
- 9.
See Grogin (1988, ix).
- 10.
Ayer (1968) elsewhere claims that James ‘was led into a form of irrationalism, which avowedly owed much to Bergson and would also have made him sympathetic to the Existentialists’ (1968, 189). Ayer nonetheless excuses James’s irrationalism and anti-intellectualism as due to ‘his running fight with the Hegelians’ (189).
- 11.
- 12.
- 13.
Contrary to Ayer’s suggestion that analytic philosophy relies on a pure exercise of critical reason, Katzav and Vaesen (2016) have argued that the mid-twentieth-century rise of analytic philosophy relied on capturing control of certain prominent journals, thus effectively suppressing critical dialogue with competing traditions.
- 14.
I am deeply thankful to Michael Kremer for pointing out to me the existence of this episode and Ryle’s (1954) later polemic.
- 15.
Concerning Bergson’s influence on Canguilhem; see Bianco (2013, 247).
- 16.
See Glendinning (2006, 75–76).
- 17.
For a criticism of Hare’s warning against reading long books, see Glendinning (2006, 74–78).
- 18.
See also Glendinning (2006, 74–75).
- 19.
Hare ([1960] 1973) does not cite any concrete examples of such relatively sparse meetings. Michael Kremer, to whom I am very grateful, has suggested to me three possible avenues for such meetings: (1) various Germanophone philosophers who came to Oxford as refugees, for example Cassirer, who had lectured at Oxford between 1933 and 1935, or Adorno, who spent 1934–1938 as a doctoral student at Merton College, writing a dissertation on Husserl under Ryle’s supervision (see Kramer and Wilcock 1999); (2) invited speakers to Oxford, including, for example, Derrida, invited by Strawson in 1967 (see also Vrahimis 2013a, 160–162); (3) the International Congress of Philosophy, whose various meetings were attended by Oxford philosophers, including the 1930 meeting at Oxford. Interestingly, the 1953 meeting is shown by Strassfeld (2020, 844–846) to have specifically contributed to the emergence of the idea of an analytic-continental divide.
- 20.
As Glendinning (2006, 74) points out, Hare identifies British philosophy with what happens in Oxford.
- 21.
See also Glendinning (2006, 79–84).
- 22.
At the Royaumont colloquium, the example Hare ([1958] 1972) analyses is that of a Swiss student visiting Oxford, whose existentialist Angst is cured by a clarification of the meaning of the term ‘nothing’.
- 23.
See also Franco (2018).
- 24.
- 25.
It is also notable that, as Kremer (2017) has shown, Ryle’s work involved a substantial response to disputes surrounding ‘intellectualism’ going back to James and his presentation of Bergson (as examined in Chap. 3), and also to Stebbing’s work (including her response to Bergson examined in Chap. 6).
- 26.
Kremer notes that Ryle had ‘at least a somewhat favorable impression’ (2017, 22) of Mussolini when he saw him in 1924, though ‘after serving for five years in military intelligence, Ryle’s opinion of Mussolini must have changed decisively’ (22).
- 27.
Ryle’s meeting with Husserl in the late 1920s was likely formative of his, as well as Ayer’s and Hare’s (both Ryle’s former students), criticisms of the role of Masters in continental philosophy. Husserl is reported to have lectured on his system ‘twice for an hour’ (Schuhmann 1977, 340). Ryle was purportedly ‘unwilling to admit to Frau Husserl that her husband was as great as Plato, but admitted that he might be as great as Kant’ (McGuiness and Vrijen 2006, 748). Richard Wollheim reports Ryle’s claim that after the visit he became ‘deeply dispirited’ (1991, 24) with phenomenology. While in previous work (Vrahimis 2013a, 118) I had mistakenly repeated the assertion that during his visit Ryle studied with Heidegger, Kremer (2022) has recently debunked this myth.
- 28.
See Vrahimis (2013a, 143–159).
- 29.
I argue for this thesis in Vrahimis (2013a, 110–159).
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Vrahimis, A. (2022). Doing Without Masters: Oxford Philosophy and the Analytic-Continental Divide. In: Bergsonism and the History of Analytic Philosophy. History of Analytic Philosophy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-80755-9_12
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