Akehurst T L The Cultural Politics of Analytic Philosophy Britishness & The Spectre of Europe 2010

The Cultural Politics of Analytic Philosophy
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Wittgenstein at his Word Duncan Richter
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The Cultural Politics of
Analytic Philosophy
Britishness and the Spectre of Europe
Thomas L. Akehurst
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Thomas L. Akehurst 2010
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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: HB: 978-1-8470-6450-9
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Akehurst, Thomas L.
The cultural politics of analytic philosophy: britishness and the
spectre of Europe/Thomas L. Akehurst.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references
ISBN-13: 978-1-84706-450-9 (HB)
ISBN-10: 1-84706-450-7 (HB)
1. Analysis (Philosophy) 2. Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich,
17701831Influence. 3. Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, 18441900Influence.
4. Germany--Politics and government--20th century. I. Title.
B808.5.A34 2010
146.40941--dc22 2009019738
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Printed and bound in Great Britain by the MPG Books Group
Contents
Acknowledgements vi
Introduction 1
Chapter 1 Nazi Philosophy 16
Chapter 2 The Expulsion of the Invaders 53
Chapter 3 Philosophical Method: Virtue vs Vice 88
Chapter 4 The Virtuous Tradition: Analysis, Liberalism,

Britishness 126
Epilogue 163
Notes 170
Bibliography 198
Index 209
Acknowledgements
The research for this book was made possible by a University of Sussex
Seedcorn Scholarship, and subsequent work has been made easier by a
Scouloudi Foundation Historical Award. I am grateful to both of these insti-
tutions, and to the East Sussex Fire and Rescue service for preventing the
whole project going up in smoke at an early stage.
Given that the cultural history of philosophy is a relatively unpeopled
field in this country, Ive been very fortunate to find so many readers and
commentators. Many of them have had to stray from their preferred fields
and display considerable tolerance in engaging with this project. They
have, in so doing, immeasurably improved the resulting book. I am grate-
ful to the historians at the University of Sussex who have supported me in
my idiosyncratic research choices. I am especially indebted to Knud
Haakonssen, Alun Howkins, and Paul Betts. The encouragement of the
latter, in particular, has proved fortifying at all points of this process. I have
also benefited greatly from the comments of Stefan Collini, James
Hampshire, Michael Morris, Andrew Rebera, Jonathan Re, Darrow
Schecter and Brian Young. Ben Jones, Shamira Meghani, Katherine
Nielsen, Karen Schaller and Reto Speck read parts or all of the manuscript
for me catching many errors I would have missed entirely. While this
book is not unequivocal in its praise of analytic philosophy, I would like to
offer unequivocal gratitude (and praise) for the teaching of my own phi-
losophy tutors, among them Hallvard Lillehammer, Neil Manson, and the
late Peter Lipton.
I am tremendously grateful to my friends: Chris, Emma, Jon, Karen, Kat,
Katerina, Matt, Petra, Reto and Tim for their company and conversation.
In keeping with the theme of Britishness, I will say least about those whose
support has mattered most: Shamira, my parents, and my sister. Ill send
them all postcards.
Sections of the argument of Chapters 1 and 2 of this book have previ-
ously appeared in The Nazi Tradition: the analytic critique of continental
philosophy in mid-century Britain, History of European Ideas 34 (2008),
548557.
Acknowledgements vii
Extracts from Russells History of Western Philosophy are reproduced by

permission of the Taylor and Francis Group (World excluding USA) and
with the permission of Simon and Schuster, Inc. (USA) Copyright 1945 by
Bertrand Russell. Copyright renewed 1973 by Edith Russell. All rights
reserved.
This page intentionally left blank
Introduction
Hitlers ideals come mainly from Nietzsche.1

(Bertrand Russell 1935)
Nor is it news to philosophers that Nazi, Fascist and Communist doctrines are
descendants of the Hegelian gospel. They may therefore wonder whether Dr. Popper
is not flogging a dead horse in exposing once again the motives and fallacies of
Hegel. But Dr Popper is clearly right in saying that even if philosophers are at long
last immunized, historians, sociologists, political propagandists and voters are still
unconscious victims of this virus . . .2
(Gilbert Ryle 1947)
If Empiricist philosophy is strong to-day, perhaps we may hope to see a revival of

Liberalism the day after to-morrow.3
(H. H. Price 1940)
By God, Ryle, I believe you are right. No one ever had Common Sense before John
Locke and no-one but Englishmen have ever had it since.4
The history of Germany is not a good advert for romantic philosophy; I do think
that if they had had philosophers of the calibre of Bentham and the Mills during
this period, and if they had listened to them, history might have been very
different.5
(R. M. Hare 1989)
British analytic philosophy has something of a reputation. Particularly in its

early years, the discipline was seen as aloof from the concerns of politics
and human life. In his infamous Words and Things, Ernest Gellner con-
demned Oxford analysis for its conspicuous triviality.6 More recently, some
2 The Cultural Politics of Analytic Philosophy
have suggested that this existential gap, separating analytic philosophy

from the concerns of human life, does not merely characterize one short
period in history, but is a feature of analytic philosophy as such.7
When, in 1958, the Oxford philosopher G. J. Warnock wrote that he
believed British analytic philosophy was politically neutral potentially
compatible with a range of ideological positions he was doing no more
than stating positively what critics of analytic philosophy had been saying
and would continue to say. But Warnock went a little further; while finding
such an eventuality extremely unlikely, he conceded thaxt: there may be
some deep seated similarity of attitude and outlook, in which it may be that
future historians will find without difficulty the Weltanschauung of contem-
porary philosophy.8 What the quotations at the top of the introduction
illustrate is that Warnock was right. There was a deep seated similarity of
attitude and outlook among the British analysts; contrary to the stated
beliefs of critics and analysts alike, we can detect a clear pattern of cultural,
political and philosophical beliefs shared by major British analytic philoso-
phers. This is a worldview the analysts elaborated themselves in the pages of
their published work.
The three decades with which we are centrally concerned, 1930 to 1960,
were a crucially important period in the history of British analytic philoso-
phy. In these years it moved from being a marginal grouping in Cambridge,
in the late 1920s, to being central to the largest philosophy department in
the country, Oxford, by 1960. While these decades frame much of our dis-
cussion, our focus is on generations, specifically on the three generations of
analysts who co-founded the discipline in Britain. Where it proves useful in
understanding our period, we will look at the reflections of these philoso-
phers beyond the boundaries of 1930 and 1960.
The first generation under examination here, that of Bertrand Russell
and G. E. Moore, both in their twenties by 1900, are credited with the deci-
sive break away from idealism at the turn of the century. The second is the
generation of A. J. Ayer, J. L. Austin and Isaiah Berlin, all born around 1910,
to which Gilbert Ryle in these terms properly belongs, despite being
ten years older than Ayer; Ryles conversion to analysis happened at the
beginning of the 1930s, and he did not gain his Chair until 1945. Third, we
have the children of the 1920s, the Warnocks (Mary and Geoffrey), Stuart
Hampshire, Richard Wollheim, and, by the skin of his teeth, Bernard
Williams. Beginning in the mid-1930s the second generation emerges, and
by 1945 the third is also involved.
In this period, three foundational generations of analytic philosophers,
with growing institutional prestige and responsibility (a process which
Introduction 3
began with Moore gaining his Chair at Cambridge in 1925), could address
and fight over what it meant to be a British analytic philosopher. For this
tradition, this is the equivalent of Jesus being able to sit down with Paul,
Constantine and the Early Church fathers to thrash out the canon, and the
definitive history. It is a crucial, and somewhat overlooked, moment in the
history of the discipline.
Given the chronology outlined above, the discovery of a seam of cultural-
political assumptions should not be a cause of surprise. Analytic philosophy
emerged and came to dominance in Britain against the backdrop of some
of the most traumatic events of the twentieth century. In the time between
analytic philosophys emergence in Cambridge in the first decade of the
century and its achievement of institutional dominance in Britain in the
1950s, two new ideologies, Marxist-Leninism and fascism, made dramatic
appearances on the world stage, and Europe saw its two bloodiest wars in
history. Between 1940 and 1945, many of the most significant British ana-
lysts of the twentieth century were also soldiers, intelligence officers or code
breakers. What we find in the work of these thinkers are attempts to relate
their philosophical enterprise to the chaotic times in which they lived.
Yet these reflections and beliefs have been largely ignored by historians.
This project reveals two previously unacknowledged themes in analytic dis-
cussion. First, as the quotations from Lord Russell, and Professors Ryle and
Hare at the top of this introduction illustrate, there was a consistently held
belief among these early generations of analytic philosophers that a post-
Kantian tradition of continental philosophy was the direct source of fascist
ideology. I will examine these quotations in far more detail later, but what
we can see here is the condemnation of Nietzsche, Hegel, and, in the quota-
tion from Hare romantic philosophy, as being in some way the ancestors of
fascism, to use Russells phrase.9 This belief was generalized as the analytic
philosophers witnessed what they believed to be Germanys corruption of
the European (though not the British) mind, helping to form the notion of
a dangerous continental philosophy, characterized as philosophically
inadequate, politically aggressive, and irrational.
The divide between analytic and continental philosophy is still with us
and although components of it have a far longer history (as I will briefly
discuss later), its modern origins lie in the first half of the twentieth
century. Peter Simons has provided us with a chronology of the developing
divide. On his reading, the first signs are present in the period 1918 to
1933; 1933 to 1945 is characterized by catastrophe; and in the period 1945
to 1968 the rift is cemented.10 While the first period is clearly important in
examining the origins of British analytic philosophy, during the period the
discipline was barely recognizable; it was practised by only a handful of

predominantly Cambridge-based philosophers. Only later did the move-
ment became distinguishable and set about forming an intellectual iden-
tity. The chronological frame of this study encompasses, then, the most
crucial of Simons periods, the second and third (I will have something to
say about the earlier period in Chapters 1 and 2).
We are presented with a convergence of circumstances. On the one hand,
as analytic philosophy gains control of British universities, the divide
between British and continental philosophy opens up. On the other hand,
the period during which the fissure widens to a gulf is cut through with six
years of total war a war for which, the analysts believed, continental phi-
losophy was partly responsible. The analysts purging of continental philos-
ophy, once they were in a position to do so, seems to have been at least
partly motivated by these considerations. Randall Collins has pointed out
that the unprecedented vehemence of the dispute between analytic phi-
losophers and continental philosophers has outlasted virtually every other
substantive feature of their programme.11 On the analysts side, I suggest,
the vehemence is in part the legacy of the cultural-political assumptions
revealed in this study. If one thinks ones philosophical opponents are
implicated in an ideology one has had to fight in a world war, this will likely
add vehemence to ones polemic.
Secondly, this project reveals that, contrary to the received view of the
analysts as un-engaged politically, there is a strong pattern of thought in this
period that ties analytic philosophy to liberalism. As the Price quotation at
the top of this introduction makes clear, the analysts believed in a link
between the characteristic epistemological position of their movement,
empiricism, and a revival of liberalism. So, while in the years after the war
political philosophy was declared dead and the analysts were condemned as
those responsible,12 we will see here that in actual fact the analysts consi-
dered themselves to be guarantors of political liberalism.
Underpinning and uniting these two sets of attitudes was a project of
self-definition. An image of the continental philosopher and a continen-
tal tradition helped define the young British analytic tradition. The conti-
nentals were the other against which the virtues of the British could first
be constructed and then juxtaposed. The character of the analysts was also
clearly derived from stereotypical notions of Britishness, more specifically
of Englishness. In this book, I will use these terms interchangeably, though
it is clear from the character traits that the analysts celebrate and seek to
model that their perception of their own character is specifically English.
However, there is no consistency in their usage of the terms English/
Introduction 5
British; and as I will argue, the significant contrast for the analysts was
against continental philosophy, not among English, Scottish, Welsh or Irish
thought. Though the identity was recognizably an English one, the analysts
appear happy to extend it to all Britons, whom, they no doubt felt, had
more in common with each other than they did with the French or the
Germans.
In keeping with their British identity, the analytic philosophers saw
themselves and their discipline as down to earth and reasonable as Russell
says at the top of this introduction, the British invented common sense,
and have been the sole guardians of the virtue ever since. The analysts
juxtaposed their own native tradition, with its history of intellectual rigour
and political liberalism, against the perceived philosophical and political
vices of continental philosophy. Hare makes this explicit in his comment
at the top of the introduction if German philosophers had been of the
same quality as British philosophy, then history might have been very
different. We can already see in these quotations, the creation of two
identities one for us, and one for them. These identities blended the
political with considerations of character and of nationality. This was not
simply a difference between philosophical schools; it was a constructed con-
trast between liberalism and fascism, virtue and vice, Britain and Europe.
These nationalist beliefs, together with the condemnation of post-
Kantian continental thought, and the celebration of the liberalism of anal-
ysis, are not found by seeking out and then grilling minnows. They are
present in the very biggest fish in the analytic pond. To take just the names
at the top of this introduction: Russell hardly requires comment, so colos-
sal has he been in the history of twentieth-century analysis; Ryle was argu-
ably the most powerful philosopher of his day, the Waynflete Professor of
Metaphysics at Oxford from 1944 to 1968, and editor of the leading jour-
nal Mind from 1947 to 1971; R. M. Hare took the White Professorship of
Moral Philosophy at Oxford in 1960, and wielded massive international
influence over that subject. In the course of this study almost all the great
names from this period will be canvassed, A. J. Ayer, J. L. Austin, Isaiah
Berlin, Stuart Hampshire, Peter Strawson, Anthony Quinton, and the
Warnocks, Mary and Geoffrey. Far from being marginal or obscure figures
within analysis, these were the biggest names, working from the biggest
philosophy department in the United Kingdom. This project, then, exam-
ines powerful beliefs held by very significant figures at a very important
time for analytic philosophy.
At the centre of this book is a body of evidence pointing to the impor-
tance of these attitudes for the analysts. Its first purpose is to establish
beyond reasonable doubt that these beliefs were widespread among

centrally important analytic thinkers. Its second purpose is to illustrate how
these beliefs were, on the analysts own testimony, active in informing their
thinking, and therefore in moulding the discipline of analytic philosophy
as it emerged in this country.
However, this does not seek to be, and cannot be, the definitive statement
on the analysts attitudes in this period. Until recent years, there has been
very little genuine historical enquiry into analytic philosophy. The majority
of the historical work now going on focuses, quite legitimately, on scrutini-
zing the origins of analytic philosophy, whether this is seen as lying with
Russell and Moore, Frege, or elsewhere. Little attention has so far been
paid to the period under examination in this book the period in which
the claims about Russell and Moore as the originators of a tradition are first
extensively aired. Far more work will be needed to build a picture of British
analytic philosophy in the period 19301960. Only in the light of this wider
work will we be able to gain a more authoritative sense of the significance
of the attitudes canvassed here. Author and reader alike are faced with an
historical period about which little is known, and much remains to be dis-
covered. In such unexplored terrain, our maps are necessarily provisional.
A Cultural History of Philosophy
The fact that few historians have set about the exploration of this uncharted
territory is very largely the result of dominant attitudes within the analytic
philosophy itself. The discipline is, and has been, inhospitable to historical
work, and yet it has been analytic philosophers themselves who have enjoyed
a near monopoly on the writing of their own history.13 As a consequence,
the history of analytic philosophy has been relatively neglected.
Where histories have been written, they have tended to be founded on
some fundamentally ahistorical assumptions:
[t]he year 1900 is a comparatively meaningless date in philosophy; the

First World War did not provoke in philosophy profound changes which
echo on in subsequent years . . . The tenuous relationship between our
subject matter and common-or-garden historical narrative may be
regarded as an index of the rarefied atmosphere in which we shall be
moving . . .14
Here, analytic philosophy is painted as occupying a sphere of its own,

rarefied, and unpolluted by the vicissitudes of the rest of history. Such
Introduction 7
confident assertions, however, are not, as they may appear to be, the result
of detailed historical investigation into the interaction between analytic
philosophy and the cultural circumstances of its production almost no
such work exists. Rather, they are the result of the disinclination of those
within the discipline to engage in any such enquiry.
Many analysts go further than Bell and take a universalist view of
the subject. They hold, not that analytic philosophys historical development
is hermetically sealed off 15 from wider historical events, but that analytic
philosophy is engaged with timeless questions, and in timeless conversations.
History of any kind, it is assumed, is irrelevant to such universal, timeless
pursuits.
Guided by these ahistorical assumptions, for much of the latter half of the
twentieth century the histories of philosophy in Britain manifest a context-
free linearity. First there was Russell, and then there were Price, Ayer and
Ryle, then Ryle and Austin, Hampshire and Strawson, and so on. These
texts, purely through their form, could leave the reader with the impression
of a steady progressive march of the mind, culminating in a, if not perfect,
then less benighted, present.
Recent important revisionary work, for example by Peter Hylton, Robert
Hanna, and Tom Rockmore among others, has sought to disrupt the smooth
historical narrative of the tradition by highlighting the wrinkles and the
foundational misreadings; but they have not attempted to disrupt the con-
text-free approach the analysts have brought to the writing of the history of
philosophy.16 These are still histories of analytic philosophy within its her-
metic seal.
A history of analytic philosophy that looks beyond the boundary of the
strictly philosophical, then, might be expected to set alarm bells ringing.
Yet, as John McCumber points out:
Even those who are wholly resolute in their ahistorical view of their disci-
pline those many who, in the words of Peter Hylton, see analytical phi-
losophy as taking place within a single timeless moment cannot escape
this [the impact of culture]. For in the eyes of such people, political and
cultural circumstances are failings and defects that at the very least need
to be weeded out. You cant weed them if you dont see them, and you
cant see them if you wont look for them.17
The notion of a cultural history of philosophy, then, should be admissible

even within the standard analytic norms concerning history writing, even
if it only has the relatively limited use of pointing out where the seal has
been broken and cultural-political pollutants have sunk in.
However, I would suggest that the cultural history of philosophy can

have more of a role than this. Both the attempt to conceive of philosophy
as having a hermetically sealed history and attempts to view it as universal,
are, I think, poor starting points for reflecting on a discipline necessarily
undertaken by people living within, and inevitably influenced by, their time
and culture. Poor, that is, if what one is interested in is establishing how
philosophy came to be the way it is today a process of development that
manifestly did involve influences beyond the strictly philosophical.
That the history of philosophy is influenced by more than the strictly
philosophical is even more clearly true in the case of analytic philosophy,
because the discipline itself dramatically narrowed the bounds of what
counts as a philosophical question. This has resulted in traditional analytic
histories ruling out on principle not just the examination of wider culture,
where we might think of the non-philosophical beliefs of ordinary folk,
political events, the arts and so on, but even the examination of areas of
theoretical reflection considered to be beyond the bounds of philosophy.
This narrowed focus is not the best, and certainly not the only, basis for
understanding developments in the history of philosophy.
The resistance to anything resembling a cultural history of philosophy
has more to it than the foregoing characterization of a sealed discipline, or
alternatively, of one dealing with a narrow range of universal questions.
There is also an entirely legitimate fear that philosophy will be reduced to
culture so that questions that appeared to be philosophical can be
explained away as products of a particular time or circumstance. This kind
of history apparently manifests a real threat to philosophy as a discipline
explaining away philosophical claims, rather than respecting them enough
to examine their argumentative merits.
While such historical-cultural deconstructions of philosophy are possible,
they are not the inevitable result of the practice of the cultural history of
philosophy. They are certainly not what is attempted in this book. I am not
claiming that the cultural/political attitudes revealed in this study provide
the final definitive explanation for any strictly philosophical development.
What I am suggesting is that the history of philosophy is not governed only
by the making and refuting of strictly philosophical arguments in the
very narrow sense that this phrase has taken on within analytic philosophy.
To be sure, good (and bad) philosophical arguments are active in history.
People do, sometimes, change their minds in response to a sound argu-
ment. Strictly philosophical ideas do therefore have a role in historical
explanation. But so, as recent studies have shown, do other things; both
Introduction 9
John McCumber and George Reisch have recently shown that there are
significant factors outside the strictly philosophical which have moulded
the development of philosophy specifically they show the impact of
McCarthyism on American analytic philosophy and philosophy of science,
respectively.18 Whether modern analytic philosophy was moulded by strictly
philosophical argument or other factors or, as I suggest here, a combina-
tion, is a question that has to be answered through historical investigation,
and through studies of particular ideas and circumstances. It is no more
legitimate to claim that, its all culture, than it is to maintain what has been
the analytic status quo and insist, its all philosophy.
The fear that philosophy will be explained away into a wider culture,
then, is not a good enough reason to maintain the hermetic seal around
the discipline. We should investigate the causes of historical developments,
whatever they are. In this book, the evidence strongly points to the inter-
relationship of cultural and political beliefs and philosophical ones. It was
this web of belief, not simply the strictly philosophical aspects, that strongly
influenced the formation of British analytic philosophy in determining
who could be studied, and what kinds of question could be asked.
Because of the careful policing of what can and cannot be considered
philosophy, I have had to use the term cultural political to pick out
beliefs of the analysts on subjects such as political philosophy, character,
and the relationship between nations and philosophical ideas. If a more
catholic reading of the term philosophy were available, an alternative
label would not prove necessary. Indeed, if a more catholic reading of the
term philosophy was available, it seems unlikely that the assumptions of
the analysts canvassed in this book would have remained unexplored for
so long.
Finally on the subject of the cultural history of philosophy, it is worth
noting that this approach, which has enjoyed a very limited revival since the
turn of the century, has some other advantageous features.19 It allows the
historian to begin to fit the history of analytic philosophy into the wider
history of a period. For the first time in the history of analytic philosophy,
histories are now being written which can offer something to the historian
and to the philosopher. With this thought in mind, this book begins the
task of situating the analysts within the cultural milieu of mid-century
Britain; and discusses the continuities between the attitudes of analytic
philosophers and those present in a wider culture. It also aims to contribute
to the growing body of historical work on the cultural and intellectual
dimensions of Anglo-German relations.20
Methodological Considerations
Because cultural histories of analytic philosophy are still relatively rare

beasts, in this section I will briefly canvass some important respects in which
this book differs from what might be expected of a traditional history of the
subject. For the sake of clarity and to allow the reader to skip questions
about which they are unconcerned, this discussion is arranged under sub-
headings: Traditional distinctions; Personnel; and Use of sources.
Traditional distinctions
Perhaps inevitably, the focus on broader cultural questions has resulted in
an approach which ignores some traditionally important distinctions. The
conventional approach is for historians to concern themselves with the
distinctions, debates and questions which directly engaged their historical
subjects, or with those specific features of the debates considered to be
potentially illuminating to contemporary philosophical concerns. The his-
torian would chart the different configurations of ideas: in the period under
examination here the differences between Russell, the logical positivists
and the Oxford ordinary language philosophers would be discussed.
These philosophical similarities and differences within the analytic fold
are distinctions that I choose to ignore. My interest here is in a series of
assumptions that do not respect these demarcations partly because they
relate to a series of broader philosophical commitments that the analysts, of
whatever sub-group, had in common: hostility to metaphysics, a subscrip-
tion to some form of empiricism, a commitment to small scale, precisely
defined philosophical investigations, and so on. It is to these shared signa-
ture beliefs of the analytic philosophers that the cultural-political attitudes
uncovered by this project relate.
This commonality is, to use a highly loaded word, an empirical discovery
and it has meant that the following project pays less attention to traditional
boundaries within analysis than one might have come to expect from other
histories of the subject. The philosophical differences within analysis have
been well documented and in not engaging with these arguments and not
using them as structuring features, I wish to make no general comment on
the value of these boundaries, except to say that, viewed through a certain
lens, they become substantially less important.
It is important to note, however, that on one significant point I do adhere
to the traditional approach to the history of analytic philosophy in this
period: in placing Oxbridge, and in particular Oxford, at the centre of the
Introduction 11
story. Most historians see the 1930s as a decade in which Cambridge analysis
came to Oxford, and this is borne out by contemporary sources. H. J. Paton
spent ten years away from Oxford: by the time of my return . . . in 1937 the
philosophical climate was already greatly altered . . . the Cam was flowing
into the Isis and it seemed to me that a fresh era had begun.21 Once this
transformation is underway, what we might term the era of Oxford philoso-
phy begins. In her biography of H. L. A. Hart, Nicola Lacey (2004) points
to the significance Oxford had achieved as a philosophical centre by the
end of World War II: [i]n 1946, Oxford philosophy dominated philosophi-
cal scholarship in England, while British philosophy continued to domi-
nate all over the English speaking world . . . These men . . . felt and behaved
as if they ran the philosophical world.22
Lacey also highlights the numerical dominance of the department: in
1952 the 50 philosophers based at Oxford constituted more than a quarter
of all professional philosophers in England.23 One of the few philosophers
to have devoted serious historical attention to this period, Jonathan Re,
also emphasizes the dominance of Oxford philosophy after World War II:
[i]n fact . . . nearly all the energy of English academic philosophy in the
fifties came from Oxford.24 While Cambridge and also, to some extent,
London, do appear in this project, it is this new era in Oxford that attracts
historians attention, and because I have no wish to be revisionist in this
sense, it is Oxford which has provided my main focus. I will have more to
say on the significance of Oxfords centrality in Chapter 2.
Personnel
I have already indicated the centrality of some of the main players in this
book. So rather than offer a comprehensive cataloguing of inclusions and
exclusions, I will briefly discuss three notable exclusions and a notable
inclusion. Moore, Popper, and Wittgenstein will be absent. I am concerned
with a national(ist) conversation among the insiders of British analysis and
neither of the latter were insiders in this world, though for somewhat
different reasons. Karl Popper did not arrive in the UK until January 1946.
He was, and chose to remain, an Austrian citizen, and he found himself
thwarted by Ryle in his attempts to get a Chair at Oxford.25 Popper was,
then, twice an outsider his access to the nerve-centre of analytic philoso-
phy was blocked, and he was a foreign newcomer who, therefore, could
hardly join in with the post-war British self-congratulation.
Ludwig Wittgenstein is a more interesting figure, who was initially read as
being an analytic insider, and whose reputation diminished as he came to
be read through his subscription to certain continental philosophies. Sadly

there is no scope for fully charting this transition here; but an examination
of Wittgensteins career through the prism of some of the assumptions
revealed in this book would, I suspect, be rather enlightening.26 Leaving
these speculations aside, Wittgenstein, an Austrian who fought on the
German side in the First World War, could never have taken part in the
British nationalist discourse that was a feature of the post-war philosophical
climate. Nor would he have had any interest in engaging in the condemna-
tion of continental philosophers. If claims about his debt to Schopenhauer
are accurate, Wittgenstein would not have enjoyed the dismissal of thinkers
to whom he owed a philosophical debt.27
The simple reason for G. E. Moores absence is that, in his published
work, he betrays none of the attitudes discussed in this book. A full exami-
nation of his archive would be required to ascertain Moores views on the
topics under discussion here. He does appear as a venerated ancestor in
many of the analytic texts, alongside the other analytic pioneer, Bertrand
Russell.
Russell, however, has a more active role in what follows. In texts from the
Ancestry of Fascism (1935) to Philosophy and Politics (1950), he contrib-
utes significantly to our understanding of the cultural politics of analytic
philosophy. The centrality of Russell may surprise some. While he was a
hugely popular public figure, by the 1930s he had been outside normal aca-
demic life for almost 15 years having been dismissed from Cambridge
over his protests against World War I. What place was left for him in analytic
philosophy?
Russell was honoured in a way that few philosophers can ever have hoped
to be immortalized in their lifetime. Gilbert Ryle, giving a commemorative
address to the Aristotelian Society, said of Russell that he changed the very
tactics of philosophical thinking.28 At the very least, then, the Russell of the
1930s, 40s and 50s was a venerated living ancestor, to be listened to respect-
fully, if not any longer of central significance. But Russell was also making
a determined effort in the 1930s to break back into academia writing
scholarly articles and addressing philosophical gatherings. It was this effort
that gave Trevelyan the academic grounds for bringing Russell back to
Cambridge after World War II. His work might not have garnered whole-
hearted approval from all sides of the analytic establishment but, more so
than he had been for the better part of two decades, Russell was present
in academic circles and he was actively involved in analytic philosophy.
Neither was he philosophically isolated. In areas such as moral and political
philosophy and on questions such as the role of science and metaphysics,
Introduction 13
his ideas were in step with those of many other analysts. Unsurprisingly,
given that they were a group comprised of his disciples, he found much that
was congenial in the ideas of the logical positivists. This may have been a
man whose best philosophical work was behind him, but the combination
of his re-engagement with the discipline, and his celebrated status for past
work clearly made him a part of the world of analytic philosophy in this
period. His championing of Ernest Gellners highly controversial attack on
Oxford philosophy, Words and Things, also indicates that Russell, even in
advanced old age, had the ability to intervene in, and to stir up, the world
of analytic philosophy.29
Just as important as Russells re-emergence onto the analytic scene,
however, was the nature of the interventions that he made. Time and again
in the course of the research for this project Russell has been the philoso-
pher who has brought to the surface and explicated ideas that we find
adumbrated in other analytic philosophers. So effective and consistent is
Russell in doing this work that his thought appears at times to give coherent
explicit statement to the unconscious assumptions of the analysts. Whether
this habit is due to Russells abilities as a weather-vane or to his abilities as a
proselytizer is not clear, and nor is it an important part of this project to
clarify this question but it does make Russell centrally important. In a
period of his life that has been characterized by commentators as one of
poor intellectual standards, this ability to articulate the assumptions of his
tradition must be weighed as an important aspect of Russells legacy.30
Use of sources
In the research for this project, I have been lucky in being able to explore
the cultural politics of British analysts by drawing almost entirely on pub-
lished material and without requiring recourse to literary techniques that
the early analysts themselves would have dismissed as theory.31 This is
advantageous in that it leaves less room for doubt or disagreement as to the
meaning intended by the authors under consideration.32
I examine the books and articles written by the analysts on strictly philo-
sophical topics, works like Language, Truth and Logic, Two Concepts of
Liberty and Freedom and Reason. But the more general reflections of the
analysts have tended to provide the richest evidence especially when they
turn their attention to reflections on the origins and nature of their own
discipline. The cluster of books on the history of analytic philosophy written
by the analysts in the 1950s and early 1960s has proved especially valuable.
Due to the same considerations, texts are more often drawn from the
journal Philosophy, which catered for a wider audience, than from the rather
more austere professional publications such as Analysis, or the house-
journal of the analysts, Mind. Published interviews conducted with leading
figures in the tradition have also been very valuable, particularly the volume
collected by Bryan Magee.33
Most of the texts I examine in this book would straightforwardly have
been considered philosophy in any other historical period. However, as a
result of the seal around what counts as the strictly philosophical within
analytic philosophy, there may be some who would, on the basis of this
selection of sources, dismiss the discoveries of this project as irrelevant to
analytic philosophy, proper because they do not draw on the most precise
logico-linguistic publications of the analysts.34 Not all contemporary
analytic philosophers, of course, would support such an objection. Never-
theless, it is one that is worth briefly addressing as it threatens, for some at
least, to undermine the aim of the book. There are several points that need
to be made in answering this concern.
First, and most importantly, this book examines what the analytic philoso-
phers had to say, on the record, about their own discipline, its academic
place, and its values. In reading these texts, we do no more than take
seriously what the analysts themselves have to say about analytic philosophy.
To seek to claim that these reflections on analytic philosophy by central
analytic philosophers are irrelevant to analytic philosophy seems, prima
facie, rather peculiar.
Secondly, some of the texts I examine I mentioned three above are
indisputably strictly philosophical, and we can locate the attitudes under
discussion in this book in those texts. Thirdly, I would suggest that the
drawing of hard lines between publications which are strictly philosophi-
cal and therefore admissible and those which are not is rather harder than
it may at first appear. The histories written by the analytic philosophers
clearly had a philosophical agenda: to perpetuate and recommend their
new way of looking at the discipline. They also contain philosophical argu-
ments, and judgements about the success and failure of those arguments.
Finally, it should be no surprise that we do not find explicit articulation
of the cultural attitudes of the analysts in their most precise logico-linguistic
philosophy. We are looking here at a history of largely unspoken assump-
tions and of exclusion. If we want to understand why this exclusion takes
place, we cannot simply look at the strictly philosophical writing, because
it is from precisely these works that these issues and figures have been
excluded. The most abstract philosophical texts show us what was being
done, but if we want to understand why this question was asked and not
Introduction 15
that, or why this thinker but not that thinker, we need to take a broader
view. The analysts themselves conceded as much through their writing of
histories of their discipline. If analytic philosophy was an entirely self-
explanatory activity, nothing but the strictly philosophical work need ever
have been produced.
As with the resistance to cultural history, there seems to be something a
little defensive in the line of argument that seeks to wall off strictly philo-
sophical texts, and render other insightful sources a priori inadmissible.
Structure
In Chapter 1, I reveal the widely held assumption among the analysts that
nineteenth-century German philosophy was, in Russells language, the
ancestor of fascism. I will suggest that for the analysts this was a piece of
orthodoxy and did not require any serious justification. In Chapter 2,
I discuss the analysts construction of their own history, their claim to have
reconnected with a characteristically British philosophical tradition, and
their portrayal of idealism as foreign and dangerous, in keeping with its
fascist credentials.
In the third chapter I examine the analysts belief in the inter-
relationship between bad philosophy, bad character and bad politics. This
inter-relationship and interdependence of the strictly philosophical and
the cultural-political in the analysts critique of continental philosophy is
made clearly apparent. I also look at how this holistic critique helped shape
the analysts own identity.
Chapter 4 shows that cultural-political assumptions permeate the
analysts philosophical thought to the extent that their signature epistemol-
ogy, empiricism, was allied, in the analysts minds, directly to liberalism.
Not only did the analysts contrast themselves with the vices of the Europe-
ans in terms of philosophical method and character, they also conceived of
themselves as liberal, contrasted with continental political extremism. This
powerful assumption, buttressed both by the contrast with the continent
and the identification of analytic philosophy with British virtue, reveals a
political heart to this apparently apolitical movement.
Chapter 1
Nazi Philosophy
Presently three white specks could be seen dimly through the light of the haze overhead,
and we watched their course from the field. The raid was soon over . . . As I went back
to my Hegel my mood was one of self-satire. Was this a time for theorizing or for
destroying theories, when the world was tumbling about our ears? My second thoughts
ran otherwise. To each man the tools and weapons he can best use. In the bombing
of London I had just witnessed the visible and tangible outcome of a false and wicked
doctrine, the foundations of which lay, as I believe, in the book before me.1
(L. T. Hobhouse 1918)
German politics to-day are a realization of theories set forth by Fichte in 1807.2
This is the imagery and worship of power, of the movement of force for its own sake.
This force is, for him, the divine process itself, crushing whatever is meant to be
crushed, enthroning that whose hour to dominate has struck and this, for
Hegel, is the essence of the process. This is the source of Carlyles heroes or Nietzsches
superman, of openly power-worshipping movements such as Marxism and
Fascism, both of which (in their different ways) derived morality from historical
success.3
(Isaiah Berlin 1955)
By 1945, a broad consensus existed among the analytic philosophers that

the intellectual origins of fascism could be found in the continental philo-
sophy of the previous 200 years: in Rousseau, Fichte, Hegel and Nietzsche,
to name only the most popular targets. As the post-war age began, this view
had achieved the status of unquestioned orthodoxy. Here, I aim to offer
both a history and an anatomy of this orthodoxy. I will briefly trace the
emergence of this belief, from its origins in the First World War, through its
revival in the 1930s under the auspices of Russell, among others. I will then
Nazi Philosophy 17
go on to illustrate the political case made against certain key nineteenth-

century continental philosophers in the years around World War II, and the
broad acceptance that this critique enjoyed among the analysts. This treat-
ment elides the immediate pre-and post-Second World War discussions of
this issue. This reflects the remarkable congruence in the ideas of the ana-
lysts over a period between 1934 and the 1960s. The principal difference is
simply that after the conflict more analytic philosophers are willing to sign
up to the pre-war critique.4 In the final part of this chapter, I will examine
the question of historical causation in the analysts accounts of the origins
of fascism, by paying close attention to the two analytic philosophers who
produced full accounts of the origins of Nazi philosophy, Isaiah Berlin and
Bertrand Russell. This, in turn, will allow us to reflect on the significance of
nationalist assumptions in the position taken by the analytic philosophers.
There were, in fact, four philosophers based in Britain who devoted sub-
stantial time and effort to the analysis of the proto-Nazi philosophers in
the middle decades of the twentieth century. These were Russell, Berlin,
C. E. M. Joad and Karl Popper. It is no part of my case to prove that it was
these men who had the greatest impact on the public in terms of communi-
cating the warnings about German/Nazi philosophy but it may be worth
noting in passing that this is highly likely to be true. Russell was a public
figure of tremendous stature, and his History of Western Philosophy (1946) was
a best seller. Joad was a philosopher who, in the 1930s and 40s, equalled
Russell in fame and wrote extensively about German/Nazi philosophy in
his, also highly successful, Guide to the Philosophy of Morals and Politics (1938)
and elsewhere. Poppers polemic against Hegel, Plato, Nietzsche and others,
The Open Society and its Enemies, was well received in intellectual circles on its
release, also in 1946.5 Finally, Berlins broadcast lectures on Freedom and
Its Betrayal in the 1950s were listened to by hundreds of thousands of
people, turning him into a figure of national recognition.6 Joad has no
claim to be considered an analytic philosopher and therefore is not
a central concern here (though some treatment of his place in the intellec-
tual life of the 1930s and 1940s is overdue); and Popper, as I argued in the
introduction, is not of central significance for our purposes. This leaves us
with the accounts offered by Russell and Berlin. While this chapter does
take these two as its primary focus, the views elaborated in detail by Russell
and Berlin were shared, and explicitly shared, by many of their analytic
colleagues. Indicating this breadth of conviction will be an important part
of this chapter.
Three notes on language at the outset. I use fascism and Nazism inter-
changeably, as the analysts appear not to have drawn distinctions between
Italian Fascism, Nazism and a generic use of the term fascism. However,
both Russell and Berlin place clear focus on German Nazism and not
Italian Fascism. Russell briefly discusses Mussolini, and Mazzini is the only
figure specifically tied to the Italian movement. Berlin, on occasion, appears
to distinguish specific ancestors of French Fascism, but more typically takes
a generic approach. The reader will also note that at times the analysts
appear to be working with a theory of totalitarianism which unites Soviet
Communism and fascism.7 My focus, however, will remain on fascism. When
the analysts take specific cases, they nearly always discuss fascism and not
communism; this reflects the German-centred nature of the analysts
concerns. An account of the place of anti-Soviet feeling in the work of the
analysts would distract from this latter focus.
Secondly, I refer throughout to the anti-canon of philosophers. This is a
term coined by Jonathan Re in his Philosophical Tales to describe a canon of
condemned thinkers, to be contrasted with the canon of worthy philoso-
phers.8 I follow this usage closely; the anti-canon explored in these pages,
however, is united by a political guilt not suggested by Re in his character-
ization of the term.
World War I and Anti-Germanism in Philosophy
In 1911, the Oxford historian A. J. Carlyle wrote that the: position of the
great German nation in philosophy, science and literature was so powerful
that students were bound to study German and go to Germany if they were
of any promise.9 The First World War was to destroy such easy reverence for
German learning. In October 1914 the Manifesto of the ninety-three,
sometimes referred to as the manifesto of the intellectuals of Germany,
which was ultimately to be signed by virtually the whole German professori-
ate was published.10 Its purpose was to show clearly that there were not two
Germanies, one war-like and Prussian, the other a peaceful, culturally rich
nation, but just one Germany, determined to win the war.11 The manifesto
became a byword among British and French intellectuals for the subordi-
nation of German scholarship to the dictates of state policy.12 The reputa-
tion of the German academy was to suffer as a result.
The pre-war philosophical scene was dominated by a school of British
idealists, most notable among them Bernard Bosanquet and F. H. Bradley.
Idealism was institutionally secure within the old universities (both Bradley
and Bosanquet were associated with Oxford University, though Bosanquet
had ceased to occupy a formal academic position), its students and
Nazi Philosophy 19
adherents occupied high offices of state.13 The wartime debates were to

prove uncomfortable for these establishment figures. In the early months
of the war, a correspondence in The Times first suggested that German
aggression might have a link to the philosophies of Kant, Fichte and Hegel.14
A debate was joined, one best remembered for the evocative passage from
Hobhouses The Metaphysical Theory of the State (1918), which opens this
chapter; here Hobhouse draws a dramatic and direct parallel between the
German air-raid on London and Hegels philosophy. Hobhouse had made
a similar case in Questions of War and Peace (1916). What were his reasons for
linking Hegels thought to German aggression?
The deification of the State and the belief that it is the supreme type of
human organisation, the contempt for democracy, the unreal identifica-
tion of liberty with law, which simply puts every personal right at the mercy
of the legislator, the upholding of war as a necessity, the disregard of
humanity, the denial of the sanctity of treaties and international law . . . 15
It was Hegels state supreme, authoritarian, warlike and opposed to

everything that the free democratic world believed in that Hobhouse saw
at the heart of the German war machine. Hegel did not stand alone; he was
allied to the ultra-nationalist J. G. Fichte and helped by the intervention of
Nietzsche whose contribution had been to remove any remaining moral
controls on power. Nor was Hobhouse alone in his accusations against
German philosophy. The historian Stuart Wallace points out that the cata-
logue of the supposed characteristics of the Hegelian state were repeated
so often that they have an incantatory quality.16
The accusations, however, were extended beyond the nineteenth-century
German tradition. In his critique, Hobhouse used as his target not Hegel
himself but the English idealist Bosanquets The Philosophical Theory of the
State (1899), which Hobhouse held to be a faithful representation of the
Hegels ideas.17 The English followers of Hegelian philosophy found them-
selves caught up in the condemnation of German thought. Bosanquet, who
suffered the most criticism, was labelled a Prusso-phile philosopher.18 The
work of two American philosophers, John Dewey and George Santayana,
published during the war, extends still further the critique, blaming Hegel,
Nietzsche and Fichte as had become mandatory, but for their own reasons
extending the critique back to Immanuel Kant.19
Defenders of idealism, like J. H. Muirhead and Ernest Barker, rather than
seek to deny a link between nineteenth-century German thought and
twentieth-century German aggression, sought to push the blame away from
Hegel by arguing that it was late nineteenth-century German thought that

gave itself over to militarism. As such, militarism was not the true inheri-
tance of Hegel, but rather the fault of later philosophers, like Nietzsche
and Treitschke.20 A bookseller on the Strand announced in his window that
this was The Euro-Nietzschean War and urged passers by to Read the
Devil, in order to fight him the better.21 Nietzsche was a popular target for
almost everyone.22
Nietzsche, despite his pre-war popularity in England, does not appear to
have been particularly central to British philosophy. Hegel and Kant (and to
a lesser degree Fichte), however, were central to one of the most powerful
strands of contemporary British thought. As a result of their Germanic asso-
ciations, the war greatly harmed the reputation of British idealism, both in
philosophical and public circles. But the broadening of the attack to Nietzsche,
Treitschke and other more recent German thinkers did nothing to help
Hegels reputation; it simply added to the perception of German thought
as a many-headed hydra each head as diabolical as the last. This was an
increasingly broad-brush identification of a whole canon of nineteenth-
century German thinkers with twentieth-century German nationalism.
These supposed masterminds of modern Germanys crimes were not
vindicated by the peace, as C. E. M. Joad observed in 1919:
[s]ince the war dissatisfaction with the [Hegelian] theory has grown. For
it is in the omnipotence of the State in time of war that the theory finds
its most striking logical development. The State of war writes Hegel,
shows the omnipotence of the State in its individuality; country and
fatherland are then the power which convicts of nullity the independence
of individuals. In the hands of writers like Nietzsche and Bernhardi, who
have pushed the States claims with ruthless logic, the theory develops
aspects so revolting that political philosophy has for once been dragged
down from the clouds, and the so-called German theory of the State
became a byword for execration to the man in the street.23
Indeed it was not just the man in the street that found himself hostile to
all things German. There was a general move within the academy away
from the German scholarship so praised by A. J. Carlyle at the top of this
section. Stuart Wallace has argued that [t]he spell of German Wissenschaft
had been broken by the war . . . 24 Joad gives a more colourful, contem-
porary perspective, in a lengthy quotation that conveys powerfully the post-
war atmosphere:
Nazi Philosophy 21
[o]f all the parallel crises of its kind historically recorded, the intellectual
volte face in the English estimate of German scholarship will surely stand
out as immeasurably the most startling. The German intellectual method
in matters of learning and scholarship, the German patience in scientific
and literary criticism, the profundity of German thought in matters of
Philosophy, were before the war the theme of ungrudging admiration
among English savants. Within the space of two years we have discovered
innumerable defects in the German method and have stripped the gilt
from numberless exploded reputations. We have found that Wagner is
the musical embodiment of a ruthless and chaotic militarism, that
Nietzsches philosophy is the incoherent babbling of a dyspeptic megalo-
maniac, that Hegel is the apostle of a monstrous and repellent state which
makes insatiable demands upon the lives of its individuals, sacrifices
happiness to efficiency, and liberty to false deification of discipline and
order. Only those Germans who are sufficiently separated from the emo-
tional condemnations of to-day by the lapse of over a century Kant and
Beethoven escape the universal disparagement. These are intellectual
judgements we pass, and we are not concerned here to weigh them as
right or wrong; only be it noted they are the direct outcome of feelings
engendered by the war, and immeasurably disparate from their predeces-
sors of four years ago.25
Post-war British academics continued the backlash against German

thought and culture that had characterized the war years. A philosophical
class approaching the peace with these attitudes would find no easy recon-
ciliation with their German colleagues. Wallace writes: although individual
British scholars were in touch again with German colleagues as soon as
peace was declared, the institutional framework of international scholar-
ship seemed . . . to have been broken permanently.26 German and Austrian
philosophers were systematically excluded from international philosophi-
cal congresses for almost a decade after the Armistice.27 As Wallace has
pointed out, this unwillingness to re-establish contacts with German philos-
ophers after World War I, combined with the steady decline of German uni-
versities after 1933, made the re-establishment of cordial academic ties
between British and German philosophy departments almost an impossibil-
ity in the inter-war period.28 The suspicion of German thought that found
expression during World War I was given no chance to subside thereafter
indeed, this suspicion would survive the dismemberment of Germany itself
in 1945.
The lack of a post-war British reckoning with their own wartime attitudes
and practices also helped to ensure that the hostility to German thought
would survive through the inter-war period. Great Britain was, according to
Wallace, the only country not to hold a post-mortem on the role of academ-
ics in wartime: in Britain the academic community closed ranks. There was
no inquest on whether historians or philosophers had been guilty of serious
lapses in scholarly standards.29 The scholarly fighting, like the war, was,
with some exceptions, simply suspended by the Armistice. At the end of
World War I we are left with a vision of a dangerous German national
philosophy embodying the character and the flaws of that nation. Broadly
based, it appeared to implicate almost all the major figures in nineteenth-
century German thought and it was seen to culminate in the rape of
Belgium. German philosophy had apparently been revealed at the heart of
German politics. Joad wrote, and we quoted above, [t]hese are intellectual
judgements we pass, and we are not concerned here to weight them as right
or wrong; only be it noted they are the direct outcome of feelings engen-
dered by the war . . .30 This was the situation in 1919, and with no real post-
war re-examination of the judgements made in the heat of the conflict all
of these judgements stood. The dialogue about German philosophy and its
dangerous place as a motivating factor behind aggressive German politics
was suspended in 1919, to be re-engaged in the 1930s.
The 1920s were, by most accounts, not philosophically dynamic. Accord-
ing to Anthony Quinton, philosophy suffered from the general spiritual
devastation of the First World War.31 A generation of academics had
been lost in the trenches, leaving the very old and the extremely youthful
to eye each other with hostility across, what Gilbert Ryle referred to as,
a boundless military cemetery.32 Nevertheless, analytic philosophy made
quiet progress in Cambridge during this period the most tangible sign of
which was G. E. Moores elevation to a Professorship in 1925. The impor-
tance of Cambridge should not be over-stated, however; the philosophy
faculty was small. Between 19211930 the average number of students
sitting for a Part I in Philosophy was five and for Part II just over seven.33
This was not the basis for a rapid expansion of the tradition. In the much
larger philosophy department at Oxford, the ideas of the Cambridge (ana-
lytic) school of philosophy were barely discussed. The guide for Oxford
undergraduates, published in 1927, Philosophy in Lit. Hum. Practical Hints for
Students of the School, mentioned no-one from the new Cambridge school,
except C. D. Broad, and he only in passing.34 By the early 1930s, however,
there were signs that that the fortunes of analytic philosophy were improv-
ing in Oxford. H. H. Price had arrived from Cambridge, bringing analytic
philosophy with him. Ryle had moved towards the analytic movement,
Nazi Philosophy 23
and A. J. Ayer, recently in possession of his undergraduate degree, was

causing a splash with his loud proclamations of the analytic creed. He was
to be joined by Berlin and J. L. Austin. This burgeoning of analytic philoso-
phy coincided with the return of a threat from Germany, and the concomi-
tant return of the critique of German philosophy.
The Revival of the Critique
It was Russell and Joad, two men who had been witness to the debates over
the First World War, who dusted off the crime sheet of the German philos-
ophers and presented it to new audiences in the 1930s. In an address to
the Aristotelian Society in 1934 Joad argued that Hegels theory of the
state was invoked by fascists.35 In an address to the Fabian society, also in
1934, and published as The Ancestry of Fascism in his In Praise of Idleness
(1935), Russell identified Fichte and Nietzsche, plus a host of others, as
being part of a movement which culminates (as yet) in Hitler.36 Follow-
ing suit, other philosophers also argued for a link between German philos-
ophy and Nazism. Among their number was Ernest Barker, reprising his
critique of Nietzsche and other romantic philosophers, first aired during
World War I. Viscount (formerly Sir Herbert) Samuel moved from his
active political role during World War I (he was Home Secretary from
1916) to writing critiques of the enemies of civilization including,
again, Nietzsche, in his new capacity as President of the Royal Institute of
Philosophy.37
Philosophers once again took sides, both for and against Hegel and
idealism (though once again it was difficult to find anyone willing to defend
Nietzsche38). A debate was carried out at length and at times in bad temper,
between E. F. Carritt for the prosecution and T. M. Knox for the defence,
in the pages of Philosophy under the headline Hegel and Prussianism.39
The defenders of idealism were, however, not numerous and not all
as whole-hearted as Knox. In the same 1934 symposium in which Joad rein-
troduced the critique of the Hegelian theory of state, G. C. Fields mild
admonition seemed only concerned to defend the British idealists:
I should question, for instance, his [Joads] association of intolerance of

opinion with the Idealist Philosophy. It may be true that Hegel and Gentile
have appeared as advocates of the authoritarian State. But our leading
British Idealists who have been active in public affairs and no other school
of philosophy has in practice inspired so many of its adherents to such
activity have with hardly an exception been active on the liberal side.40
While Field argued that the British tradition of idealism was freer of taint
than its continental progenitors, he sought to elaborate this defence no
further. The idealist G. R. G. Mure, arguing that the Oxford ethos owed
much to German idealism and Socrates, remarked in an arch aside: though
for the worse of it [the Oxford manner] one need, I suppose, as little blame
Socrates as one need hold Hegel responsible for the Great War, or the
founder of Christianity for the Spanish Inquisition.41 The 1930s also saw
the return of a venerable J. H. Muirhead to the fray in defence of Hegel.42
This debate then, proceeded along similar lines as the one discontinued
in 1919 unsurprising, as many of those taking part had been either
witnesses or contributors to the same debates during World War I. Signi-
ficant in this regard is that crucial texts in the First World War condemna-
tion of the anti-canon were reprinted in this period adding further
weight to the condemnation. Hobhouses The Metaphysical Theory of the
State was reprinted in 1938, 1951, and 1960.43 Santayanas Egotism and
German Philosophy (1916) was reprinted for a British publisher in 1939.
A new edition of Deweys German Philosophy and Politics (1915) was pub-
lished in America in 1942 (though it is not clear whether it was available in
Britain). These texts were clearly felt to be valuable, once more, in under-
standing the intellectual roots of the German threat. Not that such texts
were needed to make the case; there were plenty of contemporary publica-
tions to choose from.
Indeed, the condemnation of German philosophy proved to be a popular
move across the disciplines in the 1930s and 1940s. Of the non-philoso-
phers, Aurel Kolnais The War Against the West and William McGoverns From
Luther to Hitler: The History of Nazi Fascist Philosophy appeared in England in
1938 and 1946 respectively.44 Views of a similar nature were also shared
more widely by public intellectuals. If we are to believe the philosopher
Frederick Copleston, [o]ne has only to look at letters and articles in reviews,
weekly and daily papers, to see these ideas of the Nazis coupled with the
name of Nietzsche.45 These ideas even found their way into a magazine
issued for use by commanders by the Army Bureau of Current Affairs.
Nietzsche, Fichte and Treitschke are all cited as important.46 At all levels,
the weight of opinion appeared firmly against German thought. Even
Hegel, with his British following, couldnt rely on unswerving support from
the idealists. Many kept quiet. Muirhead, one of the few to return to the fray
in defence of Hegels legacy, died in 1940, depriving idealism of one of its
most consistent and staunch defenders.
Both within philosophy and wider culture, an idea had been bequeathed
by the First World War, an idea of a vicious expansionist German philoso-
phy behind the vicious expansionist German army. This had become
Nazi Philosophy 25
a staple not just in academic circles, but also among intellectuals and on the
pages of the newspapers.
We have already noted Russells involvement. Where, in all this, were the
other analytic philosophers? In the 1930s, noticeably silent. With the
exception of Russell, they did not engage in the debate over the guilt of
the anti-canon. In the most part this can be accounted for by youth. The
second generation of analytic philosophers Ayer, Austin and Berlin the
most notable were in their twenties during the 1930s. Ayer was precocious
in publishing Language Truth and Logic at the age of 26, but it is perhaps not
surprising that we do not find his contemporaries inveighing against
German philosophy in print. The third generation of analytic philosophers,
those born in the 1920s, would not come up to Oxford until the late 1930s,
and therefore could not offer much in the way of comment on the anti-
canon during the pre-war period.
On top of their youth Ayer, Austin and Berlin inhabited a world pre-
occupied with immediate concrete political concerns, which may have
distracted them from the theoretical background to the rise of fascism.
A keen concern with matters of direct political importance appeared to
grip Oxford in particular.47 Ayer, among others, was involved in campaign-
ing for the republican cause in the Spanish civil war.48 As Spain retreated as
an issue, there was the famous Munich by-election of October 1938. The
Master of Balliol, A. D. Lindsay, challenged the Tory Quinton Hogg as an
anti-appeasement candidate. Ayer was a leading opponent of Hogg, and
Austin dabbled in the art of political sloganeering.49 This active interest in
politics does not seem to have translated to an interest in writing political
philosophy.50 For reasons that we will discuss in subsequent chapters, their
days of study were not filled by reading of the work of Nietzsche, Hegel and
other condemned thinkers. Instead they were spending time reading and
discussing Ayers Language Truth and Logic (1936), a book which pre-
occupied the analysts for much of the late 1930s. It was only after 1944, with
the third generation coming of age and philosophers filtering back to
Oxford from Bletchley, France, and London that the analysts began to
expound their views on the nature and origins of the conflict.
The Analysts Account for Nazism
Given their relative lack of enthusiasm for the debate in the 1930s, what is
striking is the uniformity with which the analysts accepted the anti-
Hegelian, anti-Nietzschean and generally anti-continental philosophy
(a term whose recent history dates from this post-war period) conclusions
generated over the previous decades. I will deal with the two most compre-
hensive accounts below, but it is interesting that most of the analytic philos-
ophers who condemned the anti-canon for the crimes of Germany did not
feel any need to undertake a justification of this view. Their attitudes are
revealed in the odd comment, a passing reference. The culpability of these
continental philosophers appears so clear that a case against them does not
even need to be made.
I want now to give an indication of these responses. Here, I switch from
a broadly chronological approach to one that seeks to unite the analytic
philosophers attitudes across the period. As we will see, the ideas expressed
after 1945 are essentially continuous with Russells thesis, itself a continua-
tion of the discourse started in the First World War.
Russell was clear that the romantic revolt passes from Byron, Schopen-
hauer and Nietzsche to Mussolini and Hitler.51 He also clearly links
Nazism with German idealism: [t]he Nazis upheld German idealism,
though the degree of allegiance given to Kant, Fichte or Hegel respectively
was not clearly laid down.52 In the early 1950s Berlin began to look hard at
the roots of Nazism, which he found in the romantics.53 This is what he had
to say on the subject in his radio lectures Freedom and Its Betrayal
(1952):
Rousseau is the greatest militant lowbrow of history, a kind of guttersnipe

of genius, and figures like Carlyle, and to some extent Nietzsche, and
certainly D. H. Lawrence and dAnnunzio, as well as rvolt, petit bourgeois
dictators like Hitler and Mussolini, are his heirs.54
In another passage from the same work, he clearly implicates Hegel.55 Ayer,
too, located the source of Nazism in its philosophical past:
[e]ven politically I mean if you take the rise of Nazism in Germany, this
was in some sense Romanticism gone wrong. People who, I suppose, in
some way preceded the Nazis were people like Nietzsche. Its unfair
perhaps to him to say so, but he seems to me to represent a kind of woolly
romantic thinking which made Nazism possible.56
This quotation is taken from an interview in the 1970s; but Ayer makes the
association between Hegel and totalitarianism explicit in an article pub-
lished in 1944 (to which I will return below).57 Price, writing in the early
months of the war, is straightforward:
Nazi Philosophy 27
[t]he totalitarian political systems which now afflict the continent of

Europe are the long delayed effects of the philosophies of Fichte, Hegel
and Marx, or at least the psychological attitudes which underlay those
philosophies.58
Ryle expressed the same sentiments in his review of Poppers The Open
Society and its Enemies. Indeed, Ryle goes further than most in arguing that,
from the point of view of philosophers, Popper is wasting his time.
Nor is it news to philosophers that Nazi, Fascist and Communist doctrines

are descendants of the Hegelian gospel. They may therefore wonder
whether Dr. Popper is not flogging a dead horse in exposing once again
the motives and fallacies of Hegel. But Dr Popper is clearly right in saying
that even if philosophers are at long last immunized, historians, sociolo-
gists, political propagandists and voters are still unconscious victims of
this virus.59
By 1947, so established is it among analytic philosophers that Hegel lies

at the root of totalitarianism, that Ryle thinks Popper is wasting his breath
in lecturing to his colleagues. Other analytic philosophers offer some fairly
strong hints that they share these conclusions. The Oxford philosopher
R. M. Hare adumbrates a link between romanticism and totalitarianism:
. . . they have affected history in a way that we analytical philosophers

havent . . . the romantic philosophers, as the other kind have been called,
have affected history enormously, for the worse, I think.60
The target isnt identified explicitly, but as we will see in Chapter 4, Nazism
was central to Hares thinking in this period. Hares colleague G. J.
Warnock also hints at the idealists tendencies: Absolute Idealism can be
distinguished chiefly as being a system for extremists.61 The plausibility of
the link to Nazism in these quotations, both from colleagues of Ryle, can
only be strengthened by Ryles claim. Nicola Lacey has argued that such a
view was general within Oxford, in particular:
[t]he second, and more elusive, aspect of Oxford philosophys English-

ness had to do with the Allied victory in the war . . . For some philoso-
phers this anti-European attitude also cashed out negatively, in a suspicion
that continental philosophy had in some sense contributed to the rise of
fascism, and that there was therefore something inherently politically

questionable about it.62
Here Lacey provides another explanation for the concentration of criticism

levelled at the anti-canon after 1945. Perhaps the crises of the 1930s and
subsequent war did not allow space for reflection and it was only after vic-
tory in 1945, as part of the moral and political reconstruction, that the ori-
gins of the defeated ideology became the focus. One has to chop down a
tree before one can dig out its roots.
We have already seen explicit statements of some link between Nazism
and German thought from many of the most significant analytic philoso-
phers of the post-war years: Ryle, Price, Ayer, Berlin and of course Bertrand
Russell. Others seem to have offered us strong hints. In the above quota-
tion, Lacey suggests that the post-war period saw a belief in the question-
able nature of any philosophy that could potentially be associated with
Nazism an association which may extend to continental, rather than just
German, thought. I will return to this in later chapters. It is important to
note here that if Lacey is correct, and I will argue that she is, then we should
be able to detect a much more subtle strain of distrust and disgust levelled
at continental philosophers by the analysts of this period. What we will see
as this book develops is a wealth of further supporting detail linking the
explicit critique of Nazism to a wider negative attitude towards continental
philosophy, among analytic philosophers.
The central figures

I will now give an account of the various crimes of the anti-canon, as elabo-
rated by Russell and Berlin, drawing on other analysts where they involved
themselves. Russells central study of this topic is The Ancestry of Fascism
(1935). This essay is primarily concerned with the history of ideas, particu-
larly the history of philosophy. Of the other books Russell wrote in this
period of most significance to us are: Power: a new social analysis (1938)
which was intended as a contribution to political theory; and his hugely
successful History of Western Philosophy published in 1946, but written in the
United States during the early 1940s. After the publication of History of
Western Philosophy, Russell lost interest in analysing Nazism and turned his
attention to the Cold War and the structure of the new political age.
In understanding the critique of the anti-canon, the strength of Russells
lead cannot be underestimated. First, he was a witness to the first war of
anti-canon aggression. Some other analysts had also lived through the first
Nazi Philosophy 29
war, but they were either very young or foreswore a more active political
role during the second. Moore fits into this latter category a mature
witness to World War I, he offered no lead in the 1930s. The other analysts
(or proto-analysts) were too young to have played an active philosophical
part in the debates of First World War, though both Broad (who had been
20 in 1917) and Ryle (17 in that year) were old enough to witness and take
part in events. In the case of Ryle, it is quite possible that his later hostility
to Hegelian philosophy was, in part, influenced by the belief in Hegelian
guilt swirling around in the 1910s. However, it was Russell who was actively
and famously involved in the politics of the First World War and Russell who
chose to speak on the subject early in the 1930s.
A second factor contributing to Russells importance was that he had not
been caught up in what, by the 1930s, seemed to be the bloodthirsty milita-
rism of 1914. He was famously critical of the war, and imprisoned for his
campaigning on that front. Nor was he among those English philosophers
who, during the First World War, looked for the intellectual origins of
German nationalism in German philosophy. He described the war as two
dogs fighting . . . everything else was idle talk, artificial rationalizing of
instinctive actions and passions.63 Russells hands were clean, his failure to
indulge in bloodthirsty militarism, or German-bashing, in 19141918, gave
weight to his polemic against the anti-canon in the 1930s and beyond.
If, this time, Russell is prepared to nail his colours to this mast, then surely
this underlines the strength of the case against the anti-canon. Thirdly, as
we will see in the next chapter, Russell was held to be at least partly respon-
sible for the intellectual defeat of Hegelianism at the turn of the twentieth
century. This was a man who could be trusted to know his target. He was
also an intellectual hero to the young analysts (who were mostly in their
teens or twenties during the 1930s).
Despite the appearance of volte-face in Russells approach to Germany, the
seeds of the position he would take in the 1930s and 1940s were germinat-
ing earlier in the century. While Russell was not involved in attacking
German thought for its political component during World War I, he was
still clear that: the sins of England sank into insignificance beside the
German treatment of Belgium.64 He also found the time during the First
World War to criticize the Hegelian view of the state, albeit without men-
tioning the names of any philosophers alive or dead. The theory he had in
mind with these comments is obvious, however:
[t]he state is sometimes spoken of as though it were an actual

entity, something remote and godlike, vastly superior to its citizens and
deserving of quasi-adoration which none of them deserve. But this is, of

course, a mere superstition.65
By 1922, Russell seems to have developed a much keener desire to look

for the origins of political movements in philosophical ones. With four
years perspective on the First World War, he argued that it, along with
various other modern atrocities, could be blamed on the cult of the heart
which was inaugurated by Kant.66 His willingness in the 1930s to label
German thinkers of the nineteenth century the ancestors of fascism, is,
then, not altogether surprising.
Berlin, a much younger man, came to the study of Nazism only after
the Second World War. His principal work on the topic did not find
a permanent form during his life, delivered as it was as two series of
lectures. Freedom and Its Betrayal: Six Enemies of Human Liberty (1952)
I have already mentioned. Berlins A. W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts
The Roots of Romanticism (1965) also offer some reflections on the topic
but, as the title of the series suggests, questions of politics were not
central.67 These lectures were repeated three times on the BBC in subse-
quent years. Both sets of lectures have recently been published using tran-
scripts of the recordings. Neither were substantially revised by Berlin and
both, therefore, remain a record of the spoken word, rather than closely
edited academic philosophy or history. It seems, however, that Berlin was
content for both texts to appear in print, both having achieved substantial
radio audiences.68 His final lengthy treatment of these issues was written for
publication. Joseph de Maistre and the Origins of Fascism was written in
1960, but only published in 1990 with Berlins approval, and with only
minor revisions to the original text.69
I will take the ancestors of fascism, as identified by Russell and Berlin, in
roughly chronological order. Here we are concerned purely with the politi-
cal theories of these anti-canon thinkers. In a later chapter we will turn to
the analytic philosophers appraisal of their philosophical merits.
Rousseau, Hegel and the idealists

Jean-Jacques Rousseau is the first antecedent of fascism. Russell says that
reformers now follow either the doctrines of the English philosopher
John Locke, or Rousseau: [a]t the present time, Hitler is an outcome of
Rousseau; Roosevelt and Churchill of Locke.70 Rousseaus influence can be
seen in the dictatorships of Russia and Germany (especially the latter).71
Nazi Philosophy 31
The lines are clearly drawn the democrats on one side, the totalitarians on
the other. This is no surprise. According to Russell, Rousseaus doctrine
entails that the individual can be forced to be free because freedom
is acting according to the general will, which has no immediate relation-
ship with the individual will.72 This theory leads to a Totalitarian State, in
which the individual citizen is powerless.73 Rousseaus general will also
allows for the mystic identification of the leader with his people74 highly
significant in the light of the advent of a German Fhrer. Berlin says of
Rousseau that he was one of the most sinister and most formidable ene-
mies of liberty in the whole history of modern thought.75 And the dictators
were grateful:
there is not a dictator in the west who in the years after Rousseau did
not use this monstrous paradox in order to justify his behaviour. The
Jacobins, Robespierre, Hitler, Mussolini, the Communists, all use this very
same method of argument.76
Following Rousseau, Hegel is next in line. Russell is forthright: Hegels

Philosophy of History is important as the source of much evil, but (I think) no
good.77 Hegel is responsible for not one, but two dangerous political
movements:
Hegel started two movements in philosophy, the one of extreme conser-

vatism and the other of extreme revolution. The one represented by the
conservative Hegelians, the other by Marx and his followers.78
Whether Russell has the Nazis in mind when he talks of conservative

Hegelians here is unclear. It seems likely, but it may be that in this case this
is meant to refer simply to Hegels reactionary nineteenth-century disciples.
We have, in any case, already seen Russell make the link explicitly towards
the top of this section. Like Rousseau, Hegel has a novel take on freedom,
according to Russell: Hegel uses freedom in a very peculiar sense. Free-
dom in Hegel means the right to obey the police and it means nothing else
at all . . . 79 This naturally leads to totalitarianism, as Russell believed it did
in Rousseau.
Hegel also held that the state is the ultimate unit of value, and commands
complete loyalty from its subjects. Externally the state has no block on its
activity war presents a perfectly acceptable means for the states self-
expression. War, is therefore [for Hegel] a thing not to be deplored but is
good, a view Russell holds to be entirely repellent.80 The following quota-

tion can be taken as a summation of Russells theoretical problems with
Hegels political philosophy:
[s]uch is Hegels doctrine of the state a doctrine which, if accepted,

justifies every internal tyranny and every external aggression that can
possibly be imagined.81
Ayer, while doing no direct work on Hegel himself, signs up to the link
between Hegels theory of state and fascism in an article for Horizon
published in 1944.
The authoritarian view of freedom was perpetuated by Hegel . . . The

result is justly described in Russells malicious dictum that, for Hegelians,
true freedom consists in the right to obey the police. In the same way, the
modern apologists for Fascism have been able to claim, not merely that
their dictators subjects enjoyed the benefits of better government than
the citizens of pluto-democracies, but also that they were more truly
free.82
Isaiah Berlin too elaborates the link between Hegel and both fascism and
communism, in one of the passages with which we opened this chapter:
[t]here is in Hegel perpetual talk about what history demands and what
history condemns . . . This is the imagery and worship of power, of the
movement of force for its own sake. This force is, for him, the divine
process itself, crushing whatever is meant to be crushed, enthroning that
whose hour to dominate has struck and this, for Hegel, is the essence of
the process. This is the source of Carlyles heroes or Nietzsches super-
man, of openly power-worshipping movements such as Marxism and
Fascism, both of which (in their different ways) derived morality from
historical success.83
Each of these analytic philosophers find in Hegels ideas the aggressive

state, warlike in external relations, and exerting absolute control over its
people and clearly link Hegel and fascism.84 I will return, below, to the
precise nature of the link.
The German philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte is next on Russells list.
This chapter began with his claim that German politics to-day are a realiza-
tion of theories set forth by Fichte in 1807.85 Written in 1934, a year after
Nazi Philosophy 33
Hitler seized power, the target of this remark is pretty clear. Fichte, a thor-
oughgoing idealist, believed in an ethic that furthered only the highest, or
most worthy people: the Germans. This aristocratic ethic, favouring, as it
does, only a select few, is, according to Russell, of the essence of the modern
attack on democracy.86 Putting these ideas together, Fichte produced
a whole philosophy of nationalistic totalitarianism which had great influ-
ence in Germany.87 Such ideas inevitably lead to wars, according to
Russell, because no other European nation would be content to believe
that Germany was the most noble nation on earth, and would be prepared
to go to war to prove themselves more worthy of that title, meanwhile
Germany would wish to demonstrate her superiority by imposing her will
on Europe.88
Berlin, too, highlights the dangers of Fichtean thought. He characterizes
Fichte as calling for a leader a conqueror.89 Berlin also credits Fichte
with the creation of the famous and fatal analogy between the individual
and the nation, the organic metaphor90 fatal because it allows the indi-
vidual to be seen as parts of a greater whole, who can then be sacrificed for
the sake of that whole. The leader will play upon his nation as an artist
plays upon his instrument, to mould it into a single organic whole . . .91 Nor
is Berlin shy in pointing to the results of these ideas. He quotes Heinrich
Heines stated fear that [a]rmed Fichteans will come, whose fanatical wills
neither fear nor self-interest can touch.92 Berlin continues to quote Heine:
[a] drama will be performed in Germany in contrast with which the French
Revolution will seem a mere peaceful idyll.93 Berlin takes this to be remark-
ably prescient; Heines prophecy was destined to be fulfilled.94
In their attacks on Fichte and Hegel, the analytic philosophers were
not content to condemn only their German disciples. Following the
pattern established in the First World War, the attack was extended
beyond the German followers of Hegel to the British Hegelians of the
late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Berlin wrote: so Hegel,
Bradley, Bosanquet have often assured us by obeying the rational man
we obey ourselves . . .95
This is only a short step away from the abandonment of reason altogether
for Berlin, and results in the argument that a dictator is entitled to mould
and shape his people: [t]his is the argument used by every dictator, inquisi-
tor, and bully who seeks some moral, or even aesthetic justification for his
conduct.96 Bradley and Bosanquet are, once again, in trouble as dangerous
peddlers of dictatorship. Berlin formed a view of the British Hegelians as
offering similar theories to those that underpin the fascist project. Interest-
ingly, while Berlin singles out T. H. Green, among the British Hegelians,
as a liberal, he quickly overrides this: Green was a genuine liberal: but

many a tyrant could use this formula to justify his worst acts of oppression.97
The pervasiveness of the totalitarian elements of Hegels political thought
then, according to Berlin, are so powerful that they also infect the thought
of acknowledged liberals. Russell seems to hold a similar view:
Green taught a whole generation at Oxford to regard him [Fichte] as the

perfection of ethical purity. Yet there is in the modern world no govern-
mental cruelty, injustice or abomination which this virtuous professors
principles fail to justify.98
Russell too, was prepared to draw direct links between the British
Hegelians and injustice and abomination. This between colleagues, is
strong stuff. Green died in 1882, so neither Russell or Berlin were speak-
ing ill of the recently deceased; Greens disciples, however, were numer-
ous and well placed (including among their number William Beveridge,
Arnold Toynbee, Clement Attlee and R. H. Tawney).99 Green was not,
therefore, an easy target; he was a highly influential and greatly admired
philosopher and political theorist. Berlin and Russells treatment of him,
then, is the more notable the staining of the reputation of a well-respected
social reformer, with accusations of holding a philosophical position which
could justify abomination and tyranny.
Russell and Berlin were not alone in mounting an attack on the previous
generation of British philosophers. Warnocks comment, quoted above,
that absolute idealism is a system for extremists was made in the context of
a discussion of the British idealists.100 In 1964, the analyst Richard Wollheim
criticized the British idealists for failure to acknowledge their totalitarian
legacy:
[i]dealist thinkers have been led to support the notion of a supreme

legislator or leader . . . Such a concept has been called Totalitarian
Democracy. If in Anglo-American political thought little or no attention
has ever been paid by idealist thinkers to this very difficult problem of
the practical interpretation of their theory, such self-denial, though
saying something for their political wisdom scarcely redounds to their
intellectual credit.101
We have already had cause to see that the picture painted by Wollheim is
rather misleading. British idealists had been forcibly confronted with the
totalitarian reading of Hegel, and during both the first and second World
Nazi Philosophy 35
Wars had responded. This is one of a number of rather odd historical claims
made by the analysts, as we will see in later chapters.
We will also see that the number of analysts prepared to portray both
German and British idealism using the language of violence is striking.
While few of them made an explicit link between Nazism and the British
idealists, many more provide compelling evidence of this view in their
choice of words. Nor were the analysts alone in making this identification.
While Joad identifies Hegel throughout his texts as the source of fascism,
both Bradley and Bosanquet are cited extensively in his analysis as holding
similar views.102 E. F. Carritt cited a string of British idealists all of whom
read Hegel as a totalitarian.103 However, while in wider philosophical circles
a debate took place on Hegels culpability, in analytic circles his guilt and
that of his followers appeared to be a matter of no debate whatsoever.
Where Hegels political philosophy was discussed, it was condemned.
Nietzsche, pragmatism, romanticism

Turning now to the next figure in the proto-fascist anti-canon: we saw above
that both Ayer and Berlin explicitly link Friedrich Nietzsche to Nazism,
though neither felt the need to elaborate or defend the claim.104 Russell deals
at length with Nietzsche and we cannot here go into all aspects of his,
extremely hostile, critique. Here I will discuss his treatment of Nietzsche in
relation to the English poet Lord Byron who, rather surprisingly given
Byrons lack of philosophical credentials, Russell discusses in his History of
Western Philosophy. The links between these two thinkers and the Nazis is made
characteristically explicit: the romantic revolt passes from Byron, Schopen-
hauer and Nietzsche to Mussolini and Hitler.105 More direct: Hitlers ideals
come mainly from Nietzsche.106 Nietzsche and Byron shared an aristocratic
philosophy; like Fichte they believed that only a certain section of the human
race is valuable. They also shared a belief that European civilization had to be
overthrown and re-formed to favour the aristocratic classes.
The aristocratic philosophy of rebellion . . . has inspired a long series of

revolutionary movements, from the Carbonari after the fall of Napoleon
to Hitlers coup in 1933.107
Byron influenced Germany through Nietzsche and Bismarck and in this

way, nationalism, Satanism and hero-worship, the legacy of Byron become
part of the complex soul of Germany.108 In addition to passing on Byrons
Satanism, Nietzsche adds some evils of his own, attaching to his aristocratic
ethic a belief in the annihilation of millions of the bungled and botched109

the non-noble, to whom no value properly attaches. He also contributes
to the history of ideas his own loathing for democracy and his gleeful
prophecy of future wars.110
Russell does seek to mitigate the case against Nietzsche, not a courtesy he
extends to anyone else in the anti-canon, except John Dewey. He accepts
that Nietzsche was neither a state worshipper (rather hes an individualist
who believes only in the great men) nor a German nationalist (he believes
in an international ruling race).111 He also tells us that Nietzsche was not
definitely anti-Semitic112 and then implies that he almost certainly was.113
However, he goes on, Nietzsche did not condone certain modern develop-
ments which have a certain connection to his general ethical outlook but
are contrary to his clearly expressed opinions.114 This is, for Russell, an
unusually coy remark, but seems, from the context of the passage, to be an
acknowledgment that Nietzsche would not have supported violence against
Jews. So unwilling was Russell to admit any good in Nietzsche, that he obfus-
cated this small concession.
The Italian nationalist Mazzini, a less significant target, is identified as an
ancestor of fascism only by Russell. He is added to the list for two reasons.
First, his belief that the moral law can be found in ones heart is considered
dangerous, as each mans heart may tell him something different: what he
was really demanding was that others should act according to his revela-
tion.115 Secondly, Mazzini believed that democracy became null if it devi-
ated from the moral law. Russells comment on this was succinct: [t]his is
also the opinion of Mussolini.116 Russell is also alone in picking out
D. H. Lawrence as a Nazi: he had developed the whole philosophy of
Fascism before the politicians had thought of it.117 Moreover, Lawrences
notion of blood-consciousness led straight to Auschwitz.118 Russell devoted
a little time to criticizing Treitschke on the same basis.119 He also identifies
Schopenhauer and Houston Chamberlain on the path to Nazism but
aside from naming them, he makes no other claims and we will quietly let
these figures slide.120
The last members of Russells anti-canon we will examine here are also
the most unlikely-seeming ancestors of fascism, the pragmatists. Russell
tells us that Hitler accepts or rejects doctrines on political grounds.121 This
subjugating of the truth to political (or other) need is a view Russell attri-
butes to the Americans William James and John Dewey. Russell argues that
once objective truth is abandoned, the question what is true can only be
settled by the appeal to force and the arbitrament of the big battalions.122
On top of this dangerous account of truth, James also believed that without
Nazi Philosophy 37
war men become soft and effeminate. Russell considers this view a mark of
brutality.123 The French philosopher Henri Bergson is also identified as a
pragmatist by Russell and placed in the canon of dangerous thinkers.
Bergsons philosophy also harmonized easily with the movement which
culminated in Vichy.124 In a prospectus for a new book delivered to his
publisher in the mid-1930s, Russell identifies a philosophical tradition
moving through Carlyle, Nietzsche, William James and Bergson and find-
ing its culmination in Mein Kampf.125
Russell is not alone in this line of thought. Berlin too draws a link between
a pragmatic theory of truth and fascism, but he saw Hegel as its champion.
In 1952, he claimed:
[t]his kind of political pragmatism, this success worship revolts our

normal moral feelings; and there is no genuine argument in Hegel which
is really effective against this revulsion . . . True values for him are those
which are effective; history is the big battalions marching down a broad
avenue . . .126
Berlins target is clearly not the Americans here, but there is a distinct
echo of Russells criticism of James and Dewey big battalions as a
recurring motif. The critique of the pragmatist conception of truth is
part of a wider criticism levelled by Russell and Berlin at the romantic
movement in western thought. Both men emphasize that the kernel of
romanticism (Russell sometimes calls it the revolt against reason) is a
denial that there can be any objective standards of truth, or any true
structures to the world. The essence of romanticism is that the world can
be moulded by the will.127 We have already seen that Russell explicitly
links romanticism and fascism.128 Berlin does so too. Fascism too is an
inheritor of romanticism, he argues and this is the case, for Berlin,
precisely because fascism inherits the idea that the world can be moulded
by the will of an individual, or a nation.129 Ayer too, albeit later, subscribes
to this view, describing (in a passage already quoted) Nazism as Romanti-
cism gone wrong.130
The romantic movement and the view of truth to which it gives rise, is
condemned time and again in analytic texts, as we will see in Chapter 3.
Certainly a significant motivation for this condemnation is simply that of a
philosopher faced with a proposition that he finds unacceptable. Another
less immediately obvious but equally powerful motivation is the belief we
have seen highlighted above, that the relativizing of truth to a nation, time,
or individual leaves the way open for a dictator not only to exercise power,
but to dictate what is true. It lends dictators metaphysical omnipotence, to

use Russells phrase.131
The equivocal position of Kant and some minor players

Those condemned include almost all the significant nineteenth-century
philosophers working in the post-Kantian tradition. The notable absentee
from this list is Kant himself. While Russell clearly disliked Kant, he is
highly equivocal on his significance to fascism. In History of Western Philoso-
phy we are told that Kant, the founder of German Idealism, is not himself
politically important132; his influence is only felt via Hegel and others of
that tradition. Yet later in the same book we read that Kants political phi-
losophy, which made the case for a world government and warned against
dictatorship by the majority, made him a political pariah in Nazi Germany:
[s]ince 1933 this treatise has caused Kant to fall into disfavour in his own
country.133 This surely makes Kant in some way politically significant?
To further confuse the picture, in 1937 Russell had placed Kant very firmly
among the philosophical danger-men: Kant died happy, and has been
honoured ever since; his doctrine has even been proclaimed the official
philosophy of the Nazi state.134 It is difficult to know what to make of
these apparently contradictory remarks and it is not clear whether they
reflect a change of mind between 1937 and 1945, or simply a change of
mood. It is possible that the doctrine to which Russell refers is Kants
reintroduction of a standard beyond truth and reason in philosophy
a move which, as we will see in Chapter 3, Russell links to the romantic
revolt, and to fascism.
Berlin is similarly equivocal about Kant, remarking: it is odd to reflect
that there is a direct line, and a very curious one, between the extreme lib-
eralism of Kant, with his respect for human nature and its sacred rights, and
Fichtes identification of freedom with self assertion, with the imposition of
your will upon others . . . and finally with a victorious nation marching to
fulfil its destiny in answer to the internal demands given to it by transcen-
dental reason, before which all material things must crumble.135 Berlin cer-
tainly did not think that this was the whole story, and Kant remained, for
him, as for Russell, a rather ambiguous figure.
Finally in this survey of the ancestry of fascism, I will briefly examine some
contributions Berlin offers to the canon of the condemned. Perhaps the
least expected is Claude-Adrien Helvtius whose vision, while far more scien-
tific than either Hegel or Rousseau, seems to get him into similar trouble
with Berlin. While Hegel and Rousseau appear to force people to be free,
Nazi Philosophy 39
Helvtius, deploying a pure utilitarianism, would force people to be good.136

This view has been used as the justification for communism and for Fascism,
for almost every enactment which has sought to obstruct human liberty.137
A thinker who Berlin seeks to tie more directly to fascism is Joseph de
Maistre. In the unambiguously titled Joseph de Maistre and the Origins of
Fascism(1960), Berlin returns to the French thinker he first canvassed as
an enemy of freedom in the 1950s.138 In this later text, however, the case is
made in far greater detail. In Maistre we
are fast approaching the worlds of the German ultra-nationalists, of the

enemies of the Enlightenment, of Nietzsche, Sorel and Pareto, D. H.
Lawrence and Knut Hamsun, Maurras, dAnnunzio, of Blut und Boden far
beyond traditional authoritarianism.139
In this quotation, Berlin offers us another tour through the ancestors

of Nazism. He also argues that we find in Maistre, for the first time, the list
of the enemies later drawn up by the Nazis including Jews, liberals, demo-
crats, those who believe in individual reason, conscience and so on. This is
a catalogue which we have heard a good deal since. It assembles for the first
time, and with precision, the list of enemies of the great counter-revolution-
ary movement that culminated in Fascism.140
Questioning the Causal Story
What Russell and Berlin offer is a smorgasbord of thinkers whom they wish
in some way to link to fascism. Neither man attempts to systematize the anti-
canon philosophers into what might be called a coherent Nazi philoso-
phy. Russell, in particular, seems content to list the ancestors of fascism
and to argue the case for each, on what he considers to be the merits of the
case. He is also noticeably disinclined to cite any direct evidence for the
claimed conceptual affinities between the Nazis and the anti-canon. He
does not offer supporting quotations from Nazi thinkers, nor does he indi-
cate whether he is drawing on secondary material in his attempts to gain an
understanding of Nazism as a movement. Berlin, as one might expect from
a historian of ideas, is more conscientious in establishing conceptual paral-
lels; but, here too, the actual mechanics of the historical picture that he
seeks to establish are far from clear.
This softness in the only two comprehensive accounts offered by the
analytic philosophers of the origins of Nazism is worth exploring a little
further. If indeed Russell and Berlin fail to provide any kind of convincing
account about the actual historical relationship between the anti-canon and
the fascists, then this poses a highly significant question: why did they
believe in this picture? But to pose such a question is to prejudge the
outcome of the inquiry. We must first establish the kind of picture Russell
and Berlin offer of the historical relationship between fascism and the
anti-canon.
In The Ancestry of Fascism Russell complained that too often ideas are
overlooked in the explanation of events. In reality, he argued, while it is
economic and political circumstances that bring political ideas into practi-
cal fruition, the ideas themselves are of vital importance in understanding
modern political phenomena.141
[I]t is important to remember that political events very frequently take

their colour from the speculations of an earlier time: there is usually con-
siderable time between the promulgation of a theory and its practical
efficacy.142
Ideas do not necessarily become politically active at the time of their

inception but when the times call for them, when the political and
economic circumstances make them relevant. The language of this expla-
nation is rather vague; political events take their colour from past specula-
tions. In attempting to flesh out this account we could look at the most
straightforward way for this transfer of colour to occur this, presumably, is
for an important political figure to come into direct contact with the past
speculations in question. We know that some of the French revolutionaries,
for example, read Rousseau, and that Lenin read Marx. We know that many
in the free-market movement read Adam Smith. This kind of causation is
also the easiest for the historian, especially, as with Lenin, when the political
figure is keen to enthuse about his philosophical inspiration. But this kind
of direct link, between a politician and a text, cannot be what Russell had in
mind here. Can he be saying that the Nazis, and more particularly Hitler
(the only Nazi named by Russell, and the source of the only Nazi work
cited, Mein Kampf), read Fichte, Rousseau, Nietzsche, Carlyle, Byron, James,
Dewey, and Bergson, Hegel and very probably Kant too? This seems histori-
cally highly unlikely, and it seems equally unlikely that Russell believed it to
have been the case.
Perhaps we are asking too much. Maybe to be part of a tradition you need
only to have been in touch with the last link in the chain. This would still
appear to require a demonstration that at least one of these philosophers
Nazi Philosophy 41
exerted a direct influence upon Hitler. No suggestion is ever given that

Russell feels any need to show this; while in some cases he asserts what
appears to be a direct link without any justification: Hitlers ideals come
mainly from Nietzsche143; on other occasions there appears to be no
historical link. Carlyles association with Nazism is made in a single remark:
[i]s there one word of this to which Hitler would not have subscribed.144
This implies no causation at all, and yet this quotation comes from a paper
entitled The Ancestry of Fascism. The same problem holds with Mazzini,
whose relations with fascism seem to be purely that some of his philosophi-
cal opinions were also held by Mussolini.145 Russell makes no attempt to
suggest that Mussolini had read Mazzini. Likewise, Russell makes no attempt
to claim that Hitler had read the American pragmatist William James he
merely states that Hitler accepts a view James invented.146 To suppose any
causal link between Hitlers thought and James is, as Russells biographer
rightly states, almost breathtakingly nave and implausible.147 Curiously,
the only direct evidence Russell cites for any of the of these thinkers having
any relationship to any government links Fichte, not to the Third Reich,
but to the Weimar Republic, and not to Adolf Hitler, but to a democrat:
Ebert, the Socialist first President of the Weimar Republic, recommended

his programme in the words: Thus shall we realize that which Fichte has
given to the German nation as its task.148
This seems to reinforce our impression of Russells complete lack of inter-

est in the mechanics of causation between the ancestors of fascism and
their descendents. It suggests that Russell believed that the bad ideas were
not transmitted to the Nazis through any diligent philosophical scholarship
on Hitlers part, but rather by some more intangible cultural method.
Though Russell never explains this idea of cultural contamination, he at
least implies that this is operating in his discussions of Nietzsche and Byron:
the legacy of Byron become part of the complex soul of Germany.149
An idea, then, or a series of ideas, can enter the soul of a nation. Precisely
how this works is not elaborated by Russell; however, it is clear that he
believes the Nazis and their philosophers are bound together by a cultural
mood or movement, which the latter had a role in instigating. This move-
ment, which Russell dubs the revolt against reason . . . has gradually
dominated larger and larger areas of the life and thought of the world.150
The picture that emerges here is importantly different from the simple
reading of Russells account of the intellectual causation existing between
fascism and its ancestors. Nazism is not the product of ideas plus political
circumstance, it appears rather to be the culmination of a particular irratio-

nalist trend in the modern European mind that is now dominating.
Russells description of this trend is of the growing of something organic, or
the accretion of toxins in this way thinkers as disparate as James and Fichte
can both feed what Russell describes as the cult of unreason very much
like the pumping of carbon dioxide into the air it affects the global
atmosphere, whether it is released in America or Germany.
Russells account of causation is not made any clearer than this analogy
suggests. This appears to stop rather short of providing an adequate causal
story. But, even if it were accurate, there is no suggestion that Russell was
interested in engaging with other crucial questions required to make his
case stick. As he himself points out in another connection, philosophers are
prone to error in this area:
[w]hen they see some political party proclaiming itself inspired by

So-and-Sos teaching, they think its actions are attributable to So-and-So,
whereas, not infrequently, the philosopher is only acclaimed because he
recommends what the party would have done in any case.151
But there is no engagement with this question in Russells treatment of

the anti-canon either, no suggestion that the Nazi regime might have used
members of the anti-canon merely as intellectual garnish for their inde-
pendently existing political programme. Nor does he seriously engage with
the question of whether any Nazi appropriation of these anti-canon think-
ers was a legitimate or illegitimate reading of them. Only once, in a very
short article for the Leader Magazine in 1944, does he claim that the views of
Nietzsche, Fichte and Hegel have been combined and vulgarized152
suggesting, after all, that the Nazi appropriation of these thinkers is illegiti-
mate. This side-line concession only raises further questions given that
Nietzsche, Fichte and Hegel had deeply dissimilar metaphysical philoso-
phies and that, as noted by a contemporary witness, Nietzsche revolted
against reason, against philosophy, particularly against idealist philoso-
phy153 does any philosophy that combines the idealists Fichte and Hegel
with the anti-idealist Nietzsche make philosophical sense? And what impact
does this have on the question of blame? In the same Leader Magazine
article Russell says that nineteenth-century Germans are [t]o some
extent154 blameworthy. This is his only explicit comment on this crucial
issue. Implicitly, as we have already seen, and as we will go on to see in
Chapters 2 and 3, he presents us with a picture of bad philosophy pro-
duced by bad men, unsurprisingly culminating in Nazism. The impression
Nazi Philosophy 43
he gives very strongly is that such philosophy was ripe for Nazi appropria-
tion, and such appropriation was very much in the spirit of the original
philosophers intentions.
I will now move on to Berlins account of the relationship between his
anti-canon of thinkers and fascism. In Freedom and Its Betrayal, Berlin calls
Hegel the source of fascism.155 But he, with some legitimacy, does not
seek to give a detailed account of the historical relationships involved,
no doubt feeling that such a detailed piece of intellectual history would
take too long and prove too dense for a radio broadcast. We are more
likely to achieve an accurate picture of Berlins thinking on the question
of the historical relationship between the anti-canon and Nazism if we
turn to his long essay on de Maistre an essay which also strongly implies
an historical claim in the title: Joseph de Maistre and the Origins of
Fascism.
What we find is a certain amount of confusion. On some occasions,
Berlin implies that there was no causal connection at all, and that Maistres
ideas merely have an affinity with the paranoiac world of modern
fascism.156 This claim is made at the top of Berlins paper, and it is to this
merely conceptual affinity that Berlin returns in the last pages:
totalitarian society, which Maistre . . . had visualized, became actual; and

thereby, at inestimable cost in human suffering, has vindicated the depth
and brilliance of a remarkable and terrifying prophet of our day.157
Again there is no suggestion that there is any link between Maistre and
fascism here; he was remarkably prescient, no more. In other places in the
text, Berlin seems to be moving towards claiming a causal connection:
[i]n practice if not in theory (at times offered in a transparently false

scientific guise), Maistres deeply pessimistic vision is the heart of the
totalitarianisms, of both left and right, of our terrible century.158
Berlin does not elaborate what it means to be at the heart of a political

movement in practice but not in theory but this quotation does seem to be
edging towards claiming some manner of historical relationship. The next
quotation seems less equivocal:
[t]hey matter [his ideas] because he was the first theorist in the great and
powerfully tradition which culminated in Charles Maurras, a precursor of
Fascists, and of those Catholic anti-Dreyfusards and supporters of the Vichy
regime . . . Maurras may have been prepared to collaborate with Hitler

for the same reasons as those that attracted Maistre to Napoleon.159
This suggests that Maistre directly influenced the French Fascists. Again, as
in the case of Russell, no evidence is brought to justify this claim. One could
legitimately argue that, even if Berlin were to have justified a link between
Maurras, Vichy and Maistre, calling the paper Joseph de Maistre and
the Origins of Fascism seems to be rather over-egging the pudding. Such
a title implies that we are going to locate the source of the successful and
important fascisms, not failed movements and puppet regimes in France.
Indeed, the inclusion of Jews on Berlins list of Maistres hate-figures strongly
inclines one to believe that there will be some link to German National
Socialism. Hostility towards the Jews was, pre-eminently, a characteristic of
German Fascism; the Italians, by contrast were relatively philo-semitic.160
While the link to Nazism may be implied strongly in Berlins text, it is never
stated, and considerably more work would be required in showing that
Maistre was, via his influence on the French, an influence on Italians or
Germans.161 But Berlin does not appear interested in cementing this aspect
of his story.
As we noted above, Berlin, like Russell, deploys the notion of movements,
which encompasses the anti-canon thinkers and the fascists. He is quite
clear about the conceptual ties that bind this group together, isolating a
romantic movement, which combines with ultra-nationalism, to culminate
in fascism.162 But we are never offered anything beyond conceptual affinity.
Berlins biographer Michael Ignatieff has picked up this question:
Berlin was imprecise about how these influences worked through into
Nazi ideology. In what historical sense was de Maistre a precursor of fas-
cism? Hitler had never heard his name. But again, an historical genealogy
of fascism was not what Berlin really had in mind. His problem was philo-
sophical: trying to understand how the Enlightenment faith in moral uni-
versals should have been transformed into the Romantic exaltation of all
that was irrational in human nature.163
Ignatieffs claim, that Berlins is a purely conceptual project, may offer a

much more useful understanding of these texts. But it does not diminish
the fact that both Berlin and Russell appear to be writing histories and
making historical claims. Russell talks of the ancestry of fascism, Berlin of
its origins their texts do not clearly differentiate between conceptual
affinities and direct historical influence. Yet historically Russell and Berlin
Nazi Philosophy 45
present no case, as Ignatieff clearly concedes in the case of the latter. Walter
Kaufmann made the following observation about Poppers treatment of
this topic:
[n]o conception is bandied about more unscrupulously in the history of

ideas than influence. Poppers notion of it is so utterly unscientific that
one should never guess that he has done important work on logic and on
scientific method. At best it is reducible to post hoc, ergo propter hoc.164
This conclusion could have been made to measure the work of either
Russell or Berlin. Neither seems to have the causal story they require to
make claims about the ancestry of fascism stick. Neither seemed particu-
larly interested in devising a causal story, nor concerned by its absence. Yet
this is no detachable part of their thesis it is fundamental.
It is important to stress that, of the analysts working on this topic, Russell
and Berlin provide the two most comprehensive causal accounts in the
case of the other figures we have looked at the historical link is simply
stated. None of the analysts attempt to draw a genuine historical line
between their anti-canon and fascism.165 Nevertheless, there are very few
attempts to mitigate the blame attached to these anti-canon figures. We
have seen Ayer make one concession with regard to Nietzsche in the
1970s.166 In the same decade Berlin says: It would be absurd to charge
Hegel, for instance, with the sinister shapes into which some of his notions
have turned in our day.167 However, in the 1950s Berlin clearly implies
something very different. As we have seen in this Chapter and will see fur-
ther evidence of in Chapter 3, in the 1950s Berlin clearly attributed sinister-
ness very directly to Hegel himself.168
Nationalist Assumptions in the Critique of the Anti-canon
Of course, the point here cannot be to condemn philosophers for writing

poor history. What is interesting here is the combination of the absence of
evidence produced by the analysts, coupled with their willingness to believe
the worst of the anti-canon thinkers. We know that there was evidence to be
found of, for example, the attempts of the Nazis to ally themselves to
Nietzsche, or of Heideggers membership of, and active involvement in, the
party in the early 1930s. But what is interesting is that the analysts show no
awareness of these facts, or of any other historical links, and yet by the 1950s
believed the case against the anti-canon is so watertight that Ryle could say
it was hardly worth discussing. We must return, therefore, to the question

posed at the beginning of the last section. Where does their confidence in
this picture come from?
Part of the explanation must be the established nature of the beliefs the
analytic philosophers held. After the First World War the origins of German
crimes may have simply been a matter that did not require any further
detailed elaboration. These ideas had been extant for 40 years by the time
Berlin was broadcasting on this topic in the 1950s. They were truly received
opinions passed from Hobhouse to Russell and Joad, then Berlin,
Ayer and the rest. Nicholas Martin suggests that the earlier experience had
already created the indelible impression in Anglo-Saxony that Nietzsche,
aggression, and German nationalism, in whatever form or combination,
were identical.169 What Martin points to is that these are not simply received
opinions, but received opinions with a very particular nationalist stripe
that German aggression was of a piece with the ideas of this German philos-
opher. This is what we find at work in the analysts thinking on the subject:
a tacit subscription to the notion of a national philosophy or national
character. This assumption negated the need to prove a link between the
German Nietzsche and the German Hitler. The apparent self-evidence of this
assumption was such that it was allowed to pass unnoticed.
It may be that the First World War functioned in another way, enabling
the analysts to use their own experience of native anti-canon philosophy
the British idealists in drawing conclusions about their German counter-
parts. Julia Stapleton has written of the First World War that [t]here is the
further irony that the English intellectuals leap to the defence of their state
was much inspired by the philosophy of citizenship in German Idealism
which many of its members had internalized in the previous quarter of a
century.170 It may be that part of the backlash against idealism was the result
of a belief that it had directly affected British culture through the British
idealists making the British more war-hungry and militaristic, seducing
them into an unnecessary war in 1914. Ronald Stromberg noted that [i]n
1914 it did not seem to matter much whether one was an Idealist or a Real-
ist, Dualist, or Monist, almost everybody rejoiced in the war. But when we
think of Russell, or the disciples of G. E. Moore, who showed some resis-
tance, we are inclined to give the edge to the Idealists for belligerence.171
This differentiation between analyst and idealist may have been enough
for the analysts to believe that they had seen the war-like potential of
British Idealism, and also (important for later chapters) that they had
stood against it. Such an association, if it was made, and we have no direct
evidence that it was, might help to explain the analysts certainty that
Nazi Philosophy 47
anti-canon philosophy led to militarism and jingoism Russell, Moore,

Broad and Ryle had seen it happening at first hand.
A national German philosophy

Russells anti-canon is clearly a European and transatlantic phenomenon,
and it is not isolated in any one country or region: it encompasses the
American pragmatists, the Britons Carlyle, Green and Byron, the French-
man Bergson, the Swiss Rousseau and the Italian Mazzini. But the Germans
are far and away the most significant single grouping, Kant, Hegel, Fichte,
and Nietzsche more dominant still if the minor players Schopenhauer
and Treitschke are included. Many of those who are not German are shown
to be tied to Germany in some way, Byron through Nietzsche, Carlyle and
Green through the influence of Fichte.172 Even Dewey is shown as an ally to
Germany: I find myself in the English tradition, while Dr Dewey belongs
with the Germans and more particularly with Hegel.173 When one consid-
ers that this was written in 1939, this is a stinging remark, Dr Dewey belongs
with the Germans. Not a claim that Dewey, one of the critics of German
thought during World War I, could have expected or accepted. The roman-
tic movement, of which Deweys pragmatism was said to form a part, was
also labelled a German phenomenon: [t]he romantic movement, in spite
of owing its origin to Rousseau, was at first mainly German.174
The coming together in Germany of the dangerous totalitarian aspects of
European thought is not merely an historical fluke. It is due to something
in German culture or in the German character:
[i]t was Germany, always more susceptible to romanticism than any other
country, that provided a governmental outlet for the anti-rational philos-
ophy of the naked will.175
Here Russell argues that the German character had a congenital weakness
for this kind of philosophy. Russell offers a psycho-cultural explanation for
the flaw. The outlook, he argues, was profoundly influenced by German
history; much of what seems strange in German philosophical speculation
reflects the state of mind of a vigorous nation deprived, by historical
accidents, of its natural share of power.176 It is not, therefore, surprising
that the century of the intellectual predominance of Germany177 was the
century that gave rise to irrationalism and which finally provided the intel-
lectual fuel for the rise of Hitler (head of the government of the anti-ratio-
nal philosophy and the naked will). One can detect strains of an almost
Hegelian nature in Russells explanation here. The notion of a nation hav-

ing a natural share of power seems to fit much better into a Hegelian pic-
ture of states guided by an historical spirit, than Russells individualist
materialism. There is also a possible Darwinist reading of this explanation,
if one is to focus on Russells idea of nation in racial terms. Clearly the ambi-
guities of this leave it substantially short of offering a full explanation for
the German condition but the resources Russell seems to be deploying
are significant in themselves. He also, as we have seen, clearly links the
Nazis to another movement in philosophy that he characterizes as typically
German: [t]he Nazis upheld German idealism . . . 178 This is a clear
example of the pattern I have suggested; the German Nazis inherit German
idealism.
This anti-canon tradition, while mostly German, is definitely European,
and not, it appears, particularly British. True, Carlyle, Green and Byron are
mentioned but Russell makes clear that Byron, who was not even a philoso-
pher, had next to no influence in Britain,179 and devotes almost no time to
Carlyle. Green is never explicitly listed as an ancestor of fascism, and the
source of his thought is non-native the German Fichte. This relative lack
of Englishmen is highly significant, as we will see later on. Russell is keen to
show that continental ideas, like continental armies, find it hard to cross
the channel.180
Before we move on to examine the beliefs of the other analysts with
regard to the essential Germanness of the anti-canon, it is worth pausing
here to address an objection, no doubt already present in the mind of the
reader. Russell, it should be pointed out, did not have a monochrome view
of the German nation. He made clear that he saw two Germanies: one of
the anti-canon that we have been focusing on here, and the Germany of
figures such as Georg Cantor, and Gottlieb Frege, whom he greatly
admired.181 He also wrote in 1944 (in a paper that simultaneously reinforces
his central belief in the culpability of German philosophy) that he did not
think that Germans were by nature worse than other people, and that they
did have the thinkers to move them in the right direction, if only it was they
and not the inheritors of Nietzsche and Hegel who were given support.182
Among the British analytic philosophers more widely, as we will see, a
general attitude of suspicion towards continental philosophy, and German
philosophy in particular, did not always militate against specific groups or
individuals. The Vienna circle and Ludwig Wittgenstein (Austrian, rather
than German and perhaps this made a difference) were both important
intellectual influences on the British analysts during this period. To the
extent that they were allies, both were seen as essentially in the British tradi-
tion disciples of Russell. Russell and the analysts then, like many of those
Nazi Philosophy 49
who took a two Germanies approach to World War I, did not simply see all
Germans as bad; rather it was believed that the particular evil represented
by Nazism was characteristically German.
Fewer of Berlins anti-canon targets are German, though he does share
Russells belief in the culpability of Nietzsche, Hegel and Fichte. Rousseau
he links heavily to the emergent German tradition. However, he seeks to
include thinkers like Helvtius and Maistre who have no apparent link to
either Germany or Italy. However Berlin, like Russell, also makes clear that
the romantic movement, with its critical, and disastrous, revolt against
truth, is a fundamentally German beast. Not only did it occur for the most
part in Germany183 but the Germans are in the end responsible for the
whole outlook.184 Berlin was certainly prepared to generalize on the ques-
tion of national character. He suggested that, early in the nineteenth cen-
tury, the Germans (seemingly as one) retreated psychologically into an
inner citadel.185
A nationalist German philosophy

In another essay, Berlin identified anti-canon ideas not just with the Ger-
man nation, but with a specifically German nationalism: [f]or Hegel [prog-
ress was] . . . the victory of the historic nations over the unhistoric, of
Germanic culture over the rest . . . 186 This remark of Berlins fits into a
pattern of hostility towards Hegels supposed political allegiances among
the analytic philosophers. Berlin highlights the fact that Hegel was in ser-
vice to the state. He suggested that the Prussian King would not have called
a liberal to his side. He also points to Hegels support for the curtailment of
freedom of speech undertaken by Metternich.187 On Russells analysis,
Hegel was an ultra-nationalist, who believed that the Prussian state of the
early nineteenth century was the supreme instrument of the progress of
history. Both he and Fichte were the philosophic mouthpieces of Prussia
and ultimately, in aiding Prussian dominance, helped to give the victory to
the least internationally minded elements of German culture.188 This is an
historical claim echoed by Ryle in his review of Poppers Open Society. Ryle
talks of the King of Prussia, assisted by his official professor189 and opines
that modern philosophers will not be taken in by such propaganda.
Contemporary philosophers are for the most part . . . aware of the equiv-
ocal relations between what Hegel taught and what Hegel was authorized
to teach. It was no accident that Hegel accepted from Plato and Aristotle
and Rousseau just those premises from which his Prussian conclusions
could be made to follow.190
Hegel then, on Ryles reading, is not a genuinely independent thinker,

but subservient to the interests of the Prussian state. In these accusations we
can detect a parallel invited between Hegels running to support his politi-
cal masters when summoned to do so, and the behaviour, during World
War I, of the German academics eager to stand foursquare behind their
nation, at the expense, so the British felt, of their academic probity. A tradi-
tion of German philosophers intellectual capitulation to state power is
strongly suggested. Both Ryle and Russell would have remembered the
notorious manifesto of the intellectuals of Germany and though his name
is not mentioned, it is quite possible that the name of the card-carrying
Nazi Martin Heidegger may have been in the minds of the British analysts
as yet another member of this German tradition.
It is entirely unsurprising that the analytic philosophers, who viewed
Hegel as a state-worshipper, should see him also as a willing slave to an
actual state. It is significant, perhaps, that the accusation made against
Hegel by Russell, Ryle and Berlin came after an article by T. M. Knox in
Philosophy in which he introduces some detailed and seemingly highly
persuasive historical evidence designed to illustrate that Hegel in fact was
never the pet philosopher of the Prussian king, and did not mould his
philosophical views to suit his political masters.191 His evidence, however,
appears to be ignored by the analytic philosophers. Maybe none of them
had read the article or the fairly lengthy exchange in Philosophy of which it
formed a part. It is equally possible that the idea of Hegel as a servant to
Prussia was too established to warrant reconsideration in the face of Knoxs
claims. Whatever the reason, it is clear that the analytic philosophers, in the
case of Hegel at least, were prepared to tie together explicitly the notion
of a German national philosophy with the idea of a culpably state-serving
German nationalist philosophy. Once again, German military aggression is
tied up with German philosophical thought.
What we can see in all of these explanations is a generalized notion of a
national German character allied to a national German philosophy a
combined culture that seems, according to these thinkers, to plot a straight
path towards Hitler and National Socialism. In the caldron of German cul-
ture totalitarian philosophies are mixed together with flaws in national
character and ancient superstitions to produce the noxious Nazi party. The
strength of these assumptions offers the best explanation for the confi-
dence with which the analysts could espouse their views on the culpability
of the anti-canon, despite, as we have seen, their lack of an adequate histori-
cal argument for this conclusion.
Nazi Philosophy 51
Conclusion
We have seen that in the period between 1934 and the 1960s, leading ana-
lytic philosophers identified an anti-canon of predominantly nineteenth-
century, predominantly foreign philosophers, all of whom they link to the
fascist movement of the twentieth century. In showing the lack of any
substantial historical account, and the lack of interest in any historical
account among the analytic philosophers, I have illustrated the strength of
the belief in the guilt of this anti-canon.
The nature of the publications in which the analytic philosophers did
their work only serves to reinforce the impression that these views were
held with utter certainty. We saw, above, that Ryle argued philosophers did
not need to be warned off Hegel, Nietzsche and the rest, they were already
immunized. This belief is apparently characteristic of those analytic
philosophers to have written about the anti-canon. Russells central texts,
the History of Western Philosophy and the Ancestry of Fascism, and Berlins
central texts Freedom and Its Betrayal and The Roots of Romanticism,
were all designed for non-specialist audiences. Even Ayers contribution to
the question, The Concept of Freedom, was published not in a philosophy
journal but in a literary magazine. For the analysts the question of
anti-canon guilt had ceased to be one that required philosophical debate
and clarification, it was therefore not a problem that analytic philosophers
dealt with in-house in their professional journals. The conclusions were
already drawn; they simply needed communicating to the public in order to
prevent a severe case of intellectual infection.
It is also worth noting the sheer strength of the analytic philosophers
critique of the anti-canon. There was almost no attempt to mitigate the
case against those seen as fascisms ancestors. The analysts did insert the
occasional lonely nuance, but the culpability of anti-canon philosophers for
fascism is relentlessly emphasized. It is striking that, in their more lengthy
commentaries, neither Russell nor Berlin seem to wish to make pleas for
mitigating circumstances.192 They were quite content to let the full force of
blame for siring fascism rest on nineteenth-century German philosophers.
An important part of the reason for this must be the strong nationalist
assumptions underpinning the English position, with the attendant ten-
dency to see the enemy (the bad Germans and their intellectual allies) as
a monolithic and wholly negative entity. We have clearly seen that the
anti-canon appears to be a particularly German phenomenon, and appar-
ently only relatively distantly related to Britain.
The analysts ability to simply dismiss a vast swathe of nineteenth-century

thought as proto-fascist, however, points to a further factor in their treat-
ment of the anti-canon. As we shall see in the next chapter, analytic philoso-
phy was founded on a rebuttal of, which grew into contempt for, Hegelian
philosophy in particular, and what came to be known as continental
philosophy in general. There was apparently no need to review the evi-
dence against these figures; they were philosophically bankrupt, morally
and politically dangerous dinosaurs and no-one wanted to recheck the
pages of Hegel to find out whether his ghost had been maligned.
Chapter 2
The Expulsion of the Invaders
The contemporary discovery of continental philosophy in the English-speaking

countries is actually quite recent. Only about fifteen years ago a course in philoso-
phy that failed to mention Hegel or Nietzsche, Husserl, Heidegger or Sartre was not
considered deficient. But as the anomalies in the geographical definition show, this
discovery is in fact more akin to the remission, perhaps temporary, of a more active
process of forgetting and exclusion . . .1
(David West 1996)
Santayanas prediction, made in 1913, was correct: Hegel will be to the next gen-
eration what Sir William Hamilton was to the last. Nothing will have been dis-
proved but everything will have been abandoned.2
(Peter Nicholson 1990)
Idealism, which appeared so suddenly and violently in this country . . .3

(G. J. Warnock 1952)
In the last chapter we looked at the way in which the analysts saw the history
of post-Kantian continental philosophy as culminating in National Social-
ism. This chapter is concerned with the way in which the analysts con-
structed their own history, and alongside it the history of their immediate
predecessors, the British idealists.
This chapter begins by outlining the treatment received by continental
philosophy and philosophers at the hands of the analysts it demonstrates
a pattern of neglect and marginalization. This picture is furthered in the
following section by an examination of the analysts writing of the history of
both their own tradition and that of the British idealists. What the first half
of this chapter demonstrates is the truth of David Wests characterization of
the analytic philosophys treatment of continental philosophy as an active
process of forgetting and exclusion . . . 4
In the second half of the chapter, I will argue that the analysts own
history writing strongly invites us to read this process of forgetting and
exclusion as intimately bound up with the cultural-political assumptions
seen in Chapter 1. As the title of this chapter indicates, the analysts set up a
narrative which characterizes them as the heirs to a native, British, tradi-
tion, and which portrays the British idealists as representing the brief
and short lived occupation of something fundamentally foreign. This for-
eign occupation is described through the language of warfare and conflict,
and linked, by the analysts, to the political aggression of Germany in the
twentieth century. Hence the analysts defeat of idealism represents more
than simply the ascendancy of one philosophical tradition over another; it
represents the expulsion of an invader.
Analytic Disengagement
The British idealists, figures such as Bradley, Bosanquet and Green, repre-
sented the principal encroachment of continental philosophy into Great
Britain, as far as the analytic philosophers were concerned. In this section,
we examine the various respects in which the analysts dealt with the ideal-
ists in particular, but also with other continental thinkers and groups.
The analysts principal treatment of idealism and the idealists was a wall
of silence. Iris Murdoch, one of the most insightful critics of post-war
analytic philosophy, aided greatly by her equivocal position with regard to
the tradition, points specifically to the eclipse of Hegel:
[i]t is almost mysterious how little Hegel is esteemed in this country. This
philosopher, who, while not being the greatest, contains possibly more
truth than any other, is unread and unstudied here.5
Having begun to explore the analysts beliefs about Hegel, we may now
feel that this lack of esteem is not mysterious at all. Indeed, Murdoch, far
from being an uncritical friend to the analytic philosophical movement,
implies that the reasons are not far to seek. The exclusion of Hegel is only
almost mysterious.
It was not just the British idealists, and Hegel, the thinker perceived as
their inspiration, who were put aside. Ryle wrote of the period: our copies
of [F. H. Bradleys] Appearance and Reality were dusty; and most of us had
never seen a copy of [Martin Heideggers] Sein und Zeit.6 Here, the British
Hegelian Bradley is joined in dusty obscurity by the phenomenologists,
The Expulsion of the Invaders 55
represented by Heidegger another continental school of thought.

C. D. Broad illustrated that this neglect also extended to Nietzsche. After
the war, Walter Kaufmann had the following encounter:
[i]n 1952, when I visited C. D. Broad [in] . . . Cambridge, he mentioned

a man named Salter. I asked whether he was the Salter who had written a
book on Nietzsche, to which Broad, one of the most eminent British phi-
losophers of his generation, replied: Dear no: he did not deal with
crackpot subjects like that; he wrote about psychical research.7
Such an assessment of the intellectual merits of the anti-canon, was, as we

will see, a fairly typical one. The message is clear; the analysts do not indulge
in such crackpot subjects as those raised by anti-canon thinkers. Clearly
the avoidance of these thinkers was not a question of a benign lack of
curiosity, it reflected assumptions the analysts had made about the nature
and quality of continental thought assumptions to which I will return in
Chapter 3.
Ayer, too, pointed to the complete lack of interest among his colleagues
in non-native thought:
[T]he main body of British philosophers took no serious interest in any

French philosopher later than Descartes, who died in 1650, and indeed,
once Hegel had fallen into disfavour, in any German philosopher later
than Kant whose principal work, The Critique of Pure Reason, appeared in
1781. I did not wholly share this insularity.8
Ayers lack of insularity extended to attending international philosophy

conferences, speaking fluent French and befriending leading existential-
ists, including Camus. However, it should not be overstated. Philosophi-
cally it counted for very little the most obvious signs of his catholicism
are a series of highly misleading articles on the existentialists published
in the late 1940s and 1950s in which he deployed the logical positivist
theory of meaning in order systematically to denigrate, or dismiss as
trivial, all the existentialists significant philosophical claims.9 While he
attended World Congresses of Philosophy from 1953 onwards, he gave up
attending meetings of the Association des Socits Philosophiques de Langue
Franaise because, according to his biographer: he came to he conclu-
sion that he could not learn from the French and they would not learn
from him . . .10 Ayers catholicism, then, certainly did not extend to
continental philosophy.
Bryan Magees comment on the state of Oxford philosophy in the 1950s

testifies to the same kind of generalized resistance to continental thought
beyond the simply Hegelian:
[A]t Oxford the assumption had always been that the empiricist tradition
was philosophy. There had been one occasion when I had raised a ques-
tion about the existential tradition as represented by philosophers like
Kierkegaard, Nietzsche and Heidegger only to have it explained to me
that these were not philosophers.11
This was a particularly strong form of dismissal. Not only are the anti-canon
poor philosophers unworthy of study, they have in some way devolved into
not being philosophers at all.12 It is testament to the control the analysts
exerted in the 1950s that their beliefs about philosophy had achieved a sta-
tus of such apparent permanence; the assumption at Oxford had not, as
Magee claims, always been that the empiricist tradition was the only philo-
sophy worth considering. But such was clearly the impression conveyed to
this particular student.
The analytic philosophers, then, very largely ignored foreign thought,
besides that which could be seen as essentially continuous with their own
tradition.
Structural and institutional exclusion

We have so far been discussing the analysts dislike of, and unwillingness to
engage with, anti-canon philosophy. These attitudes manifested themselves
in a variety of concrete ways, amounting to a movement on several fronts to
expel or marginalize foreign, anti-canon ideas. The analytic philosophers
were far from eager to spend time with their continental colleagues.
Raymond Plant has highlighted this lack of contact:
[A]part from one or two conferences to discuss theories of mutual

interest, conferences which often turned into dialogues of the deaf, there
was very little explicit influence or contact between British and continen-
tal philosophy.13
Recounting one such meeting, Re reports that the analysts huddled

together in self defence to try and avoid conversation.14 Isaiah Berlin
observed that they refused to accept influences from outside the magic
circle of Oxford, Cambridge and Vienna.15
The avoidance of anti-canon philosophy did not simply involve avoiding

continental philosophers. The process of marginalization extended to
the analytic philosophers treatment of the remaining British idealists
the local members of the anti-canon. Stefan Collini has argued that,
for Ryle, Austin and Ayer (taken as representatives of their tradition), R. G.
Collingwood was no longer regarded as a philosophical antagonist with
whom disagreement promised to be fruitful precisely because he was linked
to the British idealists.16 Warnock, writing from the vantage point of the
1970s, reinforces this point and goes further, arguing that the principal
intellectual affinity between analysts of all stripes was their agreement on
who was out.
Austin and Ayer for example, doubtless did not contrive, at that or any
other time, actually to agree about anything very much. But each was at
least interested in what the other said; both were interested in things said
by, say, Russell and Moore and Ryle; and neither, I believe, would have felt
it worthwhile even to disagree with, say Joseph or Collingwood.17
Both Joseph and Collingwood were seen as idealists and therefore not
worth the effort of conversation.18 Highly significantly, for Warnock, this
assumption of the worthlessness of idealism was the glue that bound ana-
lytic philosophers together. I will argue in the next chapter that this self-
definition by the analytic philosophers against continental philosophy in
general and idealism in particular, is fundamental to an understanding of
their beliefs, both about themselves and continental thought.
The analysts, then, avoided continental philosophers and their British
offshoots. They also tried to avoid teaching anti-canon philosophy to their
students. Quinton points to the organisation of teaching which bounds
lightly from Hume and Kant to Russell and Moore with no . . . attention to
the intervening period19 and, thereby, the exclusion from the undergradu-
ate teaching in Oxford of any reference to Hegel, Fichte, Nietzsche,
Schopenhauer, and the British idealists. Nicola Lacey, writing about post-
war Oxford, comments:
[I]nevitably, Kant and Descartes sat alongside Aristotle and Plato in the
Oxford undergraduate syllabus. But Nietzsche, Marx, Kierkegaard,
and Hegel were notably absent. Only the so-called English Empiricists
Locke, Berkeley, Hobbes, Hume, and Mill (as well as, to some
extent, Kant) appear to have engaged the enthusiasm of the linguistic
philosophers.20
Michael Ignatieff comments that Berlin read no German philosophy . . .

in his Oxford syllabus during the 1930s.21 Magee, who studied Politics,
Philosophy and Economics (PPE) in Oxford shortly after World War II
reports that it was
not only possible, it was usual, for a PPE student who got a first class
degree specializing in philosophy not to have read a word of Spinoza,
Leibniz, Kants Critique of Pure Reason (which was a special option), Hegel,
Marx, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Husserl, Heidegger, or any other philo-
sopher who had practised outside the British Isles. Most of the questions
in the examination paper on the history of philosophy related to four
philosophers only: Descartes, Locke, Berkeley and Hume . . . For the rest,
it was a question of studying the work of living British philosophers, plus
Moore and Wittgenstein (British citizens now dead).22
Adding to this picture, Forguson notes that at the height of the ordinary
language movement in Oxford philosophy, in 1957, the logic paper for PPE
featured 11 questions out of 14 which invit[ed] an ordinary language
approach.23 What, it appears, that we can conclude from all this is that not
only was it usual to avoid all anti-canon philosophers during a PPE course,
but if one branched out into continental philosophy, one could not expect
to find a suitable exam question on the subject. This policy must have made
studying any of the philosophy distrusted by the analysts practically very
difficult.
An incident involving Ayer and a syllabus disagreement provides us with
an insight into the active analytic attempts to resist the teaching of anti-
canon philosophy. The idealist J. N. Findlay, appointed to a Professorship
at Kings College London in 1951, found himself in disagreement with Ayer,
by then Professor of Philosophy at University College, London. It was under
Findlays guidance that courses in the history of philosophy were central-
ized at university, rather than college, level. This done, according to the
Dictionary of National Biography, he succeeded, against the wishes of
A. J. Ayer, in having Hegel as the special author for two successive years.24
Richard Wollheim has pointed out that for Ayer teaching was not simply
filling peoples heads, it was a matter of opening their eyes.25 And it seems no
possible good could be done by allowing undergraduate eyes to feast on
Hegel.
It appears, then, that there was nothing passive or accidental in the ignor-
ing of the post-Kantian nineteenth century. Such a possibility is, even in the
abstract, highly unlikely particularly in the case of the British idealists.
One does not passively forget ones immediate predecessors one may
wish to forget, or exclude, and this seems closer to the truth of the
matter.
The marginalization of anti-canon philosophy went further than ignor-
ing it and refusal to teach it. There were also, apparently co-ordinated,
condemnations in print. When the analysts broke their silence on conti-
nental philosophy, it was to criticize it, often in the strongest possible terms.
As Re points out, Oxfordian attacks on continental philosophy were
aggressive, even sadistic . . . 26 Re recounts that Mind, under the editorship
of Ryle, tried to keep readers informed about the antics of the foreign col-
leagues. Every work of continental philosophy turned out, upon careful
examination, to be pretentious rubbish.27
This is what we might expect from a journal edited by Ryle. We have
already had cause to note Ryles prominence in the analytic tradition from
the early 1930s on, and his clear subscription to the claim that Hegel was an
ancestor of Nazism. However, much has also been made of his catholic
credentials.28 It has been noted that he took an interest in phenomenology
(a characteristically continental school) and contributed a review of
Heideggers Sein und Zeit to Mind in 1929. However, as with Ayer, the simple
fact of the existence of writing on continental philosophy is far from enough
to demonstrate catholicism. One has to examine the content. Sein und Zeit,
Ryle stated: marks a big advance in the application of the Phenomenolog-
ical Method though I may say at once that I suspect that this advance is
an advance towards disaster.29 Not only the disparaging conclusion, but the
inverted commas around phenomenological method testifies to the thrust
of Ryles convictions on this subject.
This attitude showed no signs of changing in 1945, when he described
phenomenology as a bore which the British will ignore (and, he implies,
rightly so).30 One can get a flavour from this of the probable nature of a
Ryle editorial policy and as Re testifies and an examination of Mind in
the post-war years reveals this was the policy Ryle pursued; phenomenol-
ogy, and other continental philosophies besides, were ignored where they
werent disparaged.31
Ryle also contributed to the marginalization of idealism within Oxford
University. As Hare recalls, in his capacity as Waynflete Professor of Meta-
physics, Ryle made a point of getting as many young analysts appointed to
teaching positions as possible: an academic politician . . . he transformed
British philosophy almost single-handed.32 He also created the Oxford
B.Phil., to give postgraduate students the opportunity to specialize in
philosophy.33 Through the new qualification Oxford sent streams of
analytically trained philosophy tutors out to populate Britains rapidly

expanding higher education sector. Forguson reports that 59 per cent of
the philosophers in other British universities in 1955 were Oxford gradu-
ates, up from 36 per cent in 1939.34
Through skilful organization, analytic philosophy gained ground rapidly.
Conversely, with Ryle in charge it must have been very hard for a young
idealist attempting to take a position in philosophy at Oxford. Cambridge
meanwhile, always more sceptical towards idealism, had lost its last major
idealist with the death of John McTaggart, two decades before the end of
the Second World War, leaving the field in Cambridge to the champions of
common sense.35 Both the old universities then, by 1945, saw analysts in a
position of sufficient dominance to control syllabuses and appointments
and well-placed to expand their influence over the rest of the country.
We have already gained a sense of what such an expansion of influence
would mean for idealism in particular and continental philosophy in gen-
eral: absence from syllabuses, few opportunities for the study of relevant
texts, few opportunities for dialogue.
A gulf of understanding?
There may be a further aspect to this analytic refusal to engage with,
not just the idealists, but philosophy in the post-Kantian tradition more
generally. As a result of the moves made against their philosophical enemies
by Russell, Moore, Ryle, and others, there was no reason for the younger
generation of analytic philosophers to have read German philosophy at all.
According to his biographer Berlin did not encounter German philosophy
studying either Greats or PPE in the 1930s.36 The history of philosophy
paper had been removed from PPE after World War I, making philosophi-
cal breadth on the course all the more unlikely.37
But the more standard route to a philosophy post was not Greats and
PPE, but Honour Moderations (Mods) and Greats a route taken by the
overwhelming majority of the Oxford analytic philosophers. Hares reflec-
tions on the course and its implications further reinforce the suspicion.
Typically for a Mods and Greats student, the lions share of Hares time was
devoted to the classics, with little time for modern philosophy.38 In common
with his philosophical colleagues, he gained an academic post after
graduating from his undergraduate degree and so did not write a D.Phil.
The result of such an education was that most analytic philosophers
were not grounded in the history of their subject by their time as students.
As Strawson has pointed out, for some, this historical ignorance became
something of a badge of honour.39
Also in common with his philosophical colleagues, Hare was employed
by a college, with a teaching load of between seven and 25 hours a week.
The result: I had little time for the luxury of studying outside my own
writing and remain . . . extremely ignorant of the history of philosophy.40
There is, no doubt, an element of modesty here, but the structural
constraints that Hare recounts suggest that those in his position would have
had, at best, very little time to give themselves a broad grounding in the
subject. In his route through the Oxford system, Hare is highly representa-
tive. Apart from those elected to All Souls, who were able to concentrate
on research (this applied to Isaiah Berlin between 1932 and 1938, but
he combined the position with teaching at New College; and to Austin
between 1933 and 1935), the Oxford philosophers spent time teaching and
playing their part in what they subsequently dubbed the revolution in
philosophy.41
While those of the second generation of analysts who were undergradu-
ates before the war may have been taught by an idealist, the gradual institu-
tional domination of Oxford by the analysts made it increasingly unlikely
that those who took their degrees after the war Hare, the Warnocks,
Hampshire, Pears, Strawson and Wollheim would have come into contact
with anti-canon philosophy to any significant extent (though we have to be
a little careful here, as I will suggest later in this chapter that there was,
despite the analysts claims to the contrary, a persistent idealist presence in
Oxford after 1945). It is at least possible, then, that many of the younger
generation of analytic philosophers had simply not read the philosophers
about whom they entertained hostile beliefs, and against whom they
attempted to maintain an embargo.
Even those who produced short chapters on idealism as part of their
writing on the history of philosophy may well not have read the long and
difficult texts of the idealists. A number of commentators have made the
point that the errors in the reading of idealism by Moore and Russell were
simply perpetuated by subsequent analytic philosophers.42 Walter Kaufmann
has also identified a level of ignorance of Hegel in the reviews of Poppers
Open Society and its Enemies (1946).43 This suggests, at the very least, that the
readings made of the British idealists by the analytic philosophers as they
wrote their history were heavily influenced by the hostile lead given by
Russell and Moore. The very fact that only one book-length study of an
idealist was written by the Oxbridge-educated analytic philosophers in this
period testifies to the comfort the analysts felt with the view of idealism that
they inherited from Russell and perpetuated to their students.44 This was a
stable and widely accepted picture, and clearly not one any of the analysts
felt any desire to question.
Elaborating this pattern of neglect even further, Tom Rockmore has
recently claimed that [i]t is clear that Russell never read Kant carefully.
It is not clear, although he once considered himself to be a Hegelian,
that he ever read Hegel carefully or perhaps even at all . . .45 Ray Monk
adds credence to Rockmores claim, commenting that despite identifying
as Hegelian in the early part of his career, Russell didnt read Hegel
until 1897 when his Hegelianism was already on the wane.46 The
thoroughness of Russells reading of this, at a time when he was already
disillusioned, must be open to question. If Rockmores contention is cor-
rect, then this would go a long way to establishing that the Hegel con-
demned by analytic philosophers was a largely fictitious construction.47
(Russell Watson has called this creation the shadow Hegel.48) It is possible,
then, that nobody within analytic philosophy had undertaken any more
than a cursory reading of Hegel, and it is probable that most had not
done even this.
It is very likely that those with some knowledge of the history of analytic
philosophy will not find any of the foregoing especially remarkable. It does,
of course, point to the active exclusion of continental philosophy noted by
West in the quotation at the top of this chapter. But many of us are aware of
the analysts hostility to continental philosophy, and it probably comes as
no surprise that they did not wish to teach it, read it, or offer jobs to those
working on it. What may be less familiar is the extent to which the same
exclusionary project appears to be actively furthered by the analysts writing
of history.
Exclusionary History I: The Recovery of Tradition
We begin our examination of the analysts history writing with their claim
to have recovered and enhanced a tradition of British empiricism. Probably
the most widely read statement of the recovery of this British tradition in
philosophy was made in the preface to A. J. Ayers Language, Truth and Logic
(1936), still one of the best-selling works of analytic philosophy:
[t]he views which are put forward in this treatise derive from the doctrines
of Bertrand Russell and Wittgenstein which are themselves the logical
outcome of the empiricism of Berkeley and Hume.49
Later in the same work he asserts that analysis has always been implicit in
English empiricism, highlighting the national dimension to this tradition.50
In 1940, G. O. Wood, The Times Literary Supplements watcher of things
philosophical, had picked up on the change, commenting that English
philosophy was rediscovering its empiricist roots. Wood notes the much-
canvassed names of the pioneers of our empirical thought Locke,
Berkeley and Hume.51
After the war, as the analytic philosophers began to take an interest in
writing the history of their movement, we find a sudden rush to identify the
intellectual roots of analytic philosophy; all point in the same direction. For
G. J. Warnock, Russells enterprise of analysing concepts down to their par-
ticulars is the most constant and perhaps the most fertile enterprise in
which British philosophers had been engaged since the time of Locke;
Berkeley and Hume were also practitioners of this method.52 The title of
David Pears Bertrand Russell and the British Tradition in Philosophy (1967) tells
its own story unsurprisingly we find inside the claim that Russells role was
to take over and strengthen the type of empiricism whose most distin-
guished exponent had been David Hume.53
Russell was far more than just a successful restorer of the glorious past.
He was seen as having his own contribution to make, as Stuart Hampshire
showed:
[C]ontemporary empiricism derives from two traditions which converge

and meet in the work of Bertrand Russell. The first is the epistemological
tradition descending from Berkeley and Hume; the second is inspired
by the formal and exact use of symbols in modern logic, mathematics
and physical science. This new formal method is a contribution to the
traditional empiricism . . .54
This, despite Hampshires reservations, became the official position of the

analysts on Russells recovery of empiricism. Russell himself endorsed this
view in his History of Western Philosophy (1946).
Modern analytic empiricism, of which I have been giving an outline,

differs from that of Locke, Berkeley and Hume by its incorporation of
mathematics and its development of a powerful logical technique. It is
thus able, in regard to certain problems, to achieve definite answers,
which have the quality of science rather than of philosophy.55
Warnock argued that Russells thesis appeared to have the double virtue
of reviving pre-Idealistic empiricism, and of applying to philosophy the
well-proved and dazzling procedures of logic.56 By 1950, Hampshire could

write that the view of modern philosophy as a new and enhanced version of
British empirical had become a commonplace.57
As the reader will no doubt have spotted, there is a significant nationalist
tinge to all of this. Jonathan Re has highlighted this state of affairs, com-
menting that Oxford ordinary language philosophy in particular was
livened up by a streak of patriotism.
When it came to the British Empiricists Locke, Berkeley, and Hume

the Oxford philosophers were willing to admit the revolution carried
out by Russell and Moore had not been the thunderbolt that it is popu-
larly supposed to be. Ayer edited an anthology of British Empirical Philoso-
phers to make the national tradition more available to students.58
We have already seen Pears book refer to a British tradition in philoso-

phy. And this link between empiricism and Great Britain is one made by
other analysts. Russell himself stressed this point. When asked in 1960:
[w]ould you say that you yourself were in the British tradition?, Russell
replied: [o]h, very much so. You see, the British tradition comes primarily
from Locke; Locke partly imbued the three great British philosophers.59
We saw above that Warnock, Pears and Ayer as well as Russell himself, all
subscribed during this time to the notion that what had been recovered by
Russell was a national tradition;60 while others appear to imply the same
conclusion in tracing an exclusively British history of the movement, from
Locke to Russell.61 H. H. Price suggests an explanation for the affinity
between empiricism and Britain: empiricism, he comments, is a tendency
of the human mind which is peculiarly congenial to the inhabitants of
these islands.62
Nicola Lacey argues:
[t]he second, and more elusive, aspect of Oxford philosophys English-

ness had to do with the Allied victory in the war. The positive manifesta-
tion of this was a resurgence of confidence that intellectual culture could
deliver an English perspective distinct from the influential traditions of
continental philosophy.63
As Lacey suggests, in their hearty vindication of a characteristically

British intellectual tradition, the analytic philosophers form part of a wider
nationalist reassertion taking place in Britain after World War II. As Brian
Appleyard noted, there was no single fashion or taste after the war, but all
the fashions and tastes were united by the tendency to justify a position as
being distinctively British.64 Stefan Collini has explicitly linked the ordi-
nary language philosophy that characterized post-war Oxford with the
essentially English reaction of authors like Philip Larkin and Kingsley
Amis.65 I will return to the distinctive way in which the analysts fleshed out
the content of this national identity in subsequent chapters. The relation-
ship between empiricism and British character, in particular, will prove
important.
Russell, then, had reached back through time and reconnected with the
last link in the chain of British empiricists. Such a reconnection justified, or
perhaps mandated, what we have already seen: the the organisation of
teaching which bounds lightly from Hume and Kant to Russell and Moore
with no . . . attention to the intervening period.66 This approach to the his-
tory of the subject, with its leap between Hume and Kant and Russell and
Moore, highlights a crucial factor in our understanding of the treatment of
continental philosophy. It is highlighted still more clearly, and rather poeti-
cally, by Warnock. Russell symbolically joins hands with at least two centu-
ries of British philosophy, across a gap of a few years occupied with new and
strange things.67 The gap of strange things is bridged by Russell, linking
the modern empiricists back to their past. What the bridge also allows the
philosophers to do is to ignore the nineteenth-century continental beasts in
the pit below as they go backwards and forwards about their empiricist busi-
ness. And, for the analysts, this made philosophical sense. We will see in the
next chapter how, for many of the analytic philosophers, philosophy had
taken the wrong path with Kant and Hegel. It would therefore make sense
to return and attempt to pick up the philosophical threads before the world
became caught in Kantian tangles. Implicit, therefore, in a recovery of a
British tradition in philosophy that bypasses the nineteenth century, is the
claim that the nineteenth-century tradition has nothing to offer.
This wholesale deprecation towards the nineteenth-century has been
noted by subsequent commentators. Richard Rorty refers to the Anglo-
Saxon belief that no philosophical progress occurred between Kant and
Frege68; while Jonathan Re writes of analytic histories: [n]ormally avert-
ing eyes from nineteenth-century thinkers, especially Marx, it tries to join
twentieth-century philosophy directly to Kant.69 Highlighting Kants ambig-
uous place hovering between canon and anti-canon, Robert Hanna has
argued that analytic philosophy was predicated on a quite conscious and
deliberate refusal of Kantian conclusions:
the leading philosophers of the analytic tradition from the 1880s up

through the 1950s and 1960s Frege, Moore, Russell and early
Wittgenstein; Carnap and the Vienna Circle; later Wittgenstein and the
ordinary language philosophers and Quine quite self-consciously
rejected the main doctrines of the [Kants TA] first Critique . . . 70
This notion of a return to Hume, with its attendant assumptions

about the time wasted on a (post-) Kantian philosophical tradition in the
meantime is clearly important in understanding the scope and brutality
of the analysts critique of the anti-canon. The analysts believed it was a
failed tradition. This cannot directly explain the analysts belief that this
failed philosophical tradition was also fascist, but what it does entail is that
the analysts, en masse, had no doctrinal reason to seek to preserve or
protect continental philosophy. As the recovery of the British empiricist
tradition implies, the analysts had no investment in the philosophy they
condemned, and therefore, perhaps, fewer qualms in tarring it with the
Nazi brush. This was helped by the drawing of national distinctions; as
Quinton has put it, [t]he nineteenth century is seen as an exclusively
foreign affair.71
These considerations rather have the effect of suggesting that the ana-
lytic/continental distinction can historically be accounted for by a philo-
sophical divergence on the value or otherwise of Kantian and post-Kantian
thought diminishing the interest in any rather more cultural-political
explanations. There is a curiosity here, however, which points, at the very
least, to a particular set of concerns on the part of the analysts. This curios-
ity comes to light if we compare the history written by the analysts of the
immediate post-war years with the evidence provided by more recent
scholarship. The analysts focus on the British origins of the tradition in this
period paints a strong line of separation between the origins of analytic
philosophy, and the post-Kantian tradition of continental philosophy.
Analytic philosophy is defined as a reaction by two Englishmen against a
philosophical school with its roots in Germany. What is now becoming
increasingly apparent is that this strong separation between the two schools
is in fact very hard to maintain. Robert Hanna has pointed out that the
explicit rejection of Kants epistemology by many analysts, including Moore
and Russell, masked an unconscious absorption of Kants way of formu-
lating the very distinctions and problems they were dealing with.72 A recent
book by Paul Redding makes a similar case: In contrast to the Russellian
creation myth with its simple opposition between analytic philosophy and
Kant-derived idealism, the actual picture presented in such works is much
more complicated suggesting multiple affinities between analytic

philosophy and the ideas of both Kant and Hegel.73
Following this train of thought, recent commentators have also ques-
tioned whether analytic philosophy was ever as empiricist as its practitio-
ners claimed. The analysts subscription to the truths of mathematics and
logic renders their identification as empiricists rather suspect and indeed
suggests that the analysts themselves would be better characterized as
subscribing to a form of idealism.74
Away from idealism, but continuing the theme of analytic/continental
interaction, Bryan Magee is not alone in pointing out that Ludwig
Wittgenstein, who was a central figure for British analytic philosophy if
never an insider actually had a significant philosophical debt to that most
continental of figures Schopenhauer.75
On a different but related front, Michael Dummett has argued that the
roots of analytic philosophy are the same roots, as those of the phenomeno-
logical school.76 Finally, David Bell has pointed out that almost all of
Moores revolutionary claims were doctrines to be found in the work of
Bretano who, he points out, Moore would have read about in Mind at the
turn of the century (long before Ryles editorship).77 As such, he suggests,
Russell and Moores British revolution in philosophy is in fact caused by
their engagement with a dialogue going on largely among phenomenolo-
gists on the continent.
What these considerations suggest is that the analysts historical account
of the recovery of a native British tradition was a very partial construct
which overlooked foreign, particularly post-Kantian, influence on British
analytic philosophy and which highlighted the particularly British roots of
the movement. In constructing their origins in this way, the analysts created
and reinforced a barrier between themselves and the continental philo-
sophical schools a barrier which perhaps owed its existence more to the
requirements and purposes of analytic history writing in the 1950s than it
did to the state of affairs in British philosophy at the turn of the century.
We will return to this later in the chapter, by which time a fuller picture of
the analysts history writing will have emerged.
Exclusionary History II: Marginalizing the Idealists
Having examined the analysts construction of their own recent philosophi-

cal history, I now want to turn to their writing of the history of the idealists.
As we will see, the analysts used history to portray idealism as a marginal,
foreign import to British philosophy, which had short life before being
replaced by a superior native variety.
The general opinion of the analysts was that British idealism had been
decisively refuted by the pioneering work of Russell and G. E. Moore in the
first decade of the twentieth century. These two men, initially Hegelians
themselves according to their own testimony, soon rebelled against their
idealist masters. Russell tells the story in his Autobiography:
Moore, like me . . . was for a short time a Hegelian. But emerged more
quickly than I did, and it was largely his conversation that led me to aban-
don both Kant and Hegel.78
Moores canonical paper The Refutation of Idealism (1903) was widely

considered to have fulfilled its ambitions and effectively removed idealism
as a serious intellectual challenge.79 The paper represents a fundamental
point of departure for the analysts. As Ayer made clear, it had a decisive
bearing on the subsequent development of philosophy not only in England
but in part of Europe and throughout the English-speaking world.80
Perhaps because they felt that Moore had so decisively rejected idealism,
the analysts expended little effort on the exposition of idealist philosophy,
even in their historical writings. As Tom Rockmore writes: [s]tandard works
on the history of analytic philosophy usually devote a few desultory pages to
British Idealism.81 Two of the earliest and most influential works of the
history of analysis from this post-war period are Mary Warnocks Ethics since
1900 (1960), and her husband G. J. Warnocks English Philosophy since 1900
(1958). Both of these texts bear out the comments made by Rockmore;
an opening chapter gives a short and hostile account of idealism (in 15
and 11 pages respectively), culminating in the arrival of Moore who, in
G. J. Warnocks words, subjected idealism to destructive criticism.82 Mary
Warnock speaks of Moore striking the greatest blow against idealism.83
After a discussion of Moores refutation of idealism, the idealists disappear
almost completely from the picture, as the progress of analytic philosophy
is laid out in successive chapters. The narrative of these texts is nicely
summed up by Ernest Gellner, in a comment on a book by Ayer: [t]his,
then, would seem to be the plot of the book the rescue by two brave
knights of British thought, captured by Hegelian philosophy.84 The knights
are Moore and Russell, British thought the damsel in distress, and Hegelian
thought, of course, is the dragon.
One of the features of these chapters on idealism was the way in which
the analytic philosophers emphasized short duration of the period during
which British thought was in thrall to Hegel. G. J. Warnock pointed to the

shallowness of idealist roots:
[t]he state of British philosophy in the early years of the present century
was itself highly unusual and full of novelty [in its domination by
idealism] . . . To see in it a tradition is certainly a mistake. It may possibly
have been, as Muirhead twenty years later thought that it still was, in the
mainstream of European thought. But it is unquestionable that it had
not been there for very long, and that the mainstream of British thought
had run for some centuries in very different channels.85
Idealism was a novelty in Britain. His use of italics emphasizes still further
Warnocks already crystal clear message: they may believe one set of things
on the continent, but that is not what we believe in Britain. Warnock, clearly
eager to stress the foreignness of idealism, labours the point still further:
calling it an exotic in England and due primarily to German influences.
Bertrand Russell, a major cause of the exotics demise, was god-son of John
Stuart Mill.86 There is a restatement here both of the alien German
nature of idealism, and of the native tradition which Russell, the dragon-
slayer, restored through his link to John Stuart Mill.
Russell himself argued that [t]hroughout the period from Kant to
Nietzsche, professional philosophers in Great Britain remained almost
completely unaffected by their German contemporaries;87 while Ayer
reassures his readers that the idealists had very little foothold in twentieth-
century British thought: in English-speaking countries there has been
throughout the present century an almost complete disregard of the
extravagancies of German speculative thought.88
Between them, Russell and Ayer squeeze the foreign influence into a
period that appears to begin around 1890 and to end promptly in the twen-
tieth century. Like Warnock, they also make very clear the origins of this
foreign thought once again, it is German. Idealism appears as no more
than a temporary aberration in an otherwise seamless history of British
empiricism. Bernard Williams too pointed to the brief period of the
idealist philosophys stay in Britain, and suggested that the influence was
now entirely eradicated.89
These claims were bolstered with reference to certain thinkers. Ayer
told his readers that even F. H. Bradley himself, despite his idealist creden-
tials, struggled against his better, empiricist, nature. Bradley, he stated,
found it difficult entirely to free himself from the legacy of British empiri-
cism.90 Russell, in similar vein, wrote: gradually Kant and Hegel conquered
the universities of France and England, so far as their

teachers of technical philosophy were concerned. The general educated
public, however, was very little affected by this movement, which had few
adherents among men of science.91 Even during its short stay in Britain,
then, idealism never really had a firm hold virtue continued to whisper
in the ear of even the most hardened cases (Bradley); while the scientists
and ordinary man in the street doughtily ignored the whole movement
(I will return to the martial imagery in this passage and its implications
shortly).
Russell made a similar point about Nietzsche. This is taken from a letter
to D. S. Thatcher written towards the end of Russells life:
I do not think that Nietzsche ever had any important influence in

England. I believe that more people in Oxford than Cambridge paid
attention to him, but they were not the most able people. I should add
that I consistently thought ill of Nietzsche, and I may be biased about his
influence, which was certainly considerable in Germany.92
Nietzsche, then, had no real influence in Britain, certainly not in

Cambridge, and those Oxfordians who dabbled with him were marked by
their lack of intelligence. He was clearly only really attractive to the
Germans. This quotation, perhaps, offers an insight into Russells order of
merit, with Cambridge at the top and Germany at the bottom. It is also very
much continuous with the rhetoric of the dismissal of idealist thought
like Hegel, Russell suggests, Nietzsche was not taken seriously in this
country certainly not by the best people. Most of the analysts felt no need
to distance British philosophy from Nietzsche, and Russells comments
here were made as a response to an enquiry, rather than as a part of his
published output. This may well be because, while there was a Nietzschean
tradition in Great Britain in the first half of the twentieth century, it was not
one based in philosophy faculties.93 Idealism, by contrast, was an enemy in
the midst.
The 1945-generation of analysts continued to reinforce the impression
that they had helped to manufacture. Quinton makes the following
statement in an essay collection published in 1982:
[B]ut the brief interruption of idealism in Britain had no lasting effect on

the national tradition of conceiving the philosopher, as, in the word of
Locke and the practice of a host of others, an underlabourer to the scien-
tist, or, with Moore and the linguistic philosophers, to the common man.94
Several decades on, idealism here is still seen as a no more than an

interlude in British thought. G. J. Warnock, reflecting back on the immedi-
ate post-war period from the vantage point of the 1970s, commented that
the (idealist) philosophy practised in 1923 now appears to belong to a
philosophically obsolete order of beings,95 which, by 1948, had effectively
vanished.96 Both Quinton and Warnock, here, address the philosophical
past as though the collapse of idealism was an event that they witnessed
from a detached and indifferent perspective, rather than as participants in
the analytic tradition that helped cause the collapse.
As with the analysts account of the recovery of their native tradition,
it is worth holding some of these historical claims up to scrutiny, in order
to get a sense of the purposes and motives for this history writing. What we
find, once again, is that the analysts historical claims obscure a far more
complex history. In this case, their historical claims consistently understate
the significance of British idealism thereby marginalizing that tradition in
the history of British philosophy.
There is an emerging consensus, at least among historical revisionaries,
that the analysts dismissal of the intellectual foundations of idealism was
over-hasty an over-haste that fits well into the presumptions made by the
analysts about the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of the tradition.
Peter Hylton, for example, has, after a detailed reading of the analytic
critique of idealism, concluded that all of Russell and Moores criticisms in
fact had answers.97 In his Hegel, Idealism and Analytic Philosophy (2005), Tom
Rockmore suggests that this was because Russell and Moore did not under-
stand the idealism they rejected well enough to form telling objections
against it.98 Rockmore further suggests that, in analytic histories, distinc-
tions between the idealists have been ignored; instead British idealists
have served as a lightening rod for criticism of Hegelianism of all
kinds.99 On Rockmores reading, the homogenous idealism that is found
in analytic histories is created for polemical purposes to designate a view
one rejects.100
While we cannot take a definitive view on this philosophical question, we
can, I think, gain a sense of the accuracy of the analysts historical claims.
What we have seen is a suggestion by the analytic philosophers in the
decades immediately after World War II that the idealists bothered British
philosophy very briefly, though there is no indication of precisely for how
long. The suggestion, though, is that their stay was so short, and their
thought so peripheral to the mainstream of British philosophy that they
were barely worth considering. This is at best a significant exaggeration of
the historical state of affairs. We get some sense of the contestability of this
history by consulting a partisan for the idealists, H. J. Paton, who wrote the
following in 1956 about the situation in the early twentieth century:
[S]ome modern writers are apt to speak as if a band of pygmies had been
dominated by the gigantic figures of G. E. Moore and Bertrand Russell.
This may have been so in the eyes of God; it may even have been so in
the eyes of Cambridge . . . For philosophers generally, at least outside
Cambridge, Bradley and to a lesser degree Bosanquet were the dominant
figures, even to those who opposed them.101
Tom Rockmore takes a similar line to Paton, arguing that Hegelians

enjoyed a significant following through at least a quarter of the twentieth
century. Bradley, he suggests, was seen as the most significant British
Philosopher as late as 1924 a picture at odds with that painted by the
analysts.102
There is a first phase and a second phase of analytic history writing.
The first phase gives few specifics in terms of chronology, but seeks to give
the impression that idealism is finished and out of the way. In later texts by
the analysts we see specific dates and events becoming more significant
partly because these thinkers have moved into the role of historians and
chroniclers attempting to record the precise nature of events for posterity.
So it is that in articles in the 1970s and 1980s we find Quinton making clear
historical claims. Here we will look at just one such claim, the importance,
for Quinton, as well as Hare and G. J. Warnock, of 1945 as the terminal date
for idealism.103 Quinton wrote that by 1945:
[i]n Britain the last embers of resistance to analytic philosophy, itself

inaugurated at the turn of the century by Russell and Moore in total rejec-
tion of British neo-Hegelianism, had been stamped out.104
As an historical claim this is rather suspect. We have already noted the

existence of H. J. Paton (a Kantian) in this chapter. I have also mentioned
(in a forgettable footnote) G. R. G. Mure. Both were idealists working at
Oxford in 1945. J. D. Mabbot, also at Oxford, was strongly influenced by
the British Hegelians as was A. D. Lindsay who remained Master of Balliol
until 1949 before helping found the University College of North Stafford-
shire, which later became Keele University.105 Idealists persisted both in
Oxford and beyond and they persisted in positions of power. Michael
Oakeshott had a debt to Hegel apparent in his Experience and its Modes
(1933).106 By 1951 he was Professor of Political Science at the London
School of Economics.107 I have already mentioned the idealist, J. N. Findlay,

who was made professor at Kings College London also in 1951. Another
thinker strongly influenced by idealism, Ernest Barker, though he retired
from his chair in Cambridge in 1939, continued to publish until the
late 1950s.108 Scotland too continued to shelter idealists. Idealism, then, was
certainly not eradicated in the universities after 1945. More significantly
still, Re has shown that, of the 340 philosophy books reviewed in The Times
Literary Supplement in the 1950s, the number of works that could be classed
as idealist outnumbered works by analysts, 83 to 66.109 This suggests
a completely different picture from the one painted by the second and
third generation of analysts in their histories. Idealism was not a tradition
which had been stamped out, though it had certainly been weakened.
If we return to the precise text of Quintons remarks, we discover that he
can be read as making an even stronger claim that in Britain the last embers
of resistance to analytic philosophy . . . had been stamped out.110 As we
have seen, it was simply untrue that idealism had been stamped out, let
alone all resistance to analytic philosophy. When one adds to that a string
of non-idealist thinkers working outside the analytic tradition the list is lon-
ger still.111 Quinton seeks to make some accommodation with the facts of
the case by commenting that Hegels ideas did remain in the area of politi-
cal philosophy, a field which analytic philosophers avoided.112 The impli-
cation appears to be that the intervention of the analysts in political
philosophy would have seen the rapid removal of Hegelian ideas this
implication is reinforced by Quintons comment that as a result of the con-
tinuing Hegelian influence debates in political philosophy proceeded in
the idiom of an earlier age113 while the rest of the intellectual world had
moved on.114
Finally, 1945 seems a particularly strange date to pick as that on which
idealism was stamped out.115 Adam B. Ulam has argued that Neo-
Hegelianism was an aspect of the philosophical foundations of English
socialism.116 The birth of the NHS and the welfare reforms that preceded
it were undertaken under the auspices of men who had been trained in
T. H. Greens school of idealism, men like William Beveridge. Ernest Barker
tutored Clement Attlee at Oxford.117 Andrew Vincent writes that [i]t is
no exaggeration to say that the majority of those who worked on and
supported the early 20th-century welfare state reforms . . . were influenced
by . . . [the] culture of civic idealism and social duty.118 Most of the analytic
philosophers, as Quinton subsequently noted, were on the left of politics,119
supporters of the social reforms of the Labour government of 1945 an
interesting and rather problematic relationship for those who wished to
deny any permanent legacy to the British idealists. Quinton subsequently

offered a predictable response, admitting that Greens disciples were influ-
ential in welfare reform, but arguing that the principle of state interference
for the common good is an aspect of Greens thought that did not derive
from Hegel and that it was this native principle that founded the British
welfare state.120 Hegel was not going to be allowed to take credit for these
achievements.
If the specific historical claims made later in the twentieth century by
Quinton and Warnock, as well as a host of those who followed their lead,
were at best only partially true, then the insinuations about the extreme
brevity of the spell of idealism which characterized the analysts history
writing in the 1950s and 1960s are definitely misleading.
Once the claim that the idealists were only brief interlopers into
British philosophy has been problematized, another aspect of the
analysts account can be drawn into sharper focus. Re has asked whether
the traditions represented by the British idealists, or even the romantic phi-
losophers, were as alien to Britain as the analysts wished their readers to
believe:
[a]s a matter of historical record, too, it could be more appropriate to see

Britain as the home of idealism, from the Cambridge Platonists through
the civic humanists and Coleridge to the Christian idealists led by
T. H. Green and their successors in the Royal Institute of Philosophy; or
of irrationalism and emotionalism, starting with Duns Scotus, and con-
tinuing in Burke, Blake, Carlyle, Ruskin and successive generations of
British Nietzscheans.121
Here, then, are two traditions of British metaphysicians and idealists

trailing back into history and right up to the present. It suggests the possi-
bility that empiricism does not have a unique claim to the title of, to use
Pears phrase, the British tradition in philosophy (my italics).
However, we should not get too carried away with the failings of this ana-
lytic history. It is important to acknowledge that they did not paint a wholly
inaccurate picture. It is clear that by 1945 the idealists were not the force
they had been before World War I. They had lost, rather unluckily in some
cases, a substantial number of their most important spokesmen. Bradley,
the most prominent idealist of the early twentieth century, died in 1924.
He was predeceased by another giant of idealism, Bernard Bosanquet, in
1923. The Cambridge idealist McTaggart died in 1925.122 More significant
for our purposes, however, is the cluster of deaths surrounding the Second
World War. Muirhead, one of the most vocal Hegelians left in England,
died on 24 May 1940. Collingwood, the brilliant Oxford idealist, died
prematurely in 1943, at the age of 54. Harold Joachim, another of the last
influential idealist philosophers at Oxford, died in 1938.
This weakening of idealism acknowledged, it still seems reasonable to
note that the analysts historical claims significantly exaggerate both the
weakness of idealism after 1945 and the briefness of the duration of idealist
influence over British philosophy. As with the analysts characterization of
their own tradition as at root British, these exaggerations point towards an
attempt to exclude continental philosophy in this case to exclude ideal-
ism by drastically curtailing its historical significance. This historical
account enabled the analysts to characterize themselves as having an exclu-
sive right to British heritage and British tradition. Re implies that in so
doing, the analysts obscured a richer, multifaceted, history of philosophy in
this country. In combination with the institutional moves that we saw the
analysts make against idealism in the first section of this chapter the disin-
clination to engage in dialogue, to read continental, or continentally
inspired, texts, to teach continental philosophy this amounts, I would sug-
gest to a compelling case that what we have here is, as West argues, an
active process of forgetting and exclusion.123
The Idealist Invasion
The slanted history and the institutional practices that weve been
exploring so far indicate a strong desire on the part of the analysts to draw
boundaries between themselves and other European philosophical
traditions. But it has not yet offered us evidence of a direct relation between
this desire for rigid separation and the cultural-political attitudes that we
began to canvas in Chapter 1 beyond the intuitive point that worries about
the political vices of the continental tradition were hardly likely to encour-
age the analysts to embrace that tradition. Here, I will suggest that the atti-
tudes canvassed in the last chapter and the exclusionary practices discussed
in this chapter are brought together by the analysts themselves, in the way
they write their history. As we will go on to see, the analysts characterized
idealism as foreign, invasive and they linked the chronology of idealist
philosophical decline in Britain to the world wars particularly to 1945.
Moreover, the analysts conceived of World War II as a war to be fought on
an intellectual as well as a military front a conception which results in the
politicising of philosophy. As such, I will suggest, the analysts rejection of
idealism and continental philosophy, and their exclusion of it wherever

possible, is intimately tied to their assessment of its political vices.
In the last section of this chapter, we saw Russell refer to Kant and Hegel
as conquering the universities of France and England.124 A significant
aspect of the analysts charting of the history of idealism is a striking but
quite natural transference, in the language used to describe the anti-canon;
the philosophy of Hegel has taken on the character of its supposed political
manifestations. Hegelianism does not merely lead to aggression; it is, of its
nature, aggressive. Russell made an even more striking version of this claim
in a radio broadcast:
[w]hen I was young the British universities had been invaded by German
Idealism, but when the Germans invaded Belgium it was decided that
German philosophy must be bad. And so I came into my own, because
I was against German philosophy anyhow.125
The idealists are identified, once again, as a characteristically German

grouping. The aggression of the philosophy, as such, is of a piece with the
aggression recommended by the idealist theory of the state. Their invasion
of English philosophy is seen as a piece with the German armys invasion of
Belgium a martial philosophy with the values of a martial people. Russell
was not alone in seeing matters in this fashion. The supposed aggression of
idealism was summed up by G. J. Warnock in 1958: idealism appeared sud-
denly and violently in this country.126 Elsewhere in the same book he refers
to the incursion of German Idealism.127
Twenty years later, the analysts were still deploying the same metaphors.
Quinton wrote in 1982 of the rapid conquest of the British mind by ideal-
ism.128 In 1978, Mary Warnock brought out the monstrous element of ideal-
ism; she describes English philosophy as lacking a life of its own during the
second half of the nineteenth century: [t]he huge and powerful tentacles
of German idealism left little room for private enterprise and less will to
resist.129 Here we see the German idealist as an occupying leviathan, its ten-
tacles choking out independent thought. There may also be hint here of
the language of the Cold War it is private enterprise that is choked by the
tentacles of idealism, the characteristic behaviour of the Western
capitalist.130
By the 1970s, the analytic philosophers begin to offer timescales for the
collapse of idealism and we find another link being drawn between military
and philosophical victories and defeats. Quinton, following Russell, argued
that idealism was discredited by World War I:
Bosanquets book [Philosophical Theory of the State] remained the

standard text of academic political theory until the 1914 war brought it
doubly into discredit: for the German origins of its ideas and for the
somewhat bonelessly optimistic compliance with the verdict of history.
In general, idealistic philosophy came to be seen as a disreputable verbal
device which provided a metaphysical justification for whatever distribu-
tion of power happened to exist . . . 131
Quinton implies that the military conflict begun in 1914 showed idealist
philosophy in its true colours as a justification for the excesses of power.132
While he also sees 1925 as a significant date in the collapse of idealism,133
Quinton highlights the significance of 1945 as the nadir of Hegels
reputation in Britain:
Hegels reputation in the English-speaking world was at its lowest ebb in

1945. That was the year of Russells History of Western Philosophy with its
genially dismissive treatment of Hegel, and of the stormy invective of the
Hegel chapter in Karl Poppers The Open Society and its Enemies. In Britain
the last embers of resistance to analytic philosophy, itself inaugurated at
the turn of the century by Russell and Moore in total rejection of British
neo-Hegelianism, had been stamped out.134
Hare and G. J. Warnock concur with Quintons final suggestion, that

1945 was the most significant moment in the collapse of idealism. Hare
describes the idealist old guard as being routed under Ryles leader-
ship.135 Here we have a striking congruence between the chronology of the
war in Europe and the battle between British analysis and German philoso-
phy. Major Ryle of the Welsh Guards, demobbed from the army in 1945,
returns to symbolically finish off his stricken idealist foe. The fates and
characteristics of idealism and its nation-of-origin are tied together the
allied conquest of Berlin spelling not only the end of Hitler, but the refuta-
tion in practice of the idealist philosophy.
G. J. Warnock wrote of the collapse of idealism: [i]t seems likely that the
war had a good deal to do with it. In the 1920s and 1930s radically different
species of philosophy had co-existed in this country . . . after the six years
near-moratorium that began in 1939, it was to be found that only one of
these species had effectively survived.136 Maybe we can detect here too a
suggestion that the idealists fate was in some way tied to the fate of the Nazi
state that was the practical exposition of their thought? As we have noted,
the analysts were not without their philosophical reasons for pointing to
1945 as the moment that Hegelian philosophy was stamped out in Britain,
but the parallels in the two chronologies are striking.
The significance of 1945 in this intellectual warfare has another side to it.
While in retreat from British soil, German ideas were doing better else-
where. Quinton wrote that:
[t]he German army was finally defeated in 1918 and 1945, but German
ways of thought, in a particularly wanton and delirious form, have con-
quered French intellectual life. Its pantheon consists of Hegel, Husserl
and Heidegger with Nietzsche as the presiding deity. The outcome is a
bacchanalian revel of paradox and oracular chatter.137
The French, lacking resilience on the intellectual as well as on the military

front, succumbed to Heidegger and his master Hegel. Such an association
between French and German thought after 1945 paved the way for the
broad brush label continental philosophy based on the belief that the
two other great philosophical nations of western Europe were preaching
the same faith.138
Ayer, who did the pioneering work on existentialism in Britain, also
clearly believed that behind it lay a familiar enemy. He commented in 1959
that [t]he ascendancy of Germany over France in this respect is especially
remarkable.139 Later, he was more explicit, referring to the subservience,
since the war, of French to German philosophy140 and he was keen to point
out that Heidegger remained popular in Germany despite his encomia of
Hitler. Whether they understood him, whether indeed, there was anything
to understand is a question I shall not pursue here.141
Heidegger was a living vindication of the analysts assumptions about the
anti-canon, a philosopher in the post-Kantian tradition, who became a
card-carrying member of the Nazi party. Though I cannot go fully into this
point here, understanding the analysts belief in the link between French
existentialism, through Heidegger, and the anti-canon is important in
understanding the extreme hostility with which Sartre and his ilk were
greeted by post-war British philosophers. The treatment of the existential-
ists is, in tone and content, remarkably similar to the treatment of the pre-
Nazi anti-canon. This of course is entirely consistent with Quintons claim,
echoed, as we have seen by Ayer, but also by Hare and Berlin, that French
existentialism was essentially a German beast.142 As far as the analytic
philosophers were concerned, the Maginot line proved far less effective
than the English Channel in repelling the military and cultural force of the
German nation.
The British, however, werent entirely impervious and the impression

that French existentialism was simply a continuation of the dangerous
proto-fascist anti-canon must have been helped by the intellectual path of
the British existentialist, Colin Wilson. Wilsons The Outsider was a huge suc-
cess, and drew widely on continental philosophy.143 After The Outsider,
Wilsons thought took on increasingly fascist dimensions. Alan Sinfield
recounts that:
Wilson and his friends actually thought about carrying forward their
ideas of freedom by founding a neo-fascist political party, based on
Wilsons belief that effective political power ought to be in the hands of
the five per cent minority who were equipped to use it; they had a meet-
ing with Sir Oswald Mosley.144
This must have come as little surprise to the analysts, and cemented their
belief not only in the political dangers of the anti-canon, but in the relation-
ship between the nineteenth-century anti-canon and the modern existen-
tialist school with which Wilson was identified.
What we have here, then, is a relationship on two levels: first the
idealists themselves are seen as a foreign invasion force; second, the
chronology of the decline of idealism is mapped onto the chronology of
wars perpetuated by the nation Germany with which idealism is most
strongly identified. This characterization of idealism by the analysts must,
surely, be read as continuous with the attitudes we examined in the
last chapter, about the politically dangerous qualities of this German and
German-inspired philosophy.
World War II as a war of ideas

There is a further dimension to this mapping of philosophical conflict onto
military conflict. There was, both before and during the Second World War,
a sense that it was, in part, a war of ideas. Viscount Samuel, President of the
Royal Institute of Philosophy (but not an analytic philosopher), eloquently
stated the position in 1945:
[U]nquestionably the European and world cataclysm through which we

have just passed was in essence a War of Ideas the outcome of Fascist
and Nazi philosophy. We might have said with Burke, It is with an armed
doctrine that we are at war.145
Joad deployed similar imagery in his For Civilization (1940).146 The analysts
too shared a sense of the Second World War as a battle between two rival
visions of human life. Monk reports of Russell that [a] recurring theme in
his correspondence at this time [the 1940s] was that Europe, in destroying
the civilization it had built up over the centuries, was heading back to the
Middle Ages . . . The Nazi Soviet pact, he thought, made it clear that the war
was one of ideology, a fight between liberalism and various forms of totalitari-
anism.147 Hare described the war as a conflict of ideals between Nazism and
democracy148 Ryle in his review of the Open Society, commented on Poppers
view of Hegel: [i]t is right that he should feel passionately. The survival of
liberal ideas and liberal practices has been and still is in jeopardy.149
Here Hegel is represented as a direct threat to liberal values, which the
British nation is seeking to defend. Such a view of the war opened up a new
front, an intellectual front, and with it new possibilities both for victory
and defeat. A nation may lose the military struggle, yet win the battle of
ideas, or vice versa. Such a possibility gives philosophers themselves an
important role in the war effort that of winning the battle of ideas. Berlin
wrote that Heinrich Heine
prophesied that the romantic faith of Fichte and Schelling would one day
be turned, with terrible effect, by their fanatical German followers, against
the liberal culture of the West. The facts have not wholly belied this
prediction; but if professors can truly wield this fatal power, may it not be
that only other professors, or, at least, other thinkers (and not govern-
ments or Congressional committees), can alone disarm them?150
Hare makes similar claims in the 1950s and 1960s,151 and, as we will see in
Chapter 4, actually went to Germany to further the intellectual critique of
fascist philosophy. Significant too in this regard is Russells History of Western
Philosophy. It was written in the 1940s, during Russells exile in America
and was already in process when he sent a letter to Gilbert Murray on 9
April 1943 in which he wrote, I should be quite willing to do government
propaganda as my views on this war are quite orthodox.152 Russell, then,
was quite willing to fight the good fight with his pen. The History of Western
Philosophy can be read in this light. It contains a critique of Hegel and anti-
canon thought as hostile as that in Poppers Open Society and its Enemies
(though less intense). Indeed, Russell explicitly equated the argument of
his History and the more openly polemical treatment of the anti-canon pro-
vided by Popper. In Philosophy and Politics (1950), Russell makes refer-
ence to Poppers critique of Hegel and Plato, and references The Open
Society. In the same footnote he comments [t]he same thesis is maintained
in my History of Western Philosophy i.e. the thesis on the totalitarian nature

of Plato and Hegels thought.153 This offers new light on Russells History
as a text with a clear political purpose, akin to that of Poppers. Popper
described the attack on totalitarian thought made in his Open Society and
The Poverty of Historicism as his war work154; his contribution to the battle
against fascism. It seems possible, and indeed potentially fruitful, to read
Russells approach to the anti-canon in the History in the same light.
However, while the analysts clearly did subscribe to the notion that World
War II was a battle of ideas, it would be wrong to approach their writings on
the anti-canon with the view that the analysts are waging an intellectual war.
Rather, for the analysts, this was a war of ideas that had already been won.
The vast majority of the material on the anti-canon comes after 1945. Russells
pre-1945 work is, to this extent, exceptional. Despite Ryles comment in 1947
to the effect that liberalism remains in danger from Hegelian thought, there
is no sense that this is a genuine fear among the analysts. There were no dra-
matic moves from Ryle consistent with a belief in imminent danger from con-
tinental philosophy. Neither did Berlin, despite arguing that philosophers
can disarm dangerous foreign thought, make any wider comments on this.
His 1950 lectures on Freedom and Its Betrayal delivered on the Third Pro-
gramme clearly did have a political purpose consistent with the view of World
War II as a war of ideas. But if this was a serious fear, one would expect a bar-
rage of anti-Hegelian material from the analysts. What we see is a trickle.
This is not all hands to the pumps, this is mopping up. The military war
was over, there was a certain amount of re-education to be done, and Hares
lecture tours of Germany are consistent with this, as is Berlins pointing out
the origins of Europes woes in Freedom and Its Betrayal. Hegel was being
eradicated from Germany by the occupying British forces;155 and he had
been intellectually refuted long years ago by Russell and Moore. 1945 rep-
resented the point of victory for the analysts, both politically and philo-
sophically. The post-war approach of the analysts was consistent with
cementing this victory, not with fighting the war.
Conclusion
I would like to make four points by way of conclusion to this chapter.
Culture, politics and philosophy fuse

What we have seen in this chapter is an active process of forgetting and
exclusion, directed specifically at the idealists, but also against continental
philosophy more widely. This process was tightly bound up with the
analysts cultural-political assumptions. At one, basic, level, this is apparent
from the fact that the texts in which the analysts seek to exclude the ideal-
ists are very often the same texts as those which characterize them as inva-
sive and aggressive. Indeed, the characterization of the idealists and foreign
and militaristic is itself a part of the process of exclusion. The cultural
attitudes and claims are a part of this philosophical project.
As we have seen, the history of analytic philosophy was written by the
analysts so as to draw sharp lines between British philosophy and foreign,
particularly German, philosophy lines which were rather sharper in the
analysts account than they were in reality. This is part of their characteriza-
tion of the divide between philosophical schools as a divide between nations.
Continuous with this, their mode of interaction is conceived of as one
school invading the sovereign national territory of the other. Moreover, the
analysts narrative of the decline of idealism mapped neatly onto the two
world wars perpetrated by its nation-of-origin Germany. As well as empha-
sizing the nationalist prism through which the analysts saw philosophy in
this period, this evidence also links the analysts writing of the history of
strictly philosophical matters, to their attitudes about the political culpa-
bility of post-Kantian thought for Nazism canvassed in the last chapter.
Hegelian thought is an aggressive, invasive, philosophy, on a par with its
political disciples, the Nazis. The end of this philosophy comes, as we have
seen, with the defeat of Hitler. It is significant in this respect that analysts
who did not explicitly link Hegelianism to Nazism, like Mary and Geoffrey
Warnock, participated in history writing that is underpinned by an assump-
tion that Hegelian philosophy is aggressive.156
We have also seen the idea of World War II as a war of ideas between
philosophical schools, as well as between armies. Such an image brings
together the notion of national traditions in philosophy, with the particular
forms of government: idealist vs empiricist, tyranny vs democracy, Germany
vs Britain. We will see more evidence for this pattern of thought among the
analysts as we go. What we should note here, however, is that this suggests
that on the analysts understanding there is no cordon sanitaire between
strictly philosophical ideas and cultural-political ones. The identification
between epistemology, nation and politics shatters this barrier.
Again, as in the last chapter, there are some rather ironic Hegelian echoes
in this analytic history writing. Their confidence in the idea of the nation as
the repository of a philosophy, which we seem to find in their view of
their own heritage, and of German thought, is one that fits far better into a
Hegelian worldview, which allows the state to have a uniting spirit, than it
does into empiricism, which would not concede anything so metaphysical,

as Re has noted:
The Oxford philosophers confidence in the category of British Empiri-

cism is surprising in many ways. As a theoretical proposal the very idea of
philosophical national character is, one might have thought, compro-
mised by dubious presuppositions of a metaphysical, idealist and
Hegelian kind.157
For Re, the construction of a philosophical national character appears to

have assumptions taken from the very philosophy that the analysts claimed
to have purged.
History writing as a political project

What the foregoing considerations suggest is that for the analysts the act of
writing history was political, both in the broad sense of being informed by
a wider public political climate which concerned itself with wars, ideolo-
gies and so on and in the narrow sense of seeking to establish hegemony
within their chosen academic discipline. I want to briefly discuss this latter
respect in which the analysts histories are political, in order to point to the
significance of the fact that these appear to be histories of progress, both in
philosophy and morality, and to further note that such an historical picture
looks itself to contain assumptions of a fundamentally Hegelian kind.
As we saw in the first half of this chapter, the writing of history allowed
the analysts to cement their position within academic philosophy in Britain.
By finding allies in the history of philosophy by publishing, as Ayer did,
selected texts from their empirical ancestors, the analysts could portray the
history of British philosophy as a path culminating in themselves.158 It is
significant in this respect that the terminal chapter in Russells 800-page
History of Western Philosophy is also the culmination of the book, describing,
as it does, the discovery of a philosophical method that could finally and
reliably provide philosophical knowledge:
I have no doubt that, in so far as philosophical knowledge is possible, it is

by such methods that it must be sought; I have also no doubt that, by
these methods, many ancient problems are completely soluble.159
Starting from the ancients, Russells text marches towards the present,
handing out gongs and wooden spoons as it goes, culminating in the very
last of its 31 chapters with Russell himself and his modern analytic empiri-
cism.160 Dudley Knowles has written that Hegels prescription for the
history of philosophy was that it should be an attempt to show how and
when the truth dawned, and, along the way criticizing a multitude of false
and one sided views.161 This could be the methodological prospectus for
Russells History of Western Philosophy.
This Hegelian-tinged view of the historical process, as a progress towards
the present, is a feature of the analysts history writing. Further, by reading
past philosophers as proto-analytic philosophers as, for example, Ayer
sought to do in Language Truth and Logic, the historical nature of philoso-
phy itself can be reconstructed so as to demonstrate that, far from being
historically unusual, analytic philosophy was the perennial form of philoso-
phy when it was undertaken properly. The analysts could therefore claim both
that they had performed a philosophical revolution and that this revolution
was one which finally revealed the true nature of philosophy for all to see
a claim that bears more than a passing resemblance to Hegels famous dic-
tum: the rational is actual, the actual is rational.
In these analytic histories this was a progress not only in philosophical
method, but also in virtue. In a very significant assessment of G. J. Warnocks
English Philosophy since 1900, B. A. O. Williams (not to be confused with
Bernard Williams) writes as follows:
[i]t has the basic straightforwardness of a moral tale. At the start we are
presented with a macabre picture of British Idealism, intellectually
corrupt, fraudulent, staggering to its end in delusions of grandeur.
Coming from foreign places, its rule was never more than the tyranny of
occupation; and the rise of the hero, Moore, to drive it out is an affirma-
tion not only of the light against the dark but of the native against the
exotic. In the ensuing struggles, Moore had his allies, not always reliable:
Russell, brave but unsteady; Positivism, secretly in love with the metaphys-
ical enemy. The epic of Wittgenstein is also told, not without a slight sense
of strain at having to take so extravagant a theory so seriously. With Ryle,
victorious peace is almost achieved and the story ends with Common
Sense again on the throne and the citizens of Oxford, calm but not idle,
earning the unambitious rewards for honest toil.162
Here Williams conveys with tremendous power and insight that moral arc of
Warnocks text. Here we see the march of progress and reason through the
history of philosophy, culminating in the glorious present of post-war
Oxford, the travails over, the end of history finally reached. The idealists,
foreign and fraudulent (a claim to which we will return), were driven out by
Moore and his allies. This was a methodological and a moral victory, as well
as a victory of the native over the foreign. This unity of the movement of his-
tory with moral development, the passage from worse to better, is yet another
aspect of the analysts history writing that has strong Hegelian echoes.
History writing and institutional control

It is worth making explicit, though it is not a terribly profound point, that
the institutional moves against the anti-canon not teaching their texts,
avoiding dialogue, etc. that we canvassed at the top of this chapter can
also be read as part of the analytic construction of history. The institutional
moves helped to bring the historical claims the analysts made about the
marginality of the idealists closer to reality. As such, their history writing was
at least in part a blueprint or manifesto for British philosophy, rather than
simply providing an account of past philosophical events. Idealist philoso-
phy and philosophers were marginalized both institutionally and histori-
cally. They were ignored in the present, and efforts were made to ensure
they would be forgotten in the future.
Peter Strawson commented that the heat has often gone out of a revolu-
tionary movement when it begins to write its own history.163 This might
indeed explain the cluster of histories written by the Oxford analysts in the
second half of the 1950s and into the 1960s. The golden age of ordinary
language philosophy was, by 1955, a decade old, within five years it would
be over, on most accounts. The writing of history was, for the analysts, what
it is for many movements, intellectual and otherwise, which have taken a
degree of institutional control. It was an exercise in cementing that control,
in providing textbooks for the spreading of its gospel, and authorized
accounts of how the previous governors were superseded. The process took
on a more important purpose and a more openly polemical form because
of the perceived seriousness of the matter in hand. The generation imme-
diately preceding the analysts, and much of the preceding century, was
dominated by the strange, the exotic and the politically dangerous. A his-
tory purged of these philosophical and political sinners was itself an exer-
cise in the restoration of virtue. There was clearly, then, a strong ideological
dimension to the historical narrative the analysts offered to the world in the
1950s and 1960s. As Tom Rockmore has put it:
[A]ll history, including the history of philosophy, is written by the victors.

English language analytic philosophy was the clear victor in the battle
against British Idealism.164
This is important; when history books record the collapse of British

idealism it is often overlooked that this was the result, in part, of an active
campaign against idealist philosophy on the part of the analysts, on various
fronts, the institutional, the historical, the philosophical. It is an indication
of the measure of the victory of the analysts that Rockmore goes on to
characterize the twenty-first-century view of British idealism in the follow-
ing terms:
British Idealism . . . now appears like a mere foreign body in the midst of
the great British philosophical tradition to which it never really belonged,
and upon which it thrust itself.165
The analysts historical and institutional attack on idealism was largely

successful. Rockmore captures many of the significant dimensions of
the analysts view, the foreignness of its origins, its imposition on British
philosophy. That Rockmore argues this characterization of the history of
idealism was still current in 2005 is a testament to the power and domi-
nance of this partial and ideological analytic history of British philosophy.
The analytic history in context

Finally in this chapter I want to briefly place the attitudes weve canvassed
on the part of the analysts into their historical context. The analysts found
themselves writing about the history of philosophy in the aftermath of the
most bloody half-century in European history. Their desire to separate
themselves intellectually from the disaster zone of mainland Europe is
neither surprising nor outrageous. As Stefan Collini has pointed out, the
drawing of hard lines between continent and island was a common
desire after World War II. He quotes David Ogg writing in 1947: [t]hat
the Channel divides us from a different mentality is an assertion which
would find greater credence now than it would have done ten years ago.166
This view itself could not be described as baseless. Even those European
countries which had not directly given birth to fascist governments had
suffered occupation and half a decade or more of propaganda and indoc-
trination. The British may, quite understandably, have asked themselves
two questions: to what extent does Europes succumbing to Nazism reveal
something about the European character? and to what extent has the
European character been (further) corrupted by occupation? These doubts
are summed up by Brian Appleyard:
[t]he idea of the foreign presented them all with a complex problem.
Six years of war, during most of which the continent had been enemy
territory, had strengthened the sense of isolation from Europe.167
Continental Europe represented a complex web of conceptual problems,

good Germans, bad Germans, French resistors, French collaborators, those
who did nothing, those who did too much. A similar series of problems
would have presented in detaching the intellectually pure from the
intellectually corrupt particularly difficult for the analysts who clearly felt
that so much of continental philosophy would require forensic screening
for traces of fascism. The desire to simply keep all that moral, intellectual
and ideological mess firmly at arms length was a perfectly natural one, espe-
cially, if one has a native tradition to fall back on which, as we have seen, the
analysts believed that they had.
However, the war itself did no more than enhance an already existing
series of tendencies. The important assumptions underpinning the ana-
lysts desire for intellectual self-sufficiency were in place long before the
outbreak of World War II. The return to Hume, with its attendant assump-
tions about the paucity of post-Kantian thought was well under way in the
1930s. The political critique of German philosophy was, as we saw, very
clearly a feature of Russells work in the 1930s and, further back, of the
debates surrounding World War I. The Second World War simply added
further momentum to pre-existing assumptions.
Chapter 3
Philosophical Method: Virtue vs Vice
Locke was the spokesman of Common Sense. Almost without thinking I retorted
impatiently, I think Locke invented Common Sense. To which Russell rejoined,
By God, Ryle, I believe you are right. No one ever had Common Sense before
John Locke and no-one but Englishmen have ever had it since. 1
(Gilbert Ryle in conversation with Bertrand Russell 1965)
I shall suggest that philosophy, if it is bad philosophy, may be dangerous, and

therefore deserves that degree of negative respect which we accord to lightning and
tigers.2
We saw in the last chapter how the analysts used history to distance
themselves from the continental tradition, and to characterize the latter as
a foreign and invasive. These moves already suggest one of the principal
contentions of this chapter, namely that for the analytic philosophers, the
identification and condemnation of an anti-canon of continental philo-
sophers served a definitional purpose. It gave them a shadow against
which they could define themselves as the light. This idea about the
analysts process of identity formation is not a new one. In English Philoso-
phy in the Fifties Jonathan Re writes:
[n]evertheless, the concept of British Empiricism was called on to do a

task which was of considerable importance to the Oxford philosophers.
In enabled them to define themselves in contrast with a hated rival, which
came to be known, in the course of the decade, by the title of continental
philosophy. Continental philosophy, to the Oxfordians, was the epitome
of the intellectual habits that their revolution was meant to eradicate:
excessive, interest in the history of philosophy, failure to respect the gap
between philosophy and science, and above all a self-indulgent use of
language. The continentals, it was insinuated, followed fashions, not
Philosophical Method: Virtue vs Vice 89
arguments, and if literary intellectuals were attracted to them, this was

only because of their skin-deep sex appeal.3
In this characterization of the way in which the Oxford analysts defined

themselves against the continentals, Re touches on the second significant
strand of this chapter. Res account of the analysts contrast between them-
selves and the continentals blends the philosophical and the more broadly
cultural the continentals were too interested in the history of philosophy,
which arguably is a strictly philosophical problem, but they were also
self-indulgent and fashion-conscious, which appear to be rather broader
cultural objections. This chapter seeks to take this insight further, and dem-
onstrate the interdependence of the analysts philosophical and cultural
dislike of the continentals, and the inter-relation of the philosophical and
cultural components in the identity positions constructed by the analysts.
One significant part of this wider cultural construction of identity is the
link drawn by the analytic philosophers between politically suspect philoso-
phy and philosophically suspect philosophy. For the analysts, the anti-canon
are not simply philosophers whose ideas have issued in bad political out-
comes, they are bad philosophers whose ideas have issued in bad political
outcomes. There is a constant, though not often explicit, invitation to draw
the conceptual link and believe the anti-canons political ideas to be evil
because they were such poor philosophers. The dangers, however, are also
personal anti-canon philosophy involves a seduction by, often violent,
emotional forces. Russell, as was his way, encapsulates these fears in the
quotation that heads this chapter: philosophy, if it is bad philosophy, may
be dangerous.
This chapter is divided into three sections. Section One looks at meta-
physics and its relationship with character in the writing of the analysts. The
contrast is drawn between the metaphysical anti-canon and the anti-
metaphysical analysts, and between the weak characters of the anti-canon,
which lead them into metaphysical speculation, and the strong characters
of the analysts, which allow them to escape it. Section Two focuses on two
related aspects of the analytic critique of anti-canon methodology its
irrationality, and its irrationalism. Here the character and motives of the
continentals are again under scrutiny, as the analysts ask whether their phil-
osophical incompetence is innocent or sinister and identify the motives
lurking behind the continentals indulgence in bad arguments and obscu-
rity of prose. In this section we also note the great wealth of imagery
deployed by the analysts linking continental philosophy with the irrational,
before looking at the way in which these ideas fold neatly into accusations
of political vice specifically, the recurrence of the accusations of Nazism

against the continentals. Section Three returns to the nationalist dimen-
sions of this process of identity formation reflecting on a connection
which will have been clear throughout between canon/anti-canon and
British/foreign.
Metaphysics
It is, perhaps, the most familiar accusation against continental philosophers

that they believe in something called metaphysics, while analytic philoso-
phers do not. Such a claim was common among the analysts of this period.
In 1958, G. J. Warnock described idealist philosophy as highly and ambi-
tiously metaphysical.4 In 1946, Russell uses metaphysics as one of the charac-
teristics with which to distinguish the British from the continental school of
philosophy;5 indeed, Tom Rockmore has argued that the only unchanging
element of Russells condemnation of Hegel was that Hegel is a metaphysi-
cian.6 Stuart Hampshire argued that the empiricist and formal logical streams
of analytic philosophy were bound together in being equally designed to
exclude metaphysical speculation and metaphysical interpretations.7
Other analysts were keen to trace the anti-metaphysical credentials of
their philosophical ancestors. Russell claimed that the great British empiri-
cist Locke is, as a rule contemptuous of metaphysics . . .8 while Hume in
whom the new philosophy comes to completion rejected metaphysics
entirely . . . This view persisted in the empirical school.9 Mary Warnock
went further, seeking to give the impression (in a direct parallel to the
claims made about the extermination of idealism) that metaphysics had
been alien to this country since the turn of the twentieth century. In 1960,
she wrote: [a]fter the publication of Principia Ethica, the climate, in
England, was on the whole unfavourable to metaphysical speculation.10
She gave Moore, the author of the Principia, credit for this change of
climate. Metaphysics was eradicated, she suggested, not due to the argu-
ment of the Principia, but the method of its approach. She reiterates a
variation on this claim a hundred pages later: [s]ince 1900, both here and
in the United States, metaphysics has been virtually dead.11
A. J. Ayer sought to make a similar claim, emphasizing that while the
British Hegelians undertook metaphysics, this was highly unusual in Britain:
British Hegelians . . . committed themselves to metaphysics in a way

that the British philosophers have fought shy of, both before and since.
That the present century has seen a return to the older and sounder
empiricist tradition, and its development in more rigorous form, is very

largely due to the work of Bertrand Russell . . . 12
Here we have our first concrete indication of the lines the analytic philo-
sophers sought to draw. Already in this quotation we have the alliance made
between continental Hegelian philosophy and metaphysics; and between
Britain, empiricism, soundness and rigour.
Ayer is perhaps the most famous of the British anti-metaphysicians.
His Demonstration of the Impossibility of Metaphysics (1934) was an
application of Viennese logical positivism, and attempted to do exactly
what its title suggests, dismiss the possibility of all metaphysical specula-
tion.13 Logical positivism, as introduced to Britain by Ayer in the 1930s, is an
important moment in the critique of continental philosophy: it provided
the British analysts with a powerful, destructive, polemical tool. While the
Vienna circle were clearly not directly a part of the British analytic philo-
sophical scene, they were, and were recognized to be, disciples of Bertrand
Russell and Ludwig Wittgenstein. H. Stuart Hughes has described the
Vienna circle as Russells most coherent band of disciples.14 Not only were
the Vienna circle empiricists manqu, they shared the British analysts
intense hostility to the German philosophical tradition. Herbert Feigl, a
member of the circle, made this very clear:
[r]enewed emphasis [on philosophy as the handmaiden of science] was

urgently needed, especially in the German countries that had not yet
recovered from the intellectual debaucheries of the post-Kantian roman-
tic metaphysicians . . . [it was] a reaction against the high-flown preten-
tious verbiage of metaphysical speculation.15
The mission of Vienna circle the destruction of the post-Kantian tradi-

tion in German thought was the same as that of the analysts. The philo-
sophical structures in Wittgensteins Tractatus Logico Philosophicus gave them
the tools they needed to sweep into limbo . . . all metaphysical philosophy
in the Hegelian tradition.16 And indeed this was precisely the effect that
Ayer believed that his Language, Truth and Logic achieved: [i]ts main effect,
especially in England, has been to curb any indulgence in speculative meta-
physics.17 The Vienna circle, then, were seen, certainly by Ayer and Russell,
as allies of the British empiricists.
There is any number of works on analytic philosophy summarizing the
philosophical grounds on which logical positivism attacks metaphysics
and I will not add to them here.18 But the potential of Language Truth
and Logic to damage the anti-canon, through its attack on the supposed
metaphysical roots of anti-canon philosophy, can partly account for its

initial popularity among the analysts in Britain. It furthered an anti-
metaphysical project that Russell had been pursuing for a decade and
that Ryle had joined with his Systematically Misleading Expressions.19
Isaiah Berlin, a close friend of Ayer, took a shine to logical positivism
and, writing for The Criterion in 1937, made clear that: he particularly
approved of its attack on what he called the vaporous clouds of nonsense
in German philosophy,20 even more directly: [i]t got rid of a lot of clouds
of Hegelianism which were no good . . .21 The target, then, was clear for the
analysts to see.
Significantly, although logical positivism rapidly lost support among
philosophers (Berlin, for example, saw it as leading to a cul-de-sac22), its
anti-metaphysical aspect influenced the post-war linguistic analysts. R. M.
Hare indicated in 1960 that, although logical positivism was not slavishly
adhered to, nevertheless it formed the thinking of post-war Oxford in
important respects:
[t]he Vienna Circle made certain, apparently very damaging, criticisms

of the kind of philosophy that was current in their day. In Oxford, and in
England generally, we have taken those criticisms seriously and have,
indeed, produced a whole new way of doing philosophy in the course of
finding answers to them.23
While much has been made of the differences between logical positivism
and the post-war Oxford linguistic analysts, in this case they were at one, as
Re has pointed out. Like the Logical Positivists, the Oxford philosophers
were united by a conviction that traditional metaphysics was thoroughly
misconceived.24 All major stripes of analytic opinion Ayer, Russell, the
Oxford philosophers were signed up to the anti-metaphysical temperance
movement. Among the names we have not yet mentioned, this included
J. L. Austin,25 and Peter Strawson.26 In his last philosophical essay, Berlin
claimed: I have never believed in any metaphysical truths.27
Towards the end of the 1950s, metaphysics, in a particularly circumscribed
form, made a comeback among the analysts. Strawsons Individuals: An Essay
in Descriptive Metaphysics (1959) and Hampshires Thought and Action (1959),
together with a revisionary symposium on the subject, later published as a
book,28 all demonstrated this loosening up of approach. However, even dur-
ing this period, it was emphasized that the return of metaphysics was clearly
not a return to the meaningless and dangerous German thought of the
past. Hare conveyed this attitude, insisting that Oxfordians do after all
accept metaphysics, [w]e insist only on distinguishing between serious

metaphysical inquiry and verbiage disguised as such.29 He elaborated
further on this, along lines that will by now be familiar:
we have seen what monstrous philosophical edifices have been created

by slipping, surreptitiously, from the ordinary uses of words to extraordi-
nary uses which are never explained . . . nothing pleases us so much as to
sit back and have a German metaphysician explain to us, if he can, how
he is going to get his metaphysical system started. And as he is usually
unable to do this, the discussion never gets on to what he thinks of as the
meat of the theory.30
So, even with the tentative return to metaphysics in 1960, it is explicit that
this is not a return to German metaphysics, to monstrous philosophy
whatever vices may be implied in that term.
In contrast to the continental philosophers fondness for the outmoded
and failed techniques of metaphysics, the analysts asserted their own
post-metaphysical mode of philosophy. A significant moment in the
furthering of this new methodology came with the founding of journal
Analysis in 1933, with A. Duncan Jones as editor, assisted by L. S. Stebbing,
C. A. Mace and Ryle. It was the vehicle for the new kind of philosophy,
taking Wittgensteins Tractatus Logico Philosophicus as its handbook. The aim
was to produce short arguments on closely defined questions, [i]nstead of
long, very general and abstract metaphysical speculations about possible
facts or about the world as a whole.31 As the eminent historian of analytic
philosophy, John Passmore, makes clear, such an approach was in part a
response to Russells call for piecemeal investigations.32 The scope of
philosophy then was to be narrowed and focused on small specific, solvable
problems. It was, as the quotations indicate, explicitly anti-metaphysical in
form. This setting up of analysis in direct opposition to the idea of philoso-
phy as metaphysics is explained by Passmore:
[o]nce we reject philosophys claim to be a purveyor of metaphysical

truths, we see, Ayer argues, that its real function is analysis the function
that Locke, Berkeley, Hume and Russell had principally exercised.33
Russell elaborates on this contrast between the scope of metaphysical and

analytic philosophy in his History of Western Philosophy. Modern analysis aims
to combine empiricism with an interest in the deductive parts of human
knowledge. The aims of this school are less spectacular than those of most
philosophers in the past, but some of its achievements are as solid as those
of the men of science.34
What we see here is a clear contrast emerging between the analysts,
with their small scale, unspectacular but methodologically sound philo-
sophical investigations, and the metaphysicians and we have seen German
philosophers and their followers picked out here who are engaging in an
illegitimate philosophical activity.
Metaphysics and character

This contrast between the metaphysical and non-metaphysical philosopher
was not, however, a simply philosophical one. Subscription to metaphysics
was a symptom of a far more worrying malady: it revealed a fundamental
weakness in the character of the philosopher, a weakness which had poten-
tially very serious philosophical implications. The analysts took the conti-
nental philosophers continued subscription to metaphysics as a sign of
various concealed vices: weak character; philosophical incompetence; and
a desire to use the obscurity of metaphysics to deceive the unwary. Of these,
we will deal with the first here, and return to the other two in the second
section of this chapter.
Some of the analysts, notably Russell and Berlin, drew a link between
subscription to metaphysics and emotional need. They argued that the con-
tinental tradition represented a revolt against reason. This took the form
of various claims; the one we will focus on here is the claim that anti-canon
thinkers turned against reason because it could not provide consolation for
the miseries of life. We will see that, for the analysts, subscription to meta-
physics was a measure of the weakness of ones character. Those who could
not face the world as it is turned to metaphysics for quasi-religious consola-
tion inevitably derogating from any commitment to truth in so doing.
Those, like the analysts, with stronger stomachs, had no need for such tran-
scendental consolation.
Russell traced the origins of the revolt against reason back to Kant
and Rousseau. Neither was able to cope with the implications of Humes
philosophy.35 Rousseaus response was straightforwardly to deny the power
of reason to solve mankinds problems and to embrace the emotions as a
truer guide to life.36 Kant, highly influenced by Rousseau, was unable to
reconcile himself to Hume, nor was he prepared to give up reason. He
sought another way to safeguard the existence of a moral law, which he felt
Hume had undermined. This caused Kant to invent a distinction between
pure and practical reason to safeguard ethics.37 This, according to Russell,
was a distinction between that which could be proved (pure reason) and
what was necessary for virtue (practical reason). This was not a move for
which Russell had any sympathy: [i]t is of course obvious that pure reason
is simply reason, while practical reason was prejudice.38
On Russells analysis, Kant had instituted covertly what Rousseau had
explicitly: the elevation his own desires, emotions and prejudices to the
level of absolutes. The outcome is sweeping: as a result of his [Kants]
teaching . . . German philosophy became anti-rational.39 This reintroduc-
tion of an authority beyond reason is, for Russell, the moment that the
modern revolt against reason begins. It was this revolt that issued directly in
the epistemological subjectivism the belief one can remake the world
according to ones desires and which we saw both Russell and Berlin
condemning in Chapter 1 as leading to fascism.
So, as Russell tells the story, in the face of Humes conclusions Kant and,
following him, other continental philosophers abandoned reason and set a
new standard of philosophical veracity, compliance with their own desires.
[Kants] fundamental desires were two: he wanted to be sure of an invari-

able routine and he wanted to believe the moral maxims that he had
learned in infancy.40
Kants goal was not truth, but the comfort of a solution to his problem.41
Meanwhile, Hegel, like many philosophers, was constitutionally timid and
dislike[d] the unexpected so he invented a theory to make the future
calculable and predictable, a philosophy which: satisfied the instincts of
philosophers more fully than any of its predecessors.42 Russell compares
the consolation offered by Hegelian philosophy to that offered by religion:
[e]motionally, belief in the Hegelian dialectic . . . is analogous to the
Christian belief in the Second Coming. 43
Of course, a philosophy based on desire is likely not to tell the truth
about the world, but to create ideas which satisfy the desires of the theorist
and his audience. Russell makes this clear in a comment on Rousseau:
there is no reason whatever to believe that such beliefs [those based on

the emotions of the heart] will be true . . . However ardently I, or all
mankind, may desire something, however necessary it may be to human
happiness, that is no ground for supposing this something to exist.44
Therefore, in following your desires into creating theory, you necessarily

run a high risk of error. There is a strong implication here that Rousseau,
Kant and Hegel are simply too weak to stare the world in the face and see it
as it is.
This appears to be a diagnosis Russell uncovers the unconscious motives
of the philosophers he examines and criticizes them on this basis. In all
cases these are motives that result in aggressive totalitarian theories and in
Nazi political doctrines in particular. He takes this diagnosis a stage further
with a group he dubs the power philosophers, arguing that philosophers
turn to philosophies of power for deep, pathological reasons. Fichte had a
desperate desire to feel superior to Napoleon; both Nietzsche and Carlyle
had infirmities for which they sought compensation in the world of
imagination.45 Elsewhere Russell goes further in the case of Nietzsche
claiming that his entire critique of value is based on almost universal hatred
and fear.46 Meanwhile, the Nazi veneration of power has its immediate
source in the humiliation at Versailles and a desire to restore Germanys
battered ego.47 It is not strictly part of our discussion, here, but the reader
might like to note that the diagnoses of the Nazi power-worship and the
anti-canon power worship of Nietzsche, Fichte and Carlyle take place on
the same page of the same essay. The critiques of Nazism and continental
philosophers are entirely bound together in this text. Bad philosophy
appears inextricably linked to the flawed humans who wrote it and the
megalomaniac tyrants who inherited it.
To return to the question of metaphysics and character, what Russell
does with these diagnoses is to establish a link between metaphysics and
temperament; one engages in metaphysical speculation because one
cannot cope with the world as it is. Thus an absence of metaphysical ambi-
tion marks one out as a strong character. While the continental philoso-
phers were found to fail this test, Russell argued that in acknowledging the
impossibility of metaphysics, analytic philosophers have resisted the lure of
philosophy as fabrication:
[a]ll this is rejected by the philosophers who take analysis to be the main
business of philosophy. They confess frankly that the human intellect is
unable to find conclusive answers to many questions of profound impor-
tance to mankind, but they refuse to believe there is some higher way of
knowing, by which we discover truths hidden from science and the
intellect.48
The analysts frankness in the face of these unanswered questions pro-

vides a stark contrast with the characterization of the needy continentals.
This relationship between character and metaphysics is marked in Russells
texts. The great empiricist Locke is, as a rule contemptuous of metaphysics
. . . He allows the validity of metaphysical arguments for the existence of

God, but he does not dwell on them, and seems somewhat uncomfortable
about them . . . 49 Locke, then, unlike Kant or Hegel, does not rush to a
metaphysical analgesic to soothe his world-pains. He allows others to do so,
but with a mixture of contempt and discomfort. Hume meanwhile, as we
have already seen rejected metaphysics entirely.50
Warnock brings this implicit strain in analytic thought to the surface.
Although like or dislike of metaphysics ought to be an intellectual question,
he says, it is in fact very largely a matter of temperament.51 He doesnt anal-
yse this claim at all, but it fits exactly with the pattern of argument we have
seen above, and it also fits the characterization of Moore in his book pub-
lished in the following year. In English Philosophy Since 1900 (1958), Moore is
portrayed as the embodiment of the British analytic virtues. His approach
was simple, direct, concrete52 and unlike the metaphysicians, was con-
tent with the world as he found it: [h]e was neither discontented with nor
puzzled by the ordinary beliefs of plain men and plain scientists.53
Here the down to earth nature of British analytic philosophy is empha-
sized; common sense views were to Moore perfectly unsurprising, undis-
tressing, and quite certainly true.54 Unlike the distressed continental, he
was at home in the world. This view of Moore as a calm, simple, almost holy
figure is one found in many analytic texts, though seldom with the devotion
which Warnock displays in English Philosophy since 1900. In a review of Russell
and Moore: the analytic heritage (1974), Ernest Gellner accuses Ayer of falling
into the same pattern, and in so doing gives us a more generalized account
of what he calls the authorized image of Moore:
[Ayer] on the whole accepts the authorized and self-propagated image of

Moore as a spirit so pure, unpretentious and straightforward that he
would not allow himself to be bamboozled, as others were, by philosophi-
cal departures from common sense the child who bravely cried that the
emperor was naked.55
This straightforwardness and purity is seen by some analysts as significant to

the history of philosophy, Warnock claims, that in order to understand the
decline of idealism one must understand the character of Moore.56 It was
the strength and clarity of Moores character that enabled him to resist ide-
alism.57 Warnock sums this up:
[w]e have taken note already of the very powerful impact of his good
sense, simplicity, directness, and argumentative rigour upon the china-
shop of Idealism . . . 58
Confronted with the unpretentious down-to-earth reasonableness of

Moore, the idealist philosophy, based, as we have seen, on unsubstantial
metaphysical foundations, crumbled. It was powerless in the face of
a philosopher who did not need the kind of metaphysical consolation that
the idealists were peddling. When Warnock comments: [t]hough he did
not deny the legitimacy of metaphysical ambitions, he was himself entirely
without them . . . this is not simply a claim about philosophical position, it
is a claim about morality and character.59
Warnock turns susceptibility or otherwise to metaphysics into a criterion
for philosophical excellence (automatically ensuring that the idealists are
bottom of the pile). Russell is acknowledged to have a metaphysical philos-
ophy, but he is rescued from equation with the idealists partly because of
the detail of his system, partly because, unlike McTaggart or Bradley, he is
not seeking to use it as a vehicle for consolation.60 Moores lack of meta-
physical ambition made him, for Warnock, far more extraordinary a figure
than Russell61 because Russell was in a sense playing the same game as
Bradley.62 The positivists too were less extraordinary than Moore. For in
fact they had, surely, their own metaphysical beliefs.63
Warnock was not alone in explicitly making metaphysical needs, or the
lack thereof, an important measure of philosophical excellence. In 1958,
Berlin wrote in his hugely influential Two Concepts of Liberty that to
desire definite answers is perhaps a deep and incurable metaphysical need;
but to allow it to determine ones practice is a symptom of an equally deep
and more dangerous moral and political immaturity.64 This attitude throws
some light back on our treatment of the British philosophers objections to
metaphysics. To be seen to be indulging in metaphysics was to betray a need
for the world to be other than it was, a need characteristic of the idealists,
and one disavowed by the analysts. Such a need, as Berlin comments, if it
infects ones practice, is a sign of ones immaturity. Worse, it will distract
one from the pursuit of truth, and thus destroy ones professional compe-
tence. No wonder Berlin himself was moved to make the extreme claim that
I have never believed in any metaphysical truths.65 In other circumstances
this may seem a bizarre, even ridiculous claim. Brought up in a religious
family, it seems highly implausible that Berlin never once, even as a child,
allowed himself to entertain the possibility of a belief in God which of
course is a paradigmatic metaphysical belief. In the light of the purported
relationship between metaphysics and character, we can now see why Berlin
was moved to take so extreme a line not to do so would be admitting
to a character flaw, a need that cannot be answered by appeal to science or
common sense, and therefore a tendency to dangerous mysticism.
Here, the underlying desires of the philosopher are in fact more of

concern than the practice of metaphysics itself. Metaphysics is simply the
manifestation of a troubled, possibly juvenile, character. The principal
worry is that metaphysics allows those who cannot face the world as it is to
fabricate a more attractive, but ultimately false, picture. As such, metaphys-
ics allows the philosopher to derogate from his primary commitment to
truth. However, for the analysts, the philosophy here is not primary; it is the
character of philosophers that is more important. If there is contentment in
the heart of the philosopher then there will be no need for a metaphysical
falsification of reality (and it is perhaps for this reason that the analysts
readmit a circumscribed descriptive metaphysics at the end of the 1950s).
Character
The practice of metaphysical philosophy, then, appears to be, in part,
comprehensible as a fear of the world as it is, and therefore of a weak char-
acter. It seems that, for the analysts, to be a good philosopher you have to
be more broadly a good person. There is some evidence that the character
of the philosopher was potentially more significant for the quality of his
philosophy than his entertaining of any particular philosophical outlook.
Consider the following description of Locke, Berkeley and Hume:
In their temper of mind they were socially minded citizens, by no means

self-assertive, not unduly anxious for power, and in favour of a tolerant
world where, within the limits of the criminal law, every man was free
to do as he pleased. They were good natured men of the world, urbane
and kindly . . . 66
There are two things worthy of note here; first the contrast in the assess-
ment of the character of these three philosophers, compared to the char-
acterization that weve seen in this chapter of the characters of the
anti-canon (and there is, I fear, worse to come on this front). But secondly
and equally significant, Russell goes on to point out that their philosophies
led to subjectivism in the theory of knowledge a dangerous doctrine,
which we have already seen Russell link to fascism. We have also seen him
accuse Kant of being responsible for the doctrine. The apparent differ-
ence between Kants inauguration of anti-rationalism in philosophy and
Locke, Berkeley and Humes failure to do so is that they had no need for it
because they were happy and content in the world. The same philosophical
possibilities were open to the three British empiricists as were open to
Kant. The fundamental difference between them, for Russell, appears to

be one of character. Kant saw the abyss and jumped in the empiricists
continued to picnic on the grassy cliffs.
We can read a similar vindication of the analytic temperament in the face
of philosophical problems in a comment from Ryle on Humes relationship
with the Europeans:
the voice itself displeases Continental ears. It is too irreverent for some;
and its irreverence is too cheerful for others. It conveys no tidings of
hope, but also no tidings of despair. But through the youthful accents of
the good-humoured iconoclast there rings another accent which jars
equally with those who severely disapprove and on those who severely
approve of irreverence. This is the accent of the thinker to whom even
beliefs or unbeliefs are less important and less interesting than cogency
and trenchancy of argument.67
Hume had the strength of character to look clearly at the world with
neither hope nor despair. In his good-humoured iconoclasm, he was not
perturbed by the results, simply interested in their cogency, and therefore,
of course, veracity. No wonder Hume was seen as having no interest in
metaphysics. By contrast, the continentals, en masse, dont like the irrever-
ent, cheerfulness of the British character. This example is made all the
more interesting because the paper from which it is taken was originally
written in French for a French audience. What the French philosophers
made of these generalizations about their preferences in philosophical
cadence is unclear.
The contrast between analytic humour and continental brow-furrowing is
one of which Ryle was particularly fond. Note this complementary, though
hardly complimentary, Rylean remark: [i]n short Phenomenology was
from its birth, a bore. Its over-solemnity of manner more than its equivocal
lineage will secure that its lofty claims are ignored.68 Its clear from this that
the British no more like the over-solemnity of the continentals, than the
continentals like British iconoclasm.
The repeated signalling of the analysts sense of humour is important
on at least three counts. It is used as a deflationary device in the analysts
writing of philosophy; but it also allows a contrast between the continen-
tals and the British that ultimately cashes out in terms of character. The
rather over-serious nature of continental philosophy naturally correlates
with the fact that the anti-canon use their philosophy as an emotional
crutch for them philosophy is life-or-death serious. Meanwhile, the
British are able to confront reality as it is and laugh in acceptance. This

can also be read as an assertion of national identity. Humour had come to
be seen as a characteristically English virtue, partly as the result of the war;
[a] sense of humour, the ability to laugh at themselves was, it seems, the
secret weapon of the English.69
The continentals lack of a humour was, characteristically, turned back by
the analysts into a suggestion of some wider vices. Ryle wrote: [c]laims to
Fhrership vanish when postprandial joking begins. Husserl wrote as if he
had never met a scientist or a joke.70 Here the over-seriousness of conti-
nental thought is linked straight back to Hitler we surely can read the
allusion to Fhrership here as nothing else. Also strongly implied in this
passage is the claim that, had Husserl only been acquainted with science
and humour, like the analysts, he might not have had such a megalomaniac
philosophical theory.
In the assessment of the character of continental philosophers, Russell
stands out as particularly brutal. As we have seen, the affective sources for
all of the continental philosophies mentioned turn out to be in feelings
most would not define as virtues: hatred, fear, the need to be comforted,
egotism. Russell also appears to include in his analysis of the anti-canon any
feature he thinks might do their credibility harm, such as Nietzsches loath-
ing of women, and possibly unnatural relationship with his sister,71 and
Rousseaus habit of stealing from his friends, and his choosing to have a
long-running relationship with an ugly ignorant woman, solely, according
to Russell, so as to make himself feel superior.72 From an early age Fichte
displayed a certain arbitrary and self-centred disposition.73 Even when
comparing Rousseaus peaceable emotions to Byrons Satanic ones,
Russell refuses to give the Swiss any credit; rather than peaceable, his emo-
tions are described as pathetic.74 What is striking about these character
vignettes is that they are brutal, and appear to come from nowhere. There
is no indication that Russell had undertaken any deep research into
Fichtes childhood, nor Rousseaus sexual preferences. This mud slinging,
for surely it cannot be fairly called anything else, is a testament to the hostil-
ity that Russell was able to generate about his fellow philosophers.
While such overt personal disparagement is apparent in Russell, most of
the other analysts choose not to take this approach. Isaiah Berlin is an
exception. His critique of Hegels character is suitably Russellian in its
hostility. Hegel, he argued, worshipped power and despises people who
want others to be happier and who wring their hands when they see the
vast tragedies, the revolutions, the gas chambers, the appalling suffering
through which humanity goes.75 Rousseau is characterized as a tramp
with many kinds of what we would nowadays call inferiority complexes.76

Nor should he be pitied; Berlin is at pains to point out that Rousseau
detested and disliked whole catalogues of people, ideas and nations and
harboured deep resentments.77 This is not, one suspects, a picture
intended to incline the reader to sympathetic engagement with the trou-
bled philosopher.
These are rare moments of over-excitement from Berlin Hegel was not
in a position to take a view one way or the other on gas chambers and other
tragedies of the twentieth century. Nor does it represent the height of
judicious analysis to dismiss Rousseau as a tramp. Such over-excitement is,
however, a characteristic of Russells polemical approach. Russell seems
determined to show that the only possible genealogy for the philosophies
of the anti-canon is out of the basest, least desirable aspects of human
nature. Such a revelation of course would incline us to distrust, condemn
or ignore such theories. This is no doubt precisely what Russell intended.
Not only are these philosophies based on non-rational desires, they are
based on the worst kind of desires. We are invited to reflect that there is
little wonder proto-Nazi philosophies were produced by men with such
unworthy motives.
Russell, however, pushes his blackguarding of the anti-canon even
further, arguing that many of the ancestors of fascism and indeed fascists
themselves78 are actually insane. The revolt against reason, it appears, is
also in part a revolt against sanity and it is small wonder that Hitler was
insane given that, according to Russell, many of his intellectual ancestors
were. Fichtes belief in the supremacy of his own ego was insanity.79 With
Deweys pragmatist account of truth a further step is taken on the road
towards a certain kind of madness.80 Rousseau ended his days insane.81
The whole romantic movement is characterized as an insane form of
subjectivism.82 Much of Nietzsches work is merely megalomaniac.83
Once again, it is only Berlin who follows Russell in claiming anti-canon
insanity and only to a limited extent. For Berlin, the logical outcome of
romanticism is some kind of lunacy because it puts into question all pre-
existing structures, as inhibitors to the reign of the individuals sovereign
will. Once the structure of language and thought is broken down, insanity
follows. This for Berlin can account for Nietzsches descent into insanity.84
Rousseau on the other hand was, on Berlins account, simply a maniacal
nature, like a mad mathematician, whose work has a kind of simplicity
and a kind of lunacy.85
So, to conclude this section, what we see is a link between the philosophi-
cal critique of metaphysics and the concern about the origins of the need
to undertake a metaphysical project. The distinction between the meta-

physical continental and the anti-metaphysical analyst, then, is also a dis-
tinction between a group of people whose lack of well-being forces them to
metaphysics to ameliorate their condition, and a group of people who have
no such profound psychological anxieties and are therefore able to face the
world without metaphysical props. The importance of character for the
analysts, as we have seen, is further emphasized in their wider cataloguing
of the contrasting temperaments of analytic and continental philosophers.
Irrationality/Irrationalism
We have already seen two aspects of the supposed irrationality of the anti-
canon their guidance by emotions rather than reason, and their insanity.
We will now go on to examine other aspects of the analysts portrayal of the
anti-canon as irrational. There are two not easily reconcilable strands of
thought within the analysts writing on this. The first is that the continentals
are attempting to undertake philosophy in a reasonable way, but are simply
appalling at making philosophical arguments. We will look at this line of
thought first. The second interpretation given by the analysts is that it is not
that the continentals simply cant write or argue effectively, but that they do
not seek to do so. Instead they seek to deceive the unwary by deploying
apparently philosophical argument in order to confuse and bewilder. This
interpretation sees the anti-canon not as irrational, but irrationalist seek-
ing to undermine reason in favour of the emotions.
Poor arguments and obscurity

There is a strand in the analysts thinking that appears to put the anti-
canons argumentative failings down to lack of skill. Russell undertakes an
extensive critique of the anti-canons philosophical arguments. A full
analysis of his approach would require a chapter in its own right. And it
would be a fascinating chapter as Russells tactics are occasionally bizarre,
including, at one stage, involving Nietzsche in an imaginary dialogue with
the Buddha during which Nietzsche is severely chastised. Here all I can do
is offer some examples of the dismissive way in which Russell treats the phil-
osophical claims of various anti-canon targets together with some com-
mentary from Russell scholars. On Hegel, Russell writes that his philosophy
could not have been written without a lack of interest in facts and consider-
able ignorance.86 This he argued is clearly shown by the fact that almost all
Hegels doctrines are false.87 Nietzsche is repeatedly dismissed as making

arguments that dont make sense, as is Fichte and all of the supposed
power philosophers.88 Since 1936, scholars have been highlighting what
Monk has called, in reference to Hegel, Russells ludicrously cavalier treat-
ment of anti-canon philosophy.89 But it was a treatment, as Tom Rockmore
pointed out, which: succeeded in attracting attention from other even
less-informed colleagues of a similar bent.90 Indeed, in his not uncritical
review of History of Western Philosophy, Isaiah Berlin singled out Russells
treatment of Nietzsche as a distinguished essay.91 This despite the section
concerned being transparently hostile to and dismissive of Nietzsche.
Russells commentary on Nietzsches view of the Greeks and Wagner, for
example, was: [t]his may seem odd, but that is not my fault.92
Berlin, not content with applauding Russells treatment of the anti-canon
philosophers arguments, joined in. We have already noted his condemna-
tion of the vaporous . . . nonsense in German philosophy.93 To this he adds
further charges against specific targets. Hegel is accused of providing no
empirical or scientific evidence for his claims, which ultimately appear to
be a case of metaphysical insight or an act of faith.94 Berlin also character-
izes the proto-Nazi Joseph de Maistre as arguing impossibly badly. He
not merely begs the question, argues in circles, but does not bother to be
consistent.95 Berlin compares two groups of thinkers, the first including
the familiar villains Plato, Maistre and Hegel, the second including Russell.
In contrast to Russell and his ilk, according to Berlin, the Maistres of this
world would never allow their ideas to be refuted in rational debate, or
admit their falsity.96
Along similar lines, in 1946 Ayer compared the reasoning of Hegel to
that of a modern exponent of the same tradition, Heidegger.
Few men, indeed, can ever have reasoned worse than Hegel, the arch
pontiff of the nineteenth century, but at least he claimed the support of
reason for his fantasies . . . Though he misused logic abominably he did
not affect to be above it. But now if we turn to Heidegger, the high priest
of the modern school of existentialism, and the leading pontiff of our
time, we find ourselves in a country from which the ordinary processes of
logic, or indeed reasoning of any kind, appear to have been banished.97
Here we notice Ayers subscription to the Russellian claim that Hegel was
using philosophy as an answer to his own needs and desires his philoso-
phy, in Ayers words, supported his fantasies. More pertinently here, Hegel
couldnt do logic, but at least he tried; Heidegger, on the other hand,
doesnt even make the attempt he has banished reason and logic entirely.
Ayer accounts for this absence by claiming that Heidegger is really a mystic
or a poet rather than a philosopher.98 He extends this reading to the
existentialists more generally arguing that they offer a poetry of nihilism,
the expression of an irrationalist world-outlook.99 As for the other analysts,
we will see below that while, for the most part, they wrote very little on the
anti-canon, the widely held conception of it as irrational, emotional and
obscure indicates that they too took a dim view of the philosophical powers
of the anti-canon philosophers.
In a natural alliance with the anti-canons apparent inability to produce
good philosophical argument is a certain obscurity of style. In reading
analytic philosophers comments on the anti-canon, one is constantly
confronted with claims that this or that continental thinker is obscure.
In the first part of Ayers autobiography, Part of My Life, for example, Kant
is mentioned twice; both times his work is described as obscure.100 Mary
Warnock described German idealism as obscure.101 Berlin found the same
vices in Hegel:
[t]his union, this being at one with the universe, has always been, in one
way or another, the goal of all the great mystics and metaphysicians. Hegel
expounds this idea in ponderous, obscure, and occasionally majestic
language.102
What this passage from Berlin points to is the fact that this obscurity
is not merely a reflection on a thick prose style, it contains within it the
accusation, explicit in this quotation, that what is being undertaken here is
an illegitimate project, metaphysics, and for obscure one had better read
pie in the sky. Berlin went further in a letter, complaining: it seems
impossible to discuss Hegel, or his revolting disciples without becoming
obscure and bombastic oneself.103 The obscurity, then, is entirely one with
the Hegelian project.
Ayer provides another excellent example of this in his autobiography.
Here he makes clear that the obscurity of continental philosophers is essen-
tially a mask for empty and pretentious rubbish. He reports an encounter
with a German philosopher soon after the war (no date is offered). The
German asked Ayer what the essence of a glass is and proceeded to
explain:
I will give you the answer he said. The essence of a glass is to be empty.
I made a sign to our host who filled our glasses. This did not please the
professor who remarked rather irritably that the essence of a glass

with wine was not the same as the essence of a glass without wine. But,
he went on, I will put to you a deeper question. What is the essence of
emptiness? [German original omitted]. Ah, I said, that really is deep
and I went on to talk about the universities he had visited.104
This derogatory response to the intellectual efforts of a, of course

German, professor indicates Ayers belief that underneath the high sound-
ing ideas lurks nothing of any substance. His response is also a manifesta-
tion of the analysts self-conception in the face of abstract theoretical
pronouncement, the empiricist juxtaposes the concrete fact of a full
wineglass. These are Paul Reddings thoughts on the analysts dismissal of
thinkers as obscure:
Such an attitude is in turn expressed in the general easy dismissal of the

idealist period of philosophy that goes beyond justifiable complaints
about the density and unclarity that perhaps reached its apotheosis in the
writings of a Hegel. If a thinker is regarded as having something impor-
tant to say, of course, then the project of trying to make that something
clearer will generally be regarded as worthwhile.105
This comment, focused on the analysts treatment of idealism, holds good

for the analysts treatment of continental philosophy more widely. Its not
simply obscure; it is obscure, and almost certainly worthless. On this read-
ing, the obscurity is one with the philosophical paucity of the continental
tradition.
Deception
But we also find a rather different claim made by the analysts, that the
obscurity, poor arguments and pseudo profundity of the anti-canon are
sinister and dangerous. That the continentals are not simply irrational,
instead they are irrationalist. Russell claimed that some of the anti-canon
philosophers deliberately made bad arguments to try and beguile their
readers. Poor reasoning and obscurity, then, are not errors, but tools. Such
a claim follows naturally from the accusations Russell has already levelled
at the anti-canon philosophers. If one is a signed up irrationalist, what
commitment does one have to sound reasoning?
We have already seen Russell explicitly accuse Kant of this of inventing
distinctions between pure and practical reason, which Russell argued were
obviously bogus, in order to safe-guard ethics.106 The implication seems to

be that Kant was being less than honest, maybe with himself but certainly
with his audience. In 1927 Russell had said Kant deluged the world with
muddle and mystery from which it is only now beginning to emerge.107 Are
we invited in these remarks to believe Kant in some way instigated this
deluge deliberately, as a way of refuting Humes unassailable arguments?
Certainly if we view this comment from Russell in the context of his wider
treatment of Kant as an irrationalist this seems like a compelling reading.
But even if we dont quite have direct evidence to state categorically that
Russell believed Kant to be wilfully deceptive, his case against Hegel, and
idealists in general, is much more explicit. This is a comment on Hegel
from Russells History of Western Philosophy:
[a] man may be pardoned if logic compels him regretfully to reach

conclusions which he deplores, but not for departing from logic in order
to be free to advocate crimes.108
In order to be free to advocate crimes Hegel, Russell implies, deliber-

ately departed from logic in order to further his own (evil) purposes.
This is not an isolated accusation; rather it fits a pattern of condemnation
in Russells, and other analysts, writing on Hegel and his followers.109
Russell makes the same accusation against another idealist, the twentieth-
century British philosopher, F. H. Bradley.
Most people will admit, I think, that it is calculated to produce bewilder-

ment rather than conviction, because there is more likelihood of error in
a very subtle, abstract and difficult argument than in so patent a fact as
the inter-relatedness of things in the world.110
The accusation here is the same; Bradleys approach is calculated

to confuse it deliberately sets out to mislead. This claim is echoed by
Warnock, who describes Bradley as rhetorical in his metaphysical system-
atizing, while his idealist colleague Bernard Bosanquet was closer to bom-
bast . . . [and] vagueness. And in the writings of lesser men solemnity and
unclarity seem to rise not seldom to the pitch of actual fraud.111 Bradley
and Bosanquet practise rhetoric, bombast and vagueness, none of them
stylistic virtues in the analysts tradition (indeed what school of philosophy
would adopt such qualities as virtues? The sophists maybe). The lesser
idealists though have taken a further step; they have descended into intel-
lectual fraud attempting to con their readers. Similarly, having established
that his contemporary, R. G. Collingwood, was a continental sort of

philosopher, Berlin was naturally led to draw the conclusion that he was
deceitful and unsound.112
This deceptive quality even extends to the method by which idealism
arrived in Britain, according to Quinton, who wrote in 1958 that: Idealism
first appeared in England in an historical disguise, the doctrines of Hegel
being mixed into Jowetts introduction to the dialogues of Plato.113 There
is an implication here that Hegel sneaked into the country strapped under-
neath Platos lorry and would certainly not have been granted a visa if he
had announced himself at Immigration. This is a rather different claim
to those about the deceptiveness of the continentals arguments, but the
central allegation is still that there is something underhand about the move-
ment and its practices.
John Passmore has generalized this attack, commenting that the suspi-
cion of idealism was common among the analysts in Cambridge University,
in particular: [c]ontempt for Hegel, and for Hegelian subterfuges, was
indeed to be a regular feature of the movement which Moore led at
Cambridge . . .114 The implication of the term subterfuges is continuous
with the critique offered by Russell, Quinton, Berlin and Warnock that
there is something cunning and deceptive about Hegels approach to
argument.
Here metaphysics again becomes important, this time as a tool to disguise
the true intentions of the anti-canon. Russell said of Fichte that he was able
to disguise his desire for power beneath a garment of metaphysics.115 He
also spoke of ideas obscured by the fog of metaphysics.116 Berlin takes up
a similar theme in his Two Concepts of Liberty. The concrete reality of the
empirical self117 is juxtaposed against the real self of Hegelian thought,
which can only be achieved by a magical transformation, or sleight of
hand.118 Metaphysics, characterized as unreal, illusory, is the medium
through which Hegel is able to effect a magical transformation which, of
course, turns out to be nothing more than a sleight of hand a trick. Else-
where Berlin uses precisely this term, characterizing Hegels reconciliation
of the particular and the general as a sensational conjuring trick.119
In a passage we have already quoted, but which is worth quoting again in
this context, we find Hare making the same claim, that metaphysics allows
German philosophers to get away with deception:
we have seen what monstrous philosophical edifices have been created by

slipping, surreptitiously, from the ordinary uses of words to extraordinary
uses which are never explained . . . nothing pleases us so much as to sit

back and have a German metaphysician explain to us, if he can, how he
is going to get his metaphysical system started. And as he is usually unable
to do this, the discussion never gets on to what he thinks of as the meat of
the theory.120
Here the key words are slipping, surreptitiously; the German metaphysi-
cian can use metaphysics to mask the weaknesses in the claims he seeks to
make. In this quotation, however, the nemesis of the German metaphysi-
cian is present, the British analyst (us), who takes pleasure in preventing
the metaphysical deception getting started.
Seduction
Part of the purpose of the obscurity, and the deception which characterized
anti-canon philosophy was, according to the analysts, to discredit reason
and to appeal directly to the emotions, to seduce, or violate, where they
could not convince.
[S]o long as the main object of philosophers is to show that nothing can
be learned by patience and detailed thinking, but that we ought rather
to worship the prejudices of the ignorant under the title of reason if we
are Hegelians . . . so long as philosophers will take care to remain
ignorant of what mathematicians have done to remove the errors by which
Hegel profited.121
Again we see that not only Hegel but the Hegelians, a significant part of
the idealist movement, profited by errors; that the confusion they sought to
spread, according to Russell, was a method of reinforcing their claims about
the inadequacy of detailed thinking. If such logical thought can be shown
to be complex and contradictory, this strengthens the claims of those who
wish to elevate prejudice. This appears to be a pattern within the anti-canon.
Russell describes romantic philosophy in general as tending to emphasize
the will at the expense of the intellect, to be impatient of chains of reason-
ing, and to glorify violence of certain kinds . . . In tendency, though not
always in fact, it is definitely hostile to what is commonly called reasons, and
tends to be anti-scientific.122 None of this directly suggests a desire to mis-
lead but it certainly suggests that conformity with good argument and
cogent reasoning was not a recognized merit by the romantics. As Berlin
summed up Maistres attitude: if reason is a poisoner to be avoided at all

costs, this is all to the good.123
The analysts were quick to point out the charged emotional language
with which the anti-canon write philosophy. Berlin provides the most
direct accusation against the anti-canon, in particular against Rousseau.
He describes Rousseaus hypnotic style124 and elaborates this into a power-
ful accusation, an in itself very emotionally compelling passage:
[y]ou appear to be reading logical argument which distinguishes between

concepts and draws conclusions in a valid manner from premises, when
all the time something very violent is being said to you. A vision is being
imposed on you, somebody is trying to dominate you by means of a very
coherent, although often very deranged, vision of life, to bind a spell, not
to argue, despite the cool and collected way in which he appears to be
talking.125
This quotation encapsulates the totality of the analytic critique of the

methodology of continental philosophy. It appears to be undertaking a
philosophical task, however, covertly, it seeks to dominate, to seduce, and to
do so in order to deliver you into the hands of a kind of mania. The
language here is striking, and littered with the imagery of irrationality and
violence domination, derangement, and sorcery. Moreover, the political
dimensions of this violence are not very far below the surface. Berlins
condemnation of Rousseaus seductive prose comes in a lecture that is
principally about Rousseaus political vices. Rousseau binds his spells for
the sake of his vision of freedom which, as we saw in Chapter 1, issues in a
totalitarian state; bad philosophy leading to bad politics. The two seem,
again, to be inextricably linked in the analysts thinking.
Ayer makes similar charges against his own pet anti-canon targets the
inheritors of the German tradition in philosophy. In Some Aspects of
Existentialism (1948) and The Claims of Philosophy (1947), Ayer argues
that the reason why the existentialists so comprehensively fail to make good
logical arguments is that it is not the habit of Existentialists to concern
themselves overmuch with logic. What they strive to obtain is an emotional
effect.126 We have already seen Ayer accuse Heidegger of casting off any
interest in good argument and being more akin to a mystic or poet than a
philosopher. Here again, Ayer generalizes this conclusion to existentialists
plural, the whole movement characterized as aiming not to convince the
mind, but to seduce the heart. We also find such accusations being levelled
by other analysts at other anti-canon targets. The Cambridge analyst C. D.

Broad described the idealist John McTaggarts metaphysics of love as
hitting his readers below the intellect.127
Claims that the anti-canon were peddling an emotional, rather than
a philosophical, method, did not always take such bald form. Warnock
runs together three significant strands in the critique of the anti-canon:
political vice and extremism in temperament and language. In so doing
he highlights the importance for the analysts of the temperature of
debate:
Absolute Idealism can be distinguished chiefly as being a system for

extremists . . . In natural but unholy alliance with this novel extremism of
thought, there occurred a striking rise in the temperature of philosophi-
cal writing. With honourable exceptions, the Idealists brought into
British philosophy a species of vivid, violent and lofty imprecision which
even in general literature had hitherto been rare.128
There is a lot going on in this paragraph. First we have the familiar

imputation of political vice idealists are extremists which we have had
cause to quote already. The use of the term unholy is also pertinent to the
concerns of this chapter as it is a term which captures the notion of
a group that represents the very opposite of virtue. We also see two further
significant claims, that the political extremism of the idealists is accompa-
nied by extremism of temperament and extremism of language an emo-
tional hot and vivid prose style. Even violent though whether this relates
to its effects on the individual and is akin to Berlins claim about the
aggressive nature of Rousseaus prose, or whether we are meant to read
this as relating to political extremism, or both, is unclear. But again it is of
foreign origin and, perhaps more importantly, it is totally out of keeping
with British sensibilities Warnock makes the extraordinary claim that
idealist prose is extravagant and hot in a manner unprecedented in Britain,
even in literature. The strength and absurdity of this claim only serves
to highlight the radical polarization of philosophy down national and
political as well as simply methodological lines. In a more measured
environment, it is hard to imagine such a claim making it into print.129
Warnocks alliance of violence and extremism to the prose style of the
idealists suggested a link between the emotional force and appeal of
idealism and its dangerous political outcomes. Such a running together of
criticism of the anti-canon is also detectable in a comment made by Hare
during a highly enjoyable interview with Bryan Magee for a 1970s television
series. He had the following to say about Marxists and existentialists:
[a]lthough there are some good philosophers in these schools, the com-
mon sort do little but blow up balloons of different shapes and colours,
full of nothing but their own breath, which float here from over the
Channel or the Atlantic; and if you prick them with a sharp needle, its
very hard to say what was in them, except that it was probably inflamma-
ble and certainly intoxicating. This may increase the head of steam a bit
beyond what natural human group aggression produces anyway; but from
faulty plumbing most of it gets on peoples spectacles.130
Not merely hot air, but inflammable and intoxicating hot air at that and
material likely to make mankind more prone to aggression, and therefore
quite possibly to political excess. The existentialists and Marxists provide us
with the same sort of high-sounding hot prose that the proto-fascist philoso-
phers had to offer. Where Marxs theories ended up politically was clear to
all, while we have seen existentialism repeatedly revealed by the analysts to
be a modern manifestation of German romantic philosophy the French
mind having been conquered by Hegel and Heidegger. It is unsurprising,
then, that shortly after making the remark quoted above, Hare links the
discussion back to Hegel.
What we have seen so far is the analysts accusing the anti-canon of being
either irrational, unable to make good arguments, or irrationalist, deliber-
ately refusing to do so with the aim of forcing or seducing others to their
cause through deception, obscurity and emotional exhortation. One might
tempted to seek a reconciliation of these two parallel accounts, the irratio-
nal, and the irrationalist. However, the analysts dont offer one particular
route to reconciling these, in principle, reconcilable claims, and it is not the
purpose of this book to over-systematize the analysts thought in this area.
Imagery of the irrational

I now want to move on to examine the wealth of imagery the analysts deploy
in characterizing the anti-canon as irrational imagery which reinforces
the impression that these continental thinkers are philosophically beyond
the pale. In Chapter 2, we gave extended attention to the role of imagery of
war and invasion in the analysts writing on the period of British idealism.
I wont return to this material again here, except to note that this imagery
of invasion is, among other things, a powerful indication of the irrationality
of the anti-canon. One doesnt imagine reasoning with an advancing

army resistance requires force. For philosophy, which places reason
centrally, a war represents the collapse, or abeyance, of the possibility of
reasonable dialogue and therefore of the practice of philosophy itself.
An invasive philosophy is no longer playing by the rules of reason it is
resorting to intellectual violence.
Appropriately, one of Russells earliest engagements with the imagery of
unreason comes in his characterization not of the anti-canon, but of their
descendants, the fascists. In the 1930s Russell, faced with what he conceived
as a cult of unreason, feared that it would also come to dominate in the
United Kingdom, in the form of a native fascism.
Coming into London by train, one passes through great regions of small
villas inhabited by families which feel no solidarity with the working class;
the man of the family has no part in local affairs . . . To such a man, if he
has enough spirit for discontent, a Fascist movement may well appear as
a deliverance.131
Russell writes of the danger that, as economic hardship increases, people

will become more willing to be seduced from intellectual sobriety in favour
of some delusive will-o-the-wisp.132 This seduction is very much what we
have been examining in our discussion of irrationality, the luring of people
away from reason into a cult of passion, a cult of power, a mystic belief in
reality beyond appearance. The second image displayed in the above quota-
tion is that of sobriety. In a seamless cross-over from Nazism to its anti-canon
roots, Russell completes this image in a discussion of Fichte by pointing out
the converse: the intoxication of power which invaded philosophy with Fichte
and to which modern men, whether philosophers or not, are prone.133 Wil-
liams and Montefiore use the same contrast to distinguish analytic from
continental style; they describe analytic philosophy as sober.134
The power of water is also invoked by Russell in his discussion of the
anti-canon: Samuel Taylor Coleridge was engulfed by Kant,135 who del-
uged the world with muddle and mystery.136 Water here is a wild force,
another symbol of the power of the irrational. A deluge cannot be resisted,
we can only retreat or, like Coleridge, be engulfed. Berlin followed
Russell to the water, describing the romantic politics as a swollen torrent.137
Elsewhere he is more expansive:
worship of the night and the irrational: that was the contribution of the
wild German spirit . . . Then the tidal wave of feeling rose above its banks
and overflowed into the neighbouring provinces of politics and social life
with literally devastating results.138
Here we have both the tidal wave of German irrationalism causing mayhem
and destruction, and the imagery of light and darkness. Berlin was appar-
ently very struck by the darkness of, in particular, Hegels philosophy, when
he was preparing his Freedom and Its Betrayal lectures. The following is
the most equivocal of the passages. Hegels system:
is a vast mythology which, like many mythologies, has great powers of

illumination, as well as great powers of obscuring whatever it touches.
It has poured forth both light and darkness more darkness perhaps
than light, but on this there will be no agreement.139
Berlin does concede that this mythology has provided some useful
ideas; however the emphasis here is on the darkness, in this case allied to
our old friend obscurity. Berlin takes this metaphor on, describing the vast
shadowy metaphysical ideas, like the shadows of a great Gothic cathedral
in which Hegel seemed permanently to dwell.140 Rousseaus ideas too have
something of the night about them. His doctrine that each man in giving
himself to all, gives himself to nobody is as dark and mysterious now as it
ever was.141 Elsewhere he discusses those who have lost their way in some
dark Heideggerian forest demonstrating that Hegel and Rousseau have
company in the dark.142 Finally, there is an allusion to the political dimen-
sion of these twilight ideas. German idealism produced shadowy and ideo-
logical schemata.143
While Berlin clearly favours images of light and darkness in the contrast
between analyst and anti-canon, the single most repeated metaphor in the
analysts writing is that of disease and cure. Russell is not by any means the
most liberal in the use of this image, but he manages to refer to irrational-
ism as a disease in his discussion of Nietzsche.144 The irrational and dan-
gerous aspects of the notion of disease are well known. Disease can spread,
rapidly infecting a healthy population as it goes and it is non-rational it
cannot be refuted in argument it can only be diagnosed and cured.
As such, irrationalism-as-disease fits the structure of Russells critique very
well. Indeed, while Russell doesnt very often make explicit use of the imag-
ery, diagnosis is exactly what he appears to have been attempting in his
treatment of the ancestors of fascism. By uncovering the mistaken assump-
tions and psychological maladies that afflicted the anti-canon he certainly
cannot hope to cure the dead philosophers, but maybe he can vaccinate his
readers.
Immunity and cures were also clearly prevalent in Ryles thinking on this
subject. As we have already seen, having identified fascism and communism
as descendants of Hegel, he goes on even if philosophers are at long last
immunized, historian, sociologists, political propagandists and voters are
still unconscious victims of this virus . . . 145
Philosophers are at long last immunised. More worryingly, however,
there are whole classes of people loose in Britain in 1947 that may be
infected with the disease of German philosophy. Russells fears about the
dangers of German thought in 1930s find an echo here two years into
a victorious peace. The use of viral imagery is a running theme in Ryles
review of The Open Society he stresses the fact that [c]ontemporary philos-
ophers are for the most part now inoculated against Hegelianism.146
Re has picked up this language of the irrational in describing the analysts
suspicions of modern continental thought. He describes a conference
between analytic and continental philosophers held in 1958:
[i]t was hardly a meeting of minds: the French hosts manifested a respect-
ful curiosity about Anglo-Saxon philosophy, and the Oxford School,
but the chorus of Oxford analysts huddled together in self defence as
though they feared some kind of intellectual infection from the over-
friendly continentals.147
Re here takes his lead from Ryle, who, reporting on the same event
remarked:
I guess that our thinkers have been immunised against the idea of
philosophy as the Mistress of Science by the fact that their daily lives in
Cambridge and Oxford Colleges keep them in personal contact with
scientists.148
Berlin highlights the same set of images when he talks of Hegel and Marx
being infected by romanticism.149 Ryle, Berlin and Russell are joined in
their use of the language of infection by the young Bernard Williams.
While the influence of Hegel radically changed the rest of European

thought, and continues to work in it, the sceptical caution of British
philosophy left it, after a brief infection, markedly immune to it.150
A general consensus, then, that while continental thought was danger-

ously infectious, whoever else may be susceptible, the British philosophers
were going to be okay. Whether this was due, as Williams suggests, to an
immunization afforded by a brief period of infection the British idealist

period or to the magic bullet of analytic philosophy, is not clear from
these quotations. We will see in the next chapter that the analysts set some
store by the latter claim, though no doubt the brief infection would have
educated the white blood cells of the British.
Appropriately, on the second of the two occasions in which Ayer
mentions Kant in Part of My Life, he recounts how, having just grasped one
of the most obscure parts of Kants work, he fell into a fever: [b]y the time
the fever left me, I had lost my insight into Kant and have never since
recaptured it . . .151 This fever, caused by sunstroke according to Ayer, could,
on the analysts reading, equally well have been caused by intellectual
infection contracted by reading too much Kant. It is notable too that the
only time in his life when Ayer understood Kant was when he was sickening
for a fever; a highly appropriate, suitably weakened state for comprehen-
sion of a member of the delirious and irrational anti-canon.
To round off this picture, looking back on the domestic political scene
around World War II, Quinton adopted the language of infection in reflect-
ing on the Russellian fear of a home-grown fascist party: [i]n terms of prac-
tical politics British Fascism never became more than a comparatively minor
problem of public hygiene . . . 152
The volume and persistence of these images of the irrational in the ana-
lysts writing about the anti-canon and their attendant allusions to evil
invasion, infection and the shadows conveys powerfully the belief both in
the rank philosophical inadequacy of the anti-canon and the potential dan-
gers of their thought, if it were allowed to get into circulation. It also dem-
onstrates how far such assumptions had entered the language of the analysts
these images being used, presumably, not as part of a concerted policy but
just as they entered the analysts heads. The fact that the imagery of infec-
tion (and intoxication, invasion, and darkness) was felt appropriate in
describing the anti-canon reflects the visceral nature of the analysts beliefs
about these philosophers.
Identity, Politics, Nationality
So far in this chapter, weve seen anti-canon philosophy portrayed as

poor in argument, obscure, metaphysical and, most recently, irrational
and emotional. On each of these fronts, we have seen evidence implicitly
linking the lack of virtue in the anti-canons philosophy and character
to the political charge sheet we saw drawn against them in Chapter 1.
Ryle described phenomenology as operating according to something

like a Fhrerprinzip. Berlin described Hegels shadowy system as containing
ideological schemata, Warnock called Absolute idealists extremists.
Russell wrote that Hegel departed from logic in order to more freely
advocate crimes. There is also a direct link drawn between poor argument
and political vice. Hare, in particular, makes this connection frequently.
We will examine these claims in more detail in the next chapter. But we
have already seen him allude to such a connection in his comments on the
continentals inflating balloons which are intoxicating, inflammable and
prone to increase human aggression.153
There has also been a wealth of images that point to the violence of
anti-canon philosophy: Berlin describing Rousseaus philosophy as seeking
to dominate, the idea of the anti-canon as a virus attacking healthy philo-
sophical bodies; And all this on top of the imagery of invasion which we
dealt with in the last chapter. To reinforce the impression of the intercon-
nection of the political and the philosophical critique of anti-canon philos-
ophy, it is notable that these claims often appear in the same texts, or indeed
on the same pages, as each other. Such images and descriptions should be
read as part of the analysts understanding of the supposed political ramifi-
cations of continental philosophy. The philosophy itself is violent and seeks
to dominate; it has violently dominated first a nation (Germany) and then
sought to dominate a continent, twice.
In addition to the wealth of evidence for the inter-relationship of the
political and the philosophical critique, which we have accrued in the
course of this chapter, the analysts also make some direct comments on this
phenomenon. Significantly, one analyst or another makes an explicit link
between the political project of anti-canon philosophy and each of the phil-
osophical failings of the anti-canon so far examined: emotional seduction
of the unwary, obscurity and metaphysics.
Perhaps most obvious is the case of emotional seduction, where we find
Russell characterizing, in the same essay, both the anti-canon and the Nazis
as irrationalists, as seducing people from sobriety. Russell also conceives of
both anti-canon philosophy and fascism as being irrational. Weve seen him
dismiss the argumentative abilities of the anti-canon. Of the two great dicta-
tors of his day he says the following:
I am Wotan says Hitler, I am Dialectical Materialism, says Stalin. And

since the claim of each is supported by vast resources in the way of armies,
aeroplanes, poison gas, and innocent enthusiasts, the madness of both
remains unnoticed.154
We have also seen an explicit link drawn through the notion of the viral
imagery. The analysts repeatedly describe the anti-canon as viral; Quinton
describes fascism as a problem of public health.
Michael Ignatieff, Berlins biographer detects a relationship between the
obscurity of particularly German philosophy, and the political purposes it
was intended to serve:
Berlin was impatient with the lofty obscurity of the German philosophical
tradition, and when it was accompanied by the low service of fascism, his
impatience turned to scorn. He was repelled by the special pleading with
which Heidegger had sought to explain his complicity with the Nazi
regime.155
If Ignatieff is an accurate guide to his subjects mind-set, then Berlin too

makes an equation between lofty obscurity and low service of fascism, at
least in the case of Heidegger.
Ayer is more straightforward still, arguing that: [f]ascists have hitherto
tended to favour some form of metaphysics . . . 156 What he later called
German susceptibility to metaphysics157 thus seems to have two axes: it
betrays the essential weakness of character of among the German philo-
sophical tradition and it provides fascists with the tools to seduce men to
commit crimes. Ayers estimation of the significance of metaphysics for fas-
cism was shared by Otto Neurath, a member of the Vienna circle who, after
giving a list of philosophers who supported the Nazis, commented: I think
this merciless habit in history very often is connected with absolutism in
metaphysics and faith.158
What these continued allusions, both implicit and explicit, demonstrate
is that the analysts understanding of continental philosophy is bound up
with and reinforced by the assumptions they make about the political vices
of the continentals. I am not seeking to suggest that the political reading of
the continentals causes the philosophical critique; but I am seeking to argue
that the two are mutually supporting. The analysts tying together of bad
philosophy and bad politics was mirrored, as we will see in the next chapter,
by the analysts tying together their claim to be doing good philosophy, with
their claim to political liberalism (i.e. to political virtue).
Nationalism
The willingness, displayed once again in this chapter, to identify the
continental philosophical tradition with Germany and with Nazism again
signals the importance of nationalist thinking to the analysts. Indeed, they

seemed prepared to generalize their own philosophical characteristics and
those of their opponents and to see them as part of a wider divide between
British philosophy and continental philosophy. Russell divides British
philosophers from continental philosophers, as such, suggesting that the
British are benevolent, while the continentals are cruel.159 He also does so
methodologically, arguing: British philosophy is more detailed and
piecemeal than that of the Continent.160 Elsewhere he provides the logical
correlate of this view, explaining that [t]he continental approach is much
more rigid.161 Here Russell generalizes over not only the entire philoso-
phical picture in the UK but also on the continent as though both repre-
sented single monolithic units.
We have seen Ayer generalizing over British philosophers, as such, in
relation to metaphysics: British Hegelians . . . committed themselves to
metaphysics in a way that the British philosophers have fought shy of, both
before and since.162 British philosophers here are a category not just in the
present but throughout history. Warnock makes the same kind of claim
when he writes that the vivid violent style of the idealists had hitherto
been rare in British philosophy.163 Somewhat later in the century Quinton
uses the English Channel as a dividing line between passionately prophetic
philosophers and orderly bureaucrats of the intellect.164
In these comments, the British state becomes a philosophically signifi-
cant unit, with the German state, and then Europe both representing
opposition units. Nationalism is built into the language. We have seen
that where a specific nation is identified as the root of the opposed phi-
losophy, it is nearly always Germany. For Bernard Williams, it is German
speculative thought that the British disregard. Perhaps most strikingly, it
is the Germans who have, according to Ayer, a weakness for metaphysics
a weakness for the very philosophical approach favoured by fascists. It is
the German metaphysician, for Hare, who is trying to construct a mon-
strous system. Where another European nation is identified, it is France
but it is a French movement synonymous with the German tradition, the
existentialists.
We have also seen, throughout this chapter, that characteristics of the
two sides have fallen out along lines entirely continuous with familiar
national stereotypes. The continentals are extravagant, abstracted, not very
practical, tempestuous, and so on. Meanwhile, the philosophical virtues dis-
played by the British philosophers draw on a recognizable set of stereotypi-
cal British characteristics, jovial, practical, not prone to abstraction, even
rather anti-intellectual, and owners of that most British of virtues, common
sense. Indeed it is in the notion of common sense that British philosophy

most explicitly links itself to the virtues of the Englishman. Ryle recounts a
train journey he shared with Russell. He asked what made Locke so impor-
tant. Russell replied:
Locke was the spokesman of Common Sense. Almost without thinking

I retorted impatiently, I think Locke invented Common Sense. To which
Russell rejoined, By God, Ryle, I believe you are right. No one ever had
Common Sense before John Locke and no-one but Englishmen have
ever had it since.165
The recurrence of appeals to common sense among the analysts has

been widely noted. It signified a desire to stick closely to the facts a certain
willingness to believe that if a theory issued in what seemed like nonsense,
it should be laughed off. The nationalism of this is quite clear from the
quotation: it is the feet-on-the-ground Englishman contrasted with the con-
tinental; the latter, in this quotation, being constitutionally unable to mus-
ter the same practical mindset. Noel Annan sums this up in a memorial
essay for Isaiah Berlin: [h]e distrusted Rousseaus and Hegels theory of
positive freedom as a perversion of common sense.166 This encapsulates
much of the English philosophers attitude towards the anti-canon that
beyond its political evil, the details of its philosophical failings, or the vices
of its members, it presented doctrines that were simply not common
sense.167
These contrasts, then, represent analytic philosophy going into alliance
with the apparently anti-intellectual British character (Stefan Collini has
recently given this supposed characteristic extended attention).168 In The
Claims of Philosophy (1947) Ayer contrasted two types of philosophers,
the pontiff and the journeyman. The pontiff, exemplified by Heidegger,
makes high-sounding but ultimately meaningless claims. The journey-
man/analyst meanwhile follows John Locke in saying it is ambition
enough to be employed as an under-labourer in clearing the ground
a little, and removing some of the rubbish that lies in the way of knowl-
edge.169 This quotation, usually shortened to the phrase under labourer
in the garden of knowledge provides analytic philosophy with one of
favourite images. At the Royaumont conference, one of the rare orga-
nized meetings between analytic and continental philosophers, J. L.
Austin described the analysts task as to clean up our small corner of the
garden.170 The philosopher as a lowly manual labourer, cleaning out
the weeds so that good seeds can flourish in their place. The imagery of
the analyst as manual worker is littered throughout twentieth-century

analytic texts.171
From these images and the subscription to common sense, to the won-
derful mechanical metaphors discussions of which part of an argument is
doing the work, the notion of stripping a thinker for parts the analysts
identified themselves with the ordinary practice of the working man.
Ernest Gellner sums up the situation perfectly:
[t]he appeal of this doctrine lies in the image it gives the philosopher of
himself. He can see himself as a man modestly and competently doing a
solid, limited piece of work, quite unlike the nebulous, melodramatic,
world- or outlook-changing and over-pretentious claims of his non-
linguistic predecessor. A fine picture this, a kind of philosophical cross on
the bluff, straight-from-the-shoulder man and of the stereotype of the
natural scientist who does one manageable job at a time, and it is well
done when completed.172
While Gellner emphasizes the significance of the natural scientist he might

equally have invoked that of a plumber. The virtues are in the modesty, the
competency, the lack of drama, or excitability about big ideas. This reflects
a strong hostility to abstraction in Britain during this period. The tendency
is described critically by Orwell in his The Lion and the Unicorn (1941),
but found positive subscribers even in academic circles.173 The historian
G. M. Trevelyan saw the antidote to over-intellectualism as, in Collinis
words, to remain close to the instincts and good sense of ordinary people
. . . Soundness is all.174 No surprise that we saw Berlin condemn Colling-
wood precisely for being unsound.175 Trevelyans attitude has more gen-
eral parallels with the message of the analysts in this period; if one substitutes
the preferred analytic idiom common sense for the good sense of ordi-
nary people, then what we have here ascribed to Trevelyan is an accurate
reading of the analysts position. It is striking, in contrast to the analyst as
grounded and earthy, how frequently in this chapter weve seen the conti-
nentals described as lofty ungrounded, disconnected from the real,
empirical, world.
The analysts subscription to assumptions rooted in national identity
has not escaped the eyes of scholars. Thus Bryan Appleyard has pointed to
its debunking style as being characteristically English: a kind of common-
sense scepticism, mistrustful of continental theory, which was to find echoes
in the hard headed posturing of the Movement. Its very Englishness indeed
resulted in its association with the whole ideology of Little England.176
The reference to the association of analytic philosophy with the ideology

of little England seems to be derived from an article in Encounter by Irving
Kristol. He writes the following about the state of British philosophy:
[a]nd there is no mistaking the fact that this is a very British school
indeed. It is almost as if there had been a deliberate effort to caricature
the Englishness of English philosophy with all those famous English
virtues wildly exaggerated: the detestation of sham and artifice, the plain-
speaking, the almost supernatural sensibleness, and with all those famous
English vices wildly exaggerated too: the parochialness, the horror at big
questions, in short the quasi-philistinism.177
We are facing here, as Kristol rightly points out, a caricature of English-

ness.178 If Kristols remarks were phrased in a slightly less hostile manner,
there would probably have been nothing in them that the analysts would
have felt inclined to reject. The characteristics are those that we have seen
across this chapter and the last the shutting out of foreign influence, dis-
missal of big questions (often addressed through metaphysical philosophy),
the demand for clarity, common sense and soundness.
Of course, the contrasts that the analysts, and others, sought to draw in
the mid-century, and particularly after 1945, were far from fresh in the
1940s. Collini points to the nineteenth-century roots of the British project
of self-definition, initially against France:
self-congratulatory contrasts with less fortunate nations, especially

France . . . were . . . a staple of political argument in England throughout
the nineteenth century, putting stability and practical good sense against
revolution and political overexcitability; pragmatic empiricism against
abstract rationalism, irony and understatement against rhetoric and
exaggeration; and so on. In the negatively characterized half of each of
these pairings we can already see the components of what was to become
the dominant representation in 20th century Britain of (European)
intellectuals.179
The roots of these categories, then, are historically at least a century deep.
It is striking, too, that many of the components of this contrast appear to
have survived intact the good sense, calmness, practicality and humour of
the empiricist English contrasted with all the vices we have seen imputed to
the anti-canon in the twentieth century, rhetoric, political dangers and
excessive abstraction. The difference between Collinis characterization of
these contrasts in the early nineteenth century and what we have found
150 years later is that the principal target appears to have shifted, from
France to Germany. David Simpson describes this striking transfer of the
stereotype. As early as the Bismarck years . . . the German had been
conscripted to serve the role previously assigned to the French, as the
blinkered devotee of method and abstract theory.180 By the turn of the
nineteenth century . . . Germany was clearly established as the new evil
empire in Europe, even more demonised than France.181
The new enemy is given the cast-off garb of the old enemy. But, in so
doing, something of the older British image of the Germans remains.
Simpson detects the characteristically twentieth-century British treatment
of the Germans as far back as Samuel Taylor Coleridge: [h]ere are both
sides of the British image of the German the wild, emotional visionary,
and the totalising man of method.182 What the analysts, particularly
Russell and Berlin, offer is a way of understanding the twin tracks of this
British-manufactured German identity. In the work of the analytic philo-
sophers, the German system provides a cover behind which to mask the
truly wild emotional debaucheries beyond. Such a reconciliation between
French and German stereotypes must have been made easier by the per-
ceived alliance between French existentialism and German thought, easing
the way for the analysts to bring together the image of the French and the
Germans, creating a monolithic continental intellect.
What this history also points to, again, is the significance of politics to
philosophy. In this case, as Simpsons comments make clear, it is at least in
part the shift in political power from the early nineteenth century, when
revolutionary France appeared to pose the greatest threat to Britain from
Europe, to a situation by the late nineteenth century, after the Franco-Prus-
sian war, when Germany became militarily ascendant on the continent of
Europe and then became the prime twentieth-century threat to British
power. This process is mirrored by Germanys apparent ascendancy in phi-
losophy, and ultimately becoming the enemy on the philosophical front, as
well as on the political one.
Conclusion
What we have seen in this chapter is identity positions constructed for

analyst and continental which straightforwardly break down as a binary
between virtue and vice. The continentals engage in unacceptable philo-
sophical practices: metaphysics, obscurity, poor argument, and appeals to
the emotions. In contrast the analysts are anti-metaphysical, they subscribe

to sound argumentative strategies partly evidenced by their ability to
critique the anti-canons poor ones, but also evidenced in their commit-
ment to doing small projects well. The continentals are obscure, which the
analysts condemn in favour of philosophical clarity. The anti-canon hit
their readers below the intellect. The analysts do not indulge in such hot
prose and rhetoric.
On the level of character, we have seen the analysts portraying themselves
as jovial, calm, content and upright, in contrast to the continentals, who are
riven by anxieties and any number of personality disorders. We have also
seen the sheer weight of imagery deployed by the analysts in conveying the
irrationality of the anti-canon. And of course, most recently, we have been
reflecting explicitly on the way the philosophical and character flaws of the
anti-canon are related to their political vices. Finally, weve seen again how
this catalogue of virtues and vices also manifests as a distinction between
the British on the one hand and the continentals, specifically the Germans
and to a lesser extent the French, on the other.
Nicholas Martin sums up his characterization of the use of Nietzsche in
British propaganda during World War I by commenting: The enemy had
to be demonized.183 From what we have seen, it may be fair to conclude
that a similar necessity gripped the analytic philosophers in the period of
the Second World War. What we see is the construction of identities, identi-
ties based around a binary between virtue and vice on the level of philoso-
phy character and politics.
The other task of this chapter and the reason why it has been the hard-
est of all to write is the attempt to demonstrate the interconnection of
these elements. As one might expect from a process of identity formation,
the analysts do not rigidly separate the character components from the
strictly philosophical, from the political philosophical, from the plain
political. Indeed these elements are so intertwined that one has to do a cer-
tain violence to the texts in order to separate them sufficiently to discuss
the various elements. Because of this unfortunately necessary violence it is
worth here, very briefly, sketching these intertwining webs.
Let us start with metaphysics, whether one is pro- or anti-metaphysics
which one might think of as a strictly philosophical question turns out to
be bound up with whether one has a character of a certain kind: use of
metaphysics often signifying a weak character. But this in turn signifies a
philosophical vice the willingness to falsify the world in order to satisfy
your own desires. This character trait is associated, though not in all cases,
with a philosophical position: epistemological subjectivism. Moreover,
metaphysics itself is associated with fascism, from what we can tell, because
its deceptive nature can be used to misdirect people, to seduce them; but
also because fascism manifests a power philosophy which seeks to recreate
the world according to its ideological commitments fascists too are episte-
mological subjectivists. Finally, as we have seen, metaphysics is also associ-
ated with Germany, and in particular with the German character.
The making of poor philosophical arguments and obscurity of prose are
read both as philosophical failings and failings of character a desire to
deceive and seduce. The idea of philosophical prose as deceptive and seduc-
tive is linked to the notion of philosophical prose as causing aggression
hot temperature of argument, and again to fascists, who seek to seduce and
intoxicate their followers. This again has a national dimension to it, as the
analysts inform us of the British philosophers preference for small scale
flexible investigations.
The explicit way in which particular philosophical preferences are tied
directly to national identity fractures the hermetic seal around analytic
philosophy at multiple points. In each of these examples the philosophical
is bound together with character and politics. We will see in the next
chapter that exactly the same occurs in the analysts characterization of the
link between their own philosophical and political virtues. It is only through
this cluster of attitudes, some strictly philosophical, some definitely not,
that we can fully understand both the vitriolic treatment of the anti-canon
and the attendant errors to which it led.
Chapter 4
The Virtuous Tradition: Analysis,

Liberalism, Britishness
I think there is some connection, both historically and psychologically, between

Empiricism and Liberalism: I mean Liberalism in that large and non-party sense
in which we say that the English speaking countries have a liberal tradition.1
(H. H. Price 1940)
The only philosophy that affords a theoretical justification of democracy, and that
accords with democracy in its temper of mind is empiricism.2
[A] certain critical temper that you would develop if you did philosophy in the sort
of way that Naess and I do it, it would on the whole tend . . . after all, you bring
the same intelligence to bear on any of a wide range of problems, even though they
arent necessarily the same range of problems, and this would, I think, tend to have
the effect of making you a liberal radical in social and political questions. This
would be more than just historical accident.3
(A. J. Ayer 1974)
There is a rather high correlation between the endorsement of analytic philosophy

and the adoption of liberal, secular, melioristic ideology of the Enlightenment.4
(Anthony Quinton 1982)
While this was neither a message consistently offered by the analysts, nor a
part of the popular perception of them, they did have a clear confidence in
the liberality of their own tradition. We can see from the quotations, above,
that this analytic tendency was not confined to the immediate period of this
project, but can be found, among the increasingly venerable analysts, until
very recently. As the comments of Price and Quinton make clear, this is not
a purported alliance with liberalism in the narrow, laissez faire, sense of the
The Virtuous Tradition 127
term, but a with a much broader ideology, encompassing democracy and

toleration.
We have been charting, over the last three chapters, a web of beliefs held
by the analysts, and it will therefore be no surprise that in this final chapter
many of the points to be made are extensions of what are by now familiar
themes. This chapter has two major sections; the first relates the analysts
confidence in the liberality of their tradition to the political-philosophical
assumptions we have seen in previous chapters. The second section relates
the analysts liberality to British nationalism. Even this division can now be
seen to be somewhat forced in that the political, philosophical assumptions
we discuss in the first half of this chapter are clearly related to the national-
ist assumptions discussed in the second. However, even at this late stage we
cant do more than one thing at a time.
Subjectivism, Nazism and the Death of

Political Philosophy
One notable aspect of the analysts political self-identification as liberal is

that it came under public and strenuous attack in the years after World War
II, on two related fronts. First, the analysts were accused of holding a subjec-
tive position on values, a position which threatened to undermine morality.
Secondly, the analysts were accused of paying so little attention to political
philosophy that they were held responsible for its death. In both cases,
there was at least a grain (and probably rather nearer a bushel) of truth
behind the allegations. Yet neither seems to have stung the analysts into
fundamentally questioning their assumptions about the liberality of their
philosophy.
I cannot do full justice to either critique of the analysts here, but it is
worth sketching these criticisms in, if only to more clearly juxtapose the
easy confidence of the analysts own reflections with a context that might be
thought to have made them distinctly defensive.
In the immediate post-war period the analysts came under attack in
intellectual circles for holding a position on ethics that was seen to under-
mine not just liberalism but any political or moral values. The ethical sub-
jectivism that was the legacy, if not the creed, of G. E. Moore saw the analysts
attacked throughout the post-war period for various crimes against
morality. Most strikingly, Ayer was accused in 1948 of giving succour to
fascism by peddling a theory which would sap peoples concern with funda-
mental human values.5 Russell too was embroiled in this affair and faced
widespread criticism in philosophical circles for taking political positions

that his meta-ethical views were unable to justify.6 In a book on the subject
in 1950, C. E. M. Joad summed up the problem with, specifically Ayers,
meta-ethical commitments:
if there is no objective right or wrong, if moral judgements are, as logical

positivists hold, merely ejaculations of emotions of approval or disap-
proval, then, as Mr Dunham points out, one cannot demonstrate that
Fascist practices are evil; one can only express dislike of them. No philo-
sophy he comments, would better please the fascists themselves, since
moral questions could then be safely left in the hands of the police . . .
Now can anyone seriously maintain that the spread of such doctrines will
have no consequences for ethics, politics and theology [?] . . . Can a man
really continue to feel indignant at cruelty, if he is convinced that the
statement cruelty is wrong is meaningless? An emotion of indignation
may indeed be felt; it may even be expressed; but it will not long survive
the conviction that it is without authority in morals or basis in reason.7
Joad outlined a perennial problem for the subjectivist and a particular

problem for the extreme subjectivism of the emotivists among them
Russell and Ayer. While these two men, being the most public face of
analytic philosophy, caught most of the criticism, the other analysts, as Mary
Warnock has pointed out, held similarly subjectivist views on the question
of ethical language. Warnock spells out the implications:
[I]t was common ground that the two kinds of meaning, evaluative and
factual, were totally distinct. The consequence of this dichotomy was that,
while disputes about matters of fact could be settled, at least in principle,
by observation, disputes about matters of morality could not. Therefore
there was ultimately no arguing about morals or politics. Either one had
to say, I feel horror at such and such a course of action, even though you
do not, and leave it at that; or one had to turn You ought to do this or
that into Do this or that, a command for which no reason need be given
and to which, of course, no obedience could be extracted otherwise than
by force. Not unnaturally, moral philosophy came to seem both rather
empty and rather easy.8
In this context, it is, perhaps, understandable that concerns were raised

about the reduction of ethical philosophy, both in its content and status,
and the effects that this might have on the moral and political fibre of the
nation.
Away from questions of meta-ethics, the analysts commitment to political

philosophy was also dramatically brought into question. So apparently
disengaged from political philosophy were they that, when Peter Laslett
infamously declared political philosophy to be dead in 1956,9 the analysts
were singled out as the murderers:
[t]he Logical Positivists did it. It was Russell and Wittgenstein, Ayer and
Ryle who convinced the philosophers that they must withdraw into them-
selves for a time and re-examine their logical and linguistic apparatus.10
This prompted a lengthy discussion among commentators, and rather later

among the analysts themselves, about the reasons and motives for the aban-
donment of political philosophy.11 I do not wish here to be drawn directly
into a discussion of this topic, though some of the conclusions later in the
chapter do have a bearing on the question. We should, however, note one
clear exception to this pattern of analytic disengagement with matters
political-philosophical: R. M. Hare, like his analytic colleagues, was con-
vinced that philosophical errors underpinned German behaviour during
World War II. Unlike his colleagues, he felt the urgent need to correct those
errors. To this end he travelled to Germany in the 1950s to deliver a series
of lectures in applied ethics. In his Peace (1966), Hare issued a retrospec-
tive manifesto for the role of the moral philosopher in the political world:
[I]f we could understand the thinking processes which could persuade a

man like Hitler that what he was doing was right, we might be on the way
to immunizing people against such ideas. It is perhaps true that, if philo-
sophers had done their job better in the last two centuries (both the job
of clarifying ideas to themselves and the job of getting other people to
understand them) there would not have been a Nazi movement?12
Hare placed the philosopher centre stage in the post-war disinfection of

the European body politic. His first works of applied ethics Reasons of
State (1953), Ethics and Politics I: Can I be blamed for obeying orders?
(1955) and Ethics and Politics II: Have I a duty to my country as such?
(1955), were all first delivered as lectures in Germany, before being broad-
cast on the BBC. They clearly delivered messages Hare felt it was important
for the Germans to hear. The first lecture stressed to the German audience
that they had a duty to think critically about the actions of the state.13 The
second lecture attacks the notion that obeying orders is a moral imperative.
Hare rapidly showed that such a view is incorrect the refutation provided,
unsurprisingly, by David Hume.14 The third lecture, Have I a duty to my

country as such?, answered in the negative.15 The topics addressed touch on
what have now become caricatures of German squirming after World War II,
including the old favourite, the Nazi who was only following orders.
As well as being far more interested in matters political than his
colleagues Hare, a subjectivist himself, also attempted to overcome the
problems posed by Joad and others. Later in this chapter, I will offer one
explanation for his unusual engagement with political philosophy. I will
also suggest that, despite Hare being exceptional in the time and energy
devoted to analysing the possible sources of liberal values within a subjecti-
vist framework, his attitudes fit very much within the web of understanding
that I will demonstrate guided the analysts thought about the relationship
between empiricism and liberalism.
This short section allows us to draw out a series of teasing issues. As we
have seen, the analytic philosophers were so apparently uninterested by
political philosophy that they were accused of bringing about its demise.
Moreover, they were accused of destroying the basis for a belief in values
and so of delivering their followers into the hands of Nazis through their
meta-ethical subscription to subjectivism. Nevertheless, the analysts believed,
apparently with a serene confidence, that there was a strong link between
their empirical philosophy and political liberalism. This, as it stands, appears
in need of some kind of an explanation.
The key to understanding the analysts belief in their alliance with liberal-
ism, despite their lack of work on the subject and the highly public criticism
of their subjectivism, lies in their cultural assumptions. The binary between
canon and anti-canon, which we have seen set up in the previous chapters,
gave the analysts powerful reasons to see their philosophical method as one
with essentially liberal outcomes.
The Liberality of the Analytic Philosophers
In this section, we will canvass the arguments the analysts put forward for
their own liberality by dividing them into two broad sections. The first set of
arguments vindicates the analysts politically through a direct contrast with
the vices of the anti-canon. Just as metaphysics leads to fascism, so anti-
metaphysics leads to anti-fascism, and so on. I examine this theme by
looking first at their hostility to metaphysics and theory, then at their calls
for scepticism and clarity. The second type of argument appears to be
more positively based on some significant philosophical links between the
analysts epistemological commitment to empiricism and their political

commitment to liberalism.
Virtue through exclusion I: Metaphysics and theory

Since the analysts believed they had identified the intellectual causes of
fascism, one way in which they could assert their liberal credentials was sim-
ply to abjure the philosophical methods that lay behind totalitarian philos-
ophy. This would, at the very least, lead to the avoidance of totalitarianism,
even if it did not provide a positive vindication of liberalism.
The methodological contrasts we saw drawn in the last chapter could,
therefore, also been seen as political contrasts. When Ayer wrote in 1948 that
[f]ascists have hitherto tended to favour some form of metaphysics . . .,16
this contained a powerful implication, that Ayers own, anti-metaphysical
philosophy, would also prove an anti-fascist philosophy. This was a connec-
tion he made in an interview with Bryan Magee in 1978. He called logical
positivism consciously hostile to the German tradition of romantic meta-
physics; and having linked this romantic movement to Nazism, in a passage
already quoted, he went on: [s]o logical positivism was against the German
tradition, both intellectually and politically.17
Ayers understanding of logical positivism was, then, as a theory with real
political ramifications. This belief issues directly from the analytic philoso-
phers belief in the relationship between Nazism and the anti-canon of
metaphysical philosophers. The Nazis are threatened by logical positivism
because, according to Ayer, the Nazis favour metaphysics.
Ayers belief in the anti-metaphysical/anti-Nazi dynamic in logical positi-
vism must have been strengthened by the treatment of its principal expo-
nents, the Vienna circle, during the 1930s, first by the authoritarian Austrian
government and the Austrian Nazi party, and eventually by the German
regime in Austria. There is confusion in the literature on this topic con-
cerning the extent to which the Vienna circle conceived of themselves as a
political movement. Ayer appeared to believe that, irrespective of any direct
political activity, the values of the circle were so dangerous to successive
reactionary governments that they had to be broken: [t]he German occu-
pation of Austria dispersed the Circle . . . the radical spirit of the group and
its rational outlook made it unacceptable to the Nazis.18 These must have
been excellent credentials not just for Ayer, but for the other watching
analytic philosophers too.
As we have seen, a belief in the relationship between metaphysics and the
proto-totalitarian anti-canon was one widely shared by the analysts. It was
not just Ayers hostility to metaphysics, then, that could be understood to

have a political dimension. While none made the relationship between
their anti-metaphysical and their anti-totalitarian credentials as explicit as
did Ayer, such an attitude would entirely fit with the analysts other beliefs
about the anti-canon. If we recall the imputations of vice and deception,
which accompanied the critique of metaphysics in Chapter 3, it would be
highly surprising if the other analytic philosophers did not privately con-
clude that their anti-metaphysical stance was a politically powerful one.
But the political distrust of metaphysics was part of a wider political dis-
trust of theory and on this subject the analysts were more forthcoming.
Their concern was that the application of theory to politics would, as with
the application of metaphysics, swirl people up in an ideological frenzy,
in which humanitarian concerns would be forgotten. Conversely, the
empiricists anti-theoretical approach would tend to humanitarianism.
As Otto Neurath, a member of the Vienna circle, wrote:
empiricists on average are less prepared to become merciless persecu-

tors, and not so frequently the enthusiastic followers (for the higher glory
of THE transcendent nation, ideal, etc. or something else) because they
are not prepared to sacrifice their own end and other peoples happiness
to something idealist and anti-human.19
In keeping discussion out of the realm of high and abstract ideals to which
all other interests must be subjugated, empiricism proves politically salu-
tary. Political virtue rested in resisting the lure of abstractions which entice
us to sacrifice concern for individuals. Theorizing is politically dangerous;
analysts dont go in for theorizing, therefore, analytic philosophers are in
less danger of authoritarianism.
Warnock suggested that the analysts hostility to Heideggerian obscu-
rity, rhetoric and mystery-mongering20 was related to a certain distrust
of Theories,21 which many analysts, especially Austin, considered distort-
ing.22 By contrast, what Austin demanded, according to Williams and
Montefiore, was the unvarnished truth.23 This of course relates to the
claims we found made by the analysts about the dangers of metaphysics in
the last chapter, that a theory could be used as a veil for bad arguments and
false claims. But the choice of the Nazi-apologist Heidegger as Warnocks
example indicates that politics is not far below the surface here. This
becomes explicit in a comment made by Stuart Hampshire, who worked
for military intelligence during the war. Afterwards some of his former
colleagues in intelligence turned out to be Soviet spies. Hampshires
explanation for this was that their anger about poverty and injustice was
manipulated by communist doctrine; they were deceived by theory.24
Russell drew a clear contrast between the political vices inherent in the
anti-canon practice of theory, and the political virtues attendant on analytic
methodology, using Locke as an example:
Locke, as we saw, is tentative in his beliefs, not at all authoritarian and

willing to leave every question to be decided by free discussion. The
result, both in his case and those of his followers, was a belief in reform,
but of a gradual sort. Since their systems of thought were piecemeal, and
the result of separate investigations of many different questions, their
political views tended naturally to have the same character. They fought
shy of large programmes all cut out of one block, and preferred to con-
sider each question on its merits. In politics, as in philosophy, they were
tentative and experimental. Their opponents on the other hand, who
thought they could grasp this sorry scheme entire, were much more
willing to shatter it to bits and then remould it nearer to the hearts
desire. They might do this as revolutionaries, or as men who wished to
increase the authority of the powers that be; in either case, they did not
shrink from violence in pursuit of vast objectives, and they condemned
love of peace as ignoble.25
Here the tentative piecemeal approach that characterized Lockes phi-

losophy is seen to have anti-authoritarian properties when applied to poli-
tics. The virtues of Locke and the analysts prove the precise inverse of the
theoretical approach to philosophy, which creates large programmes in
pursuit of vast objectives. The small-scale approach of Locke, focused on
merit and individual need, results in gradual reform and controlled pro-
gressive change. By contrast, for the sake of the ideologically-given grand
plan, Lockes opponents will not hesitate to deploy violence to get their
way. As in the previous chapter, the virtues of the analysts in this respect are
accompanied by the related vices of the (here unspecified) other. In this
case the willingness or otherwise to undertake large-scale theorizing reveals
not just philosophical virtue and vice, but also political virtue and vice.
We find a similar set of beliefs in the work of Ayer. He wrote compara-
tively little on political philosophy; in a paper first given in 1967 he goes a
long way to explaining why and in so doing highlights the importance of
the analysts hostility to theory. For a long time now, it seems to me, theo-
retical principles have played a very small part in English politics . . . There
is often a coating of theory but the arguments in which it is deployed are
mostly ad hoc: they have not stemmed from different theoretical systems.26
He characterizes this approach as political empiricism:
[t]he result of this prevalent empiricism and here I am using the word
empiricism not in the philosophical, but in the political sense, in which
an empirical is contrasted with a theoretical approach is that political
science is reduced to a combination of economics and psephology.27
Political empiricism, then, is just the supposedly non-ideological piecemeal

and pragmatic approach to solving social problems. It is this anti-theoreti-
cal aspect of British political life to which Ayer is keen to draw attention.
Clearly, as he implies by calling the British approach to politics empiricist,
there will be a powerful alliance between the anti-theoretical political
practice of the British politician and the anti-theoretical philosophical
commitments of the British analyst.
It was Iris Murdoch who clearly identified the political dimension of the
analysts hostility to theory:
[i]t is moreover felt that theorizing is anti-liberal . . . and that liberal-

minded persons should surround their choices with a minimum of
theory, relying rather on open and above-board references to facts or to
principles which are simple and comprehensible to all.28
Murdoch argued that there was no strictly philosophical reason for

abandoning theory. It therefore emerges that the choice made by our
intellectuals against the development of theories is a moral choice.29 The
hostility to theory, then, has both a moral and political dimension a feeling
that to undertake theoretical work is illiberal. The analysts dislike of theory,
and their trenchant criticism of those who indulged, was one powerful
support to their liberal credentials. Against the high abstractions of theory,
the analysts repeatedly juxtapose their own small scale, piecemeal experi-
mental and quasi-scientific philosophical analysis, perfectly designed to drill
holes in the most imposing of edifices. If vast systems gave rise to totalitari-
anism, make such vast systems difficult, if not impossible to produce.
Virtue through exclusion II: Scepticism and clarity

Together with the distrust of theory went other politically virtuous charac-
teristics. A broad scepticism characterized the tradition, allied to a subscrip-
tion to clarity which forced murky dealings into bright light. Mary Warnock,
writing on the immediate post-war period: [w]e preferred to burst balloons
rather than inflate them. After six years of propaganda, no-one was about
to pull the wool over our eyes.30 We saw balloons in the last chapter Hare
discussing the continentals inflating balloons with noxious gases and
floating them over the channel in our direction. Warnocks image suggests
a group of analysts ranged across the white cliffs of Dover to shoot these
balloons before they make landfall.
This deflationary scepticism was seen as a tonic. It was to this virtue that
Bernard Williams credited the British success in throwing off Hegel, while
continental philosophy indulged him: [w]hile the influence of Hegel
radically changed the rest of European thought, and continues to work in
it, the sceptical caution of British philosophy left it, after a brief infection,
markedly immune to it.31 This scepticism is buttressed by another of the
great analytic virtues clarity. This virtue was required for mental hygiene32
and also had a political purpose. These are G. J. Warnocks observations on
J. L. Austins attitude to teaching:
[i]t was not that he thought it mattered whether people in general held
correct, or even any, philosophical opinions; what was vitally important
was that as many as possible should acquire the habit of, and some skill in,
clear methodical thinking, and should be, as it were, immunized against
the wilder kinds of confusion, myth-mongering and intellectual trickery.
This had with him the force of a moral and political conviction.33
Here we have the familiar viral imagery, and imputation of lurking dangers.
But we also have a suggestion as to the kinds of dangers kept in check by
clarity Warnock suggests that there was a political dimension to this com-
mitment. This is a significant insight into British philosophy at this time.
As we have noted, the immediate post-war period is often seen as a period
in which political philosophy died out. What this quotation does is suggest
that at the heart of Oxford philosophy there was a moral mission, and
a moral mission that we have seen was bound up in the minds of Austins
followers, if not Austin himself, with the necessity to preserve the mental
hygiene of politics.34
Ayer also drew attention to the importance of conducting philosophy
clearly and precisely. In the last interview before his death, he drew, once
again, on the contrast with the anti-canon. Ayer was asked to characterize
British empiricism:
[s]ticking close to the facts, and close to observation, and not being
carried away by German romanticism, high falutin talk, obscurity, meta-
physics. Its a tradition, on the whole, of good prose. That is very important.
If you write good prose, you cant succumb to the sort of nonsense we get
from Germany and now also from France.35
He labours the point further: [o]ne of the great dangers of philosophy is

woolliness, and woolliness, particularly among Germans, is always masked
by very unclear writing.36 Here, Ayer catalogues almost all the major
anti-canon intellectual vices that we have been examining. He also identi-
fies good prose as prophylactic if you keep your style clear and unambigu-
ous you cannot fall into German nonsense. It is significant that nonsense,
for Ayer, is German nonsense, and only latterly French (it seems likely Ayer
considered the French nonsense to be emanating from those Frenchmen
recognizably drawing on the German tradition, like Sartre and latterly
Derrida). In these observations, Ayer touches again on the philosophical
nationalism underpinning the British position. We also see woolly think-
ing allied to a great danger of philosophy. The link here is not explicit,
but it surely cannot be too far-fetched to believe that in highlighting the
danger of German philosophy and the importance of the clarity of analytic
philosophy in countering it, Ayer had in his mind the political results of
allowing the practice of such dangerously woolly philosophy a link he had
already made directly in a previous interview.37
Hare offers the same connection much more explicitly. Clarity, for Hare,
is a crucial ally in the war against the political fanatic, [t]here will always be
fanatics, however they thrive on confused thinking.
If a person understands clearly what he is doing when he is asking a moral

question . . . if he is able to distinguish genuine facts from those facts
which are really concealed evaluations . . . then the propagandist will
have little power over him. To arm people in this way against propaganda
is the function of moral philosophy.38
Clarity is needed to unpick the fanatics moral from his factual claims to
sweep away the confusion he will seek to perpetuate. Again here, fanati-
cism, political vice, is tied up with intellectual and philosophical vice.
The analysts subscription to clarity turns out to be a political as well as a
philosophical virtue.
Liberalism and empiricism in alliance

But there was more to the analysts liberal confidence than simply asserting
a set of demands and exclusions no theory, no obscurity, no credulity.
As was implied in Russells comparison between Locke and his opponents,

there was a positive dimension to the empiricists belief in the relationship
between their philosophy and liberalism. Here we will look at three ways in
which the analysts conceived of their thought as positively liberal, as opposed
to simply anti-totalitarian. First, we will look at the claim that there is an
analogy between the empirical and liberal habits of mind, entailing that an
empiricist is likely to be liberal, and vice versa. Secondly, well examine
claims that link empiricism and liberalism through ascribing to both some
commitment to truth. Finally, well look at the suggestion that analytic phi-
losophy deliberately cultivates in its practitioners character traits that lend
themselves to good political decision-making.
Liberalism and empiricism a common mental attitude

We begin with the analogy drawn between the empiricist habit of mind and
the liberal habit of mind. Price made one such link in 1940, in a passage
quoted at the top of this chapter:
I think there is some connection, both historically and psychologically,

between Empiricism and Liberalism: I mean Liberalism in that large and
non-party sense in which we say that the English speaking countries have
a liberal tradition.39 Empiricism is hostile to humbug and obscurity, to the
dogmatic authoritative mood, to every sort of ipse dixit. It does not con-
ceive of Philosophy as a heresy-hunt directed against those who stray from
the truths once for all delivered to our fathers; but as a free co-operative
inquiry, where anyone may put forward any hypothesis he likes, new or
old, provided it makes sense. The same live-and-let-live principles, the
same dislike of humbug of the ipse dixit sort of authority, are characteristic
of Liberalism too . . . If Empiricist philosophy is strong to-day, perhaps we
may hope to see a revival of Liberalism the day after to-morrow.40
It is the empiricists intellectual habits, again contrasted against the author-

itarian humbug of another tradition (Hegel is mentioned both before and
after the passage quoted), that allies the empiricist with liberalism. The
careful live-and-let-live scientism of the empiricist is the natural ally of the
anti-authoritarian liberal. In 1940, his perception of this alliance was clearly
enough to provide Price with a measure of hope in the face of German
invasion.
The other analysts were also highly persuaded of the analogy in outlook
between liberalism and empiricism. Russell took a similar position in
Philosophy and Politics (1950), and in so doing, shows that Prices

hope of 1940 was not simply an unrepresentative clutching at straws: [t]he
scientific outlook, accordingly, is the intellectual counterpart of what is, in
the practical sphere, the outlook of Liberalism.41 For Russell, John Locke
exemplifies this unity:
[B]oth in intellectual and in practical matters he stood for order without

authority; this might be taken as the motto both of science and of Liberal-
ism. It depends clearly on consent or assent. In the intellectual world it
involves standards of evidence which, after adequate discussion, will lead
to a measure of agreement among experts. In the practical world it
involves submission to the majority after all parties have had an opportu-
nity to state their case.42
We saw above that Ayer referred to the British approach to politics as

political empiricism. Ayer clearly believed that the virtues he took to be
characteristic of the empirical approach to philosophy would also lead to
liberalism or, in this case more specifically, to his own brand of liberal radi-
calism in politics:
in general it has certainly been true in the last century or so that there has
been a close association, so close an association between empiricism and
radicalism that it couldnt entirely be an accident. But I think its a matter
of a certain habit of mind, a certain critical temper in the examination of
political and social as well as philosophical questions, that is responsible
for this, rather than some deduction from first principles.43
Pressed to elaborate his position, Ayer did so as follows:
a certain critical temper that you would develop if you did philosophy in
the sort of way that Naess and I do it, it would on the whole tend . . . after
all, you bring the same intelligence to bear on any of a wide range of
problems, even though they arent necessarily the same range of
problems, and this would, I think, tend to have the effect of making you
a liberal radical in social and political questions. This would be more
than just historical accident.44
He concludes: [a]nd, in a sense, I would expect an empirical philosopher

to be a radical.45 His biographer finds a similar link in the thought of Isaiah
Berlin.46 Michael Ignatieff writes that Berlins philosophy tutor, Frank
Hardie, became the single most important intellectual influence upon

Berlins undergraduate life: orienting him towards the British empiricism
that became his intellectual morality.47 This notion of empiricism as an
intellectual morality is an interesting one. Although Ignatieff does not
explicitly elaborate on this observation, a hundred pages further on in his
book he offers a comparison between Berlin and Albert Einstein which
seems to have a bearing on the theme. They shared, Ignatieff suggests,
a sense of reality:
There was only one world, Berlin wrote of Einstein, and this was the
world of human experience; it alone was real. This sense of reality that
the world was as it seems, and that it could be known only by patient and
careful research was the only sure guarantee against ideological intoxi-
cation . . . 48
The notion of a sense of reality invoked by Ignatieff offers us a route to

understanding these claims. Empiricists hold, in part, that the only world
that we can experience is the world given to us by our senses, and other
considerations must be ruled out.49 They denied the Kantian and post-
Kantian notion that reality was, at least in part, mind-created. Such a view
could, they felt, be used to justify the notion that reality can in fact be
remoulded nearer to the hearts desire to steal Russells phrase. The
analysts denial of the mind-createdness of the world, their sense of the
unique reality of the given world, is tied in to a guarantee against political
extremism. The focus on the concrete saves the empiricist from following
grand theories, metaphysical chimeras and other strictly exhortations to
devalue reality in favour of dangerous ideological fantasy.
The very groundedness of the empirical approach was a guarantee against
dangerous political ideas. In his essay of the same name, Berlin points to
the importance of the sense of reality for staying true to and focused on the
particularities of a situation, rather than reading it through a theoretical
schema that flattens, simplifies and generalizes.50 No surprise then that
Berlin characterized the romantics aim as to destroy ordinary tolerant
life . . . to destroy common sense.51 Common sense represents both a refusal
to theorize and a refusal to travel far from what appears obvious. Liberal-
ism, here, appears to be predicated on a common sense empiricism.
There are two dimensions of this that it is worth noting. First, we see that
the alliance between liberalism and empiricism is based on an assumption
about the philosophical nature of political evil. Only if you assume that
totalitarian politics issues from some kind of philosophically-inspired
romantic bid to recreate the known reality will an empiricist theory of

knowledge give you any guarantee against it. The analytic philosophers did
not appear to contemplate that totalitarian ideas may issue out of precisely
the small-scale, empirically-based activities that they saw as inherently
liberal.
What is clear from the quotations is that the analogy between the empiri-
cal and the liberal habits of mind was not one the analysts subjected to any
real philosophical scrutiny. Prima facie the analogy between liberalism and
empiricism is far from self evident; it would require a very careful elabora-
tion of central ideas in order to sustain the work the analysts appear to want
it to do. The analysts themselves clearly felt no such need, as they made no
such attempt. One recent analysis of the analogy, by Benjamin Barber, con-
cluded that the only parallel to be drawn between liberalism and empiricism
is that both tend to collapse into, respectively, political and epistemological
extremism.52 Not a result the analysts would have found palatable. At the
very least then, a mutually reinforcing relationship between empiricism and
liberalism is not intuitively compelling. This raises the question as to why the
analysts were so apparently compelled by it. I will return to this shortly.
Commitments to truth
Beyond the notion of an analogy between empiricist mental habits
and those of the liberal, the analysts also appeared to draw a more concrete
link between the two systems of thought. The claim was that empiricism is
allied to liberalism because both hold some subscription to truth. This
strand of their thought is hard to separate from the previous one. Indeed,
we might read Ayers comments above as implying such a relationship. He
proposed a link between empiricism and liberal radicalism on the basis that
anyone deploying the schooled intelligence and critical temper character-
istic of an analytic philosopher would come to liberal conclusions. There
was also a suggestion of this position in Berlins notion of a sense of reality.
We read these comments as proposing an analogy between the liberal
pattern of thinking and that of the empiricist, but it could be read as a
stronger claim to the effect that somehow empiricism, because it gives us
access to the facts, will also secure for us the right kinds of political out-
comes. Is there a claim that the actual truth about the world does not favour
extremism, and that therefore if one can get at the facts (via empirical
methods), one sees that liberal politics is epistemologically superior? Here
empiricist practice becomes the tool through which the truth about politics
can be seen.
This is a position that the analysts did more than simply hint at. In the last
paragraph of his History of Western Philosophy Russell is explicit about the
importance of truth.
In a welter of conflicting fanaticisms one of the few unifying forces is sci-

entific truthfulness, by which I mean the habit of basing our beliefs upon
observations and inferences as impersonal, and as much divested of local
and temperamental bias, as is possible for human beings. To have insisted
upon the introduction of this virtue into philosophy, and to have invented
a powerful method by which it can be rendered fruitful, are the chief
merits of the philosophical school of which I am a member. The habit of
careful veracity acquired in the practice of this philosophical method can
be extended to the whole sphere of human activity, producing, wherever
it exists, a lessening of fanaticism with an increasing capacity of sympathy
and mutual understanding. In abandoning a part of its dogmatic preten-
sions, philosophy does not cease to suggest and inspire a way of life.53
This passage shows Russell appealing to the morally salutary power of

commitment to truth, a commitment that he suggested was absent from
philosophy before his own school introduced it (a claim that is at best
ungenerous to the rest of the history of the discipline). But this passage also
has the feel of a political manifesto. Scientific truthfulness will light the way
to a new age of mutual human respect and understanding and it is
Russells analytic philosophy that carries the torch.
In another comment Russell masterfully ties the threads of these ideas
together:
[i]n every important war since 1700 the more democratic side has been
victorious. This is partly because democracy and empiricism (which are
intimately connected) do not demand a distortion of the facts in the
interests of theory.54
Here we can see a repetition of the claim that theorizing is falsifying in

some way. But we are also introduced to the notion that somehow democ-
racy is pre- or non-theoretical, straightforwardly true, and therefore because
of its clear veracity it requires no falsification of our understanding of the
world. This should ring bells as it is a variation on the claim, seen in the last
chapter, that in bending the world to fit your theory, and therefore your
desires, you falsify the world you seek to represent. The claim here is that
somehow neither democracy nor empiricism fall into this trap. It is not
clear whether this is because these ideas are non-theoretical, or whether

they are based on a theory of such purity that no distortion of the facts is
required. Finally, we have a wild historical claim that the democratic side
has won every important war since 1700. This three-way alliance between
military success, a political system, and truth is rather reminiscent of the
rationale of the crusades (or of a rather crude neo-Hegelianism).
We find the same suggestion of an alliance between truth and liberalism
in Hares lectures to the Germans. Hare argued that, in combination, the
structure of ethical language and clearly stated empirical fact was a power-
ful weapon for liberalism and against totalitarians and fanatics. In the
following passage, Hare demonstrates the liberal powers inherent in the
logic of ethical discourse:
[i]n his war with the fanatic, the best strategy for the liberal to adopt is
one of persistent attrition. For there are, as we have seen, certain weap-
ons available to him, in the nature of moral thought, which, if he keeps
fighting and does not lose heart, will cause all but a small hard core of
fanatics to relent.55
The truths of logic, as revealed by analytic philosophy, provide the liberal

with tools to use against the totalitarian. But the inoculation of the public
against the propaganda of the extremist is a three-stage process, with phi-
losophy providing only the first phase:
[h]e will be successful in this aim, if he can get the ordinary member of
the public, first to be clear about the logical properties of moral words, as
we have described them; secondly to inform themselves about the facts
concerning whatever question is in dispute and thirdly to exercise their
imaginations.56
Hare, like Berlin and Russell, is content to assume that there are no facts
about the world which will ally themselves to the totalitarian. Despite his
subjectivism, there is an assumption here of a moral order, reflected both
in the formal rules of logic and in empirical data about the world.
Unlike his colleagues, however, Hare gave concrete indications as to
how this works in practice. Here, I will offer just one of the many instances
of this type of argument in Hares work. One of his lectures in Germany,
Can I be blamed for obeying orders? (1955), illustrates the politically
salutary power of the logic of ethical language. The purpose of this paper
was, fairly self-evidently, to critique what Hare saw as the German attempt
to escape moral responsibility for war crimes by citing the duty to obey
orders.
Hare argued that it was the analytic philosophy of David Hume which
proved that the argument for the moral necessity of following orders is not
only false, but is clearly so from the nature of moral language itself. Hume
achieved this by revealing the logical truth that anyones desire for me to
perform an action is logically independent of whether I ought to.57 Here a
terrible political mistake, the supposed blind obedience of the German
army and people to the Nazis, is put down to a simple logical error: [t]here
is a point beyond which we cannot get rid of our moral responsibilities by
laying them on the shoulders of a superior, whether he be general, priest,
or politician, human or divine. Anyone who thinks otherwise has not under-
stood what a moral decision is.58 We get a sense from this of the structure
of Hares lectures in Germany, combining seemingly simple logical max-
ims, and an almost preacherly pointing of the moral. On one level, it is
small wonder that Hare believed that, with a higher class of philosopher,
Germany may have saved itself considerable hardship.59
These arguments, conducted at length in Freedom and Reason, and far
more rapidly in Hares lectures to the Germans, provide a more meaningful
attempt to ally analytic empirical philosophy with liberalism than any of the
other analysts provided in this period. Hares essential case, though, is not
dissimilar to the claims made by Russell about the alliance of liberalism to
truth, with empiricism as the method of discovering that truth. Logic,
combined with the empirical facts, represents a powerful ally to the liberal
cause. Indeed, Hare echoes the claim made by Russell that the fanatic will
always need to seek to distort the truth,60 which explains, he argued, why,
on the whole (though there are set-backs) liberalism advances against
fanaticism.61
Hampshire, while not straightforwardly an empiricist, nevertheless
believed that the analysts liberal credentials stemmed from their subscrip-
tion to truth. Again the contrast is offered explicitly with the anti-canon.
Writing about the tradition of Hegel and Heidegger he argued: [t]he first
requirement of a philosophical assertion that it should be true is no lon-
ger even considered, provided it is psychologically impressive and moving.
Worryingly, this appeal to the emotions of an audience leads this kind of
philosophy to gain followers rapidly.62 To combat this:
philosophers in Britain and Australia, and in Scandinavia and America

also, cling to the idea that their first duty is to try to make statements that
are true, even if they are not always exciting, and to respect the bodies of
ascertained truths which are labelled science and history. To meet

those of their critics who are uninterested in truth, a pragmatic apology
can be found in the fact that none of these analytic philosophers has
been friendly with Nazis or with other totalitarian parties, and that is not
an accident. Anyone who is a member of these parties or is friendly with
them, has to acquire the habit of making statements that are impressive
and powerful without any regard to their testable truth.63
There is very much that is of interest in these quotations. Hampshire, like

Russell makes explicit a claim that has been heavily implied in some of the
other analysts remarks, that it is a pure commitment to truth that guaran-
tees the analysts freedom from the corrupt ideas of Nazism. This is an argu-
ment, of course, that is entirely continuous with the analytic critique of
fascism and anti-canon philosophy that we examined in the last chapter.
If fascist-favouring philosophy requires distortion of the truth to get off the
ground, and the analysts stick, like good empiricists, simply to the given
facts, then they achieve immunity from extremism.
Clearly this argument only works if you assume, as the analysts did, and as
Hampshire conveniently reiterates here, that the anti-canon philosophers
had no commitment to truth and that therefore the political movement
which they spawned was intellectually bankrupt. While Russell and Hare
appear to offer something more than this by building a link between liber-
alism and empiricism on a positive metaphysical foundation that there is
something about liberalism that is simply true here Hampshire reverts to
the rather more negative characterization of the relationship. Subscription
to truth here does not offer us a vindication of liberalism; it simply defeats
totalitarianism.
Emotional control and liberalism

The other dimension to Hampshires comments is the place of appeals to
the emotions, as the opposite of appeals to truth. This is also something
we have seen before. Hampshire suggests that Hegel and Heidegger gain
followers due to the emotional appeal of their wares (and this must surely be
an allusion to totalitarian political movements, given how Hampshire con-
tinues). Commitment to truth, then, becomes an anti-totalitarian strategy in
part because it appears to disallow the project of remoulding the world
according to the hearts desire. We noted in the last chapter how important
both the accusation of emotional weakness and the use of emotional rheto-
ric was in the analysts construction of the anti-canon. Unsurprisingly, the
analysts saw their own deliberately un-emotional practice as necessarily

politically benign. In September 1935, Russell attended the International
Conference for the Unity of Science at the Sorbonne dominated by the
Viennese logical positivists. He wrote about this for Polemic in 1945:
[i]n their official sittings [the philosophers] discussed highly abstract

matters, but in their spare time they would touch on all the most thorny
questions of European politics. I observed, with astonished admiration,
that national bias hardly ever showed itself in these discussions. The
severe logical training to which these men submitted themselves had, it
appeared, rendered them immune to the infection of passionate
dogma.64
Logic, here, provides an antidote to, or more appropriately an immunisa-

tion against, passionate political dogma no mean feat in the tempestuous
days of the mid-1930s. Russell made a very similar claim about the intellec-
tual habits of empiricism recall his contrast between the careful gradualist
Lockean reformers and their violent opponents, who thought they could
grasp this sorry scheme entire [and] . . . shatter it to bits and then
remould it nearer to the hearts desire.65 In Philosophy and Politics,
Russell suggests that Lockes piecemeal and patchwork political doctrine
was a response to the evils of sectarian enthusiasm.66 What we see here is
that the distinction between the wild emotional debauch of the anti-canon
and the calmness of the canon is one with a distinctly political dimension.
Ryle and Hampshire both offered insights into the political virtue associ-
ated with the empiricists emotional control. They suggested that the care-
ful scientific approach to philosophy had positive political effects through
helping to increase self-understanding and lessening destructive passions.
Ryle argued that even through Lockes work on epistemology, the Essay on
Human Understanding, there is a political message. Lockean common sense
suggests a common basis of thought for all people and thus a way to tolera-
tion.67 Ryle went on: [c]an ordinary, or even highly sophisticated people be
converted from bigots into fairly judicious and cautious thinkers by examin-
ing, so to speak, the mechanics of their own intellectual operations?68 The
implied answer is a definite yes! Ryle holds up the permanent significance
of Locke as the lesson he taught us in reasonableness and the holding of
beliefs based on evidence and arguments. There are bigots, fanatics and
cranks in our midst in 1965, but thanks to Locke we look at them as people
to be criticized.69 Ryle seems to make a number of inter-related points here.
The paper from which these observations are drawn was an introductory
piece, delivered to summer school students at Edinburgh University so

there is much less detail than might be desirable; however the one clear
aspect of Ryles message is that Locke provided tools for the removal of big-
otry by psychological self-scrutiny. The result: judicious, cautious thinkers;
the reverse of the emotionally violent anti-canon.
Hampshire made an apparently similar point rather more clearly, while
discussing Hume:
[h]is philosophy, his theory of knowledge, his ethics, and his political
theory are designed to persuade men to understand their passions, and
thereafter calmly and without enthusiasm to make arrangements that
they should live together peacefully and agreeably, in a decent compro-
mise with the conflicting demands of their nature.70
Significantly, for Hampshire, even Humes epistemology has ameliorative

powers in the political world. The means to this appear to be, effectively,
emotional control through self-knowledge. This sort of cold reasoning with
ones desires and needs again represents the polar opposite of the anti-
canons tendency to elevate their purely subjective desires into truths about
the universe.
Warnock also linked the calmness of analysis with political virtue. He
wrote in 1958 that: [f]or my own part I am inclined to think that they only
need feel strongly hostile to contemporary philosophy who have cause to
fear or to dislike a clear intellectual air and a low temperature of argu-
ment. Modern philosophers tend to use their pens as an instrument of
deflation . . . any age or any society in which these pursuits [minute analy-
sis] were wholly neglected would be, in my judgement, seriously the worse
for that.71 This passage taken from the last paragraph of Warnocks book
again points to the social and political uses of the analytic philosopher,
as a maintainer of cool heads and grounded argumentation. The imagery
Warnock uses here is the same as that used in his account of the faults of the
anti-canon, the analysts argue at low emotional temperature; the idealists,
we recall argue at high temperature. Warnock warns that any society that
was without the analysts brand of cool, dispassionate criticism would suffer
serious but unspecified hardships.
In the case of the emotions, then, the analysts positive characterization
of their own calmness and its liberal effects seems bound up with their
critique of the anti-canon. As such, it may appear that structurally it belongs
with our discussion of the analysts list of prohibitions. But this structural
anomaly raises a rather important point. We came to discussing emotions
through the contrast Hampshire drew between appeals to emotions and

appeals to truth. This makes plain something that must have become
increasingly apparent to the reader as we proceeded. The provisional
distinction we sought to draw between the analysts prohibitions against
philosophical tactics used in totalitarian thought (through demanding
clarity not obscurity, scepticism not enthusiasm, small scale investigations
rather than metaphysics and theory) and their apparently more positive
claims about a link between analytic philosophy (particularly empiricism)
and liberalism cannot be sustained.
The analysts positive claims about their own liberality are also very highly
dependent on their assumptions about the nature of political vice. The
analysts belief that empiricism and liberalism cultivate similar habits of
mind, rests, as we noted above, on the assumption that political vices do not
stem from what the analysts conceived of as empirical investigations, but
only from grand theories. Their belief that liberalism and empiricism are
united through the idea of truth is based, in part, on the assumption that
rivals to liberalism must derogate from truth in order to construct their
positions. This seems to be tied up at least in part with the analysts assump-
tions about the deceptive nature of the anti-canon project, and also about
the paucity of its intellectual standards. Even the analysts positive beliefs
about their own liberality, then, are to a large extent bound up with their
assumptions about continental philosophy.
However, it doesnt seem quite right to characterize all of what we have
seen as reliant on the characterization of the anti-canon: at least not directly.
There does seem to be among the analysts a belief that goes beyond the
negative claim that democracy wins because fascism loses. There seems to
have been a more positive, metaphysical belief in the alliance of truth and
liberalism; a belief that through a combination of untheorized scientific
and commonsensical facts and logical rules analytic empiricism could pro-
vide evidence for liberalisms veracity.
Philosophically this was clearly a very thin claim indeed. The notion of
any pre-theoretical data issuing in just one manifestly obvious political
interpretation was as open to question in the mid-twentieth century as it is
today. Moreover, all the analysts, Hampshire and Berlin excluded, had the
problem that, by dint of their subjectivism, there was no way to draw a moral
conclusion from any amount of purely empirical data. The relationship
between what was True and what was Good, a staple of philosophical
thought since Plato and, as Nietzsche realized, a fundamental assumption
of scientism, was not one that the analysts could justify philosophically. The
analysts, as much as Nietzsche himself, were philosophically committed to
the dictum that [t]here is no pre-established harmony between the

furthering of truth and the good of mankind.72
Nietzsche, in fact, may offer one way of reading the analysts assumptions
on this front. The analysts subscription to scientism has by now been widely
canvassed.73 If one wished to offer a Nietzschean reading of the analysts
liberalism, one might argue that their faith in the power of modern science
was unconsciously accompanied by the belief in the alliance between Truth
and Goodness, upon which modern science was formed.74
While it seems likely that such assumptions may well have formed a part
of the analysts thinking, I will propose an alternative explanation, one
that seeks a contextual understanding of a creed that could take liberalism
for granted despite being formed amidst the chaos of the first half of
the twentieth century. This returns us to the Britishness of the analysts
self-image.
Britishness, the Guarantor of Political Virtue
In this section, we will examine the overlapping ways in which the

analysts drew confidence in both their own liberal credentials, and the
self-evident veracity of liberal values, from their assumptions about
the nature of British philosophy, British history and British character.
First we will look at the analysts reflections on the post-war climate in
Britain which they portray as characterized by its liberal homogeneity
and distance from the political tempests blowing on the continent. We
then go on to look at the way in which the analysts saw British character
as buttressing liberalism, before finally examining the way they drew all
these strands together, making explicit connections between Britishness,
empiricism and liberty.
The political calm of post-war Britain

One dimension of the analysts liberal confidence appears to have been the
lack of any perceived threat to liberalism in Britain after 1945. Despite
being accused of dangerous subjectivism and fostering Nazism, Ayer gave
confident assurances that British liberal values were secure and entirely cor-
rect. He wrote in 1963:
the fact is that there seems at present to be no call for any fundamental
revision of our moral outlook . . . By and large we find ourselves still at
home in the moral climate of liberal humanism which was fostered by the
Enlightenment and developed, anyhow theoretically, by the nineteenth
century utilitarians.75
The British are still at home with liberalism, an allusion to the claim that
British history has been a history of liberality. No change is required.
He wrote, in 1967, that:
one reason why political philosophy is hardly a live subject in this country,
so that more than most others it has the air of living on its past, is that our
society is . . . ideologically homogeneous . . . on fundamental questions of
organization no-one has any new ideas . . . In this matter I am like the rest;
I have nothing new to offer. Only the old familiar liberal principles; old but
not so firmly established that we can afford to take them for granted.76
There is here a warning against taking for granted the stability of English
liberal democracy, but it is eclipsed by the assurance of his foregoing
remarks. The English nation has, for Ayer, effectively grown out of political
theory why else would it be required to live on its past? It hit, many years
ago, on the right answer and has stuck with it united around old familiar
liberal principles. Reflecting back on the period, Hampshire paints a
similar picture, and he offers a contrast with the political turmoil of the
continent:
[t]hese were the gentle post-war years . . . when Communism and anti-
Communism were the preoccupations of Europe, and of the United
States but not of Britain, where philosophy flourished within a stable lib-
eral consensus. Marxism, the Communist Party, and the Catholic Church
were focuses of thought and of polemic which set the direction for Conti-
nental philosophies; but in Britain they were largely ignored. Analytical
philosophers might happen to have political interests, but their philo-
sophical arguments were largely neutral politically.77
Politics, in its problematic ideological form, is something that took place

elsewhere. Britain was gentle, the liberal consensus was stable, British
philosophers are neutral. Meanwhile, on the continent there are commu-
nists and catholics and philosophy is polemical. As Hampshire makes
explicit here, these sentiments can be understood as part of the post-war
feeling that, in Britain at least, the fundamental ideological questions had
been put aside, or resolved altogether.
The importance of British character

For the analysts, this post-war calm was a reflection of the wider virtues of
the British people virtues which provided a powerful guarantee against
the kind of political chaos that had recently gripped the continent. This
confidence manifests in two distinct claims. The first follows intuitively from
the types of claims we have already seen the common sense that the
analysts share with the British people turns out to have a political dimen-
sion to it. The second claim relates British character more directly to the
liberal virtue of tolerance, and respect for democracy.
The analysts preference for small scale philosophical enquiry and their
distrust of theory and abstraction, which provides one of their bulwarks
against dangerous political ideas, of course has a distinctly nationalist
dimension to it. The distrust of theory and fondness for common sense and
plain speaking are the very virtues that analytic philosophers share with the
British people. This alliance, noted in Chapter 3, can now be seen to have
an important political dimension.
It was just such qualities highlighted by Russell when he wrote of the fear
of pushing any theory to its logical conclusion, which has dominated them
[the British] down to the present time.78 Russell highlighted this again in
Philosophy and Politics, writing: [t]he British are distinguished among
the nations of modern Europe, on the one hand by the excellence of their
philosophers and on the other hand by their contempt for philosophy.
In both respects they show their wisdom.79 As we saw in Chapter 2, even
after British philosophy had been conquered by the idealists, Russell
points out that the two paradigms of analytic virtue, the ordinary man and
the scientist, were stolidly unimpressed.80 Not just the analysts, then, but the
British nation as a whole, share the politically salutary suspicion of pushing
ideas to extremes.
The views of the analysts as to the source of the exceptional virtue of the
British polity were shared by non-analytic philosophers. While not an
uncomplicated fan of what he saw as English anti-intellectualism, C. E. M.
Joad conceded that the English were on the whole, kindlier and more
humane than any other people . . . precisely because they do not care
about ideas.81 Of course, it was not all ideas that the British objected to, it
was abstract ideas, ideas that drifted too far from the sure foundations of
empiricism and common sense.
During and after World War II, the alliance between the down-to-earth
qualities of the working Englishman and liberty was also an important refrain
beyond the academy. It was the ordinary virtues of ordinary people that were
seen as holding the key to British victory in the war, but it was also the ordi-
nary virtues of ordinary people that enshrined the values of the nation. This
was reflected in the notion of a peoples war a stark contrast to the heros
war of 1914.82 Churchill claimed that the British people as a whole have
a natural inclination to defend liberty and the rule of law . . . Collectively
the common people became a moral as well as an economic category.83
The true home of English liberty was not its coffee houses where men of
affairs met to discuss politics, nor the cloisters of her ancient universities,
but in the attitudes of working people. No surprise then, that the analysts
preferred choice was for metaphors which united them with the source of
British virtue: both Ayer pointing to philosophers as gardeners, and Hare to
philosophers as plumbers are a part of what we can now see to be an alliance
between analytic philosophy and the ordinary man with a distinctly political
dimension. Stapleton has noted that, [c]entral to th[e] conception of
English exceptionalism was an opposition to the abstract, intellectualist
values which were often deemed responsible for the political travails abroad.84
This opposition was common to the analysts and to the British people.
There were also many more direct links made between the British
character and the liberal virtues. Such links were central to discussions of
Englishness in this period. In the 1930s, as war approached [a] vast amount
of attention was lavished on the beauties of national character; the alleged
tolerance of the English, their kindness to others, their love of sportsman-
ship . . . Straightforwardness, simplicity, loyalty, truthfulness, reliability,
conscientiousness, were all it seemed quintessentially English virtues.85
And this celebration of the English virtues continued into the war. Current
Affairs, an internal armed forces magazine, informed the troops in 1943
that Britain has taught the world that efficient government can be com-
bined with freedom and respect for human dignity . . . we claim that we are
standing for progress, that we are at least trying to solve the problems of our
age in a spirit of tolerance and that we mean to establish freedom without
which life is meaningless.86 Britain fought, not just for her empire and
independence, but for fundamental human values, values she had taught
to the rest of world through her proud imperial history.
Even the arch critic of Whig history, Herbert Butterfield, found his atti-
tude turned about by the turning of the tide in Europe. In The Englishman
and his History (1944) he wrote: who among us would exchange the long
line of amiable or prudent statesmen in English history, for all those mas-
terful and awe-inspiring geniuses who have imposed themselves on France
and Germany in modern times.87 Here again, it is the character of the
Englishman that shows itself in the stable nature of British politics.
This was, unsurprisingly, a vision of Englishness that inspired the British

analysts as much as anybody else. Russell in particular was keen to point out
the liberality of character that was as much a part of England as the soil.
Russell wrote that Locke gave the first comprehensive statement of the
liberal philosophy. He went on:
[i]n England, his views were so completely in harmony with those of most
intelligent men that it is difficult to trace their influence except in theo-
retical philosophy.88
So highly assimilated are liberal values into the British nation that they
disappear into the warp and weft of everyday thought and behaviour.
In History of Western Philosophy, Russell sought to locate the spring of this
liberal English character in the Civil War and the Glorious Revolution, writ-
ing that the former instilled in Englishmen, once for all, a love of compro-
mise and moderation and a fear of pushing any theory to its logical
conclusion, which has dominated them down to the present time.89 By 1688
the English qualities of moderation and compromise were well established:
John Locke (16321704) is the apostle of the Revolution of 1688, the

most moderate and the most successful of all revolutions. Its aims were
modest, but they were exactly achieved and no subsequent revolution has
hitherto been found necessary in England. Locke faithfully embodies its
spirit . . . 90
The Glorious Revolution was a characteristically English affair, moderate in

its aims, unlike, we may imply, the high-sounding ambitions of libert, galit,
fraternit. Not only moderate, it was also entirely successful, such that the
English have felt no subsequent need to overthrow their rulers. This is glory
of a delightfully understated English kind.
In a later interview, with Woodrow Wyatt in 1960, Russell highlighted a
slightly different, but not incompatible, set of historical circumstances as
providing the historical root for Englands tolerant polity. Wyatt asked
Russell to characterize the virtues of English society. He answered:
a certain kind of diffused kindliness . . . I dont think they [the British]

have the same inflexible dogmas that are very common in other coun-
tries. And I think partly owing to the fact that we havent had a foreign
invasion since 1066, we havent got so much reason for savagery in our
history as most countries have.91
Finally, Russell locates the greatest virtue of the English character in its
ability to compromise.92 In Religion and Science, first published in 1935,
he referred to England as now, as always an exceptionally tolerant coun-
try.93 What we find in Russell is a restatement of many of the standard
tropes of British exceptionalism.
We find similar allusions to the benign political history and culture of
Britain in Isaiah Berlin, who drew a powerfully evocative contrast between
the world of proto-fascist Joseph de Maistre and the world, just across the
Channel, of Edmund Burkes England:
Maistres famous, terrible vision of life, his violent preoccupation with

blood and death belongs to a world different from the rich and tranquil
England of Burkes imagination, from the slow, mature wisdom of the
landed gentry, the deep peace of the country houses great and small,
the eternal society founded on the social contract between the quick and
the dead and those yet unborn, secure from the turbulence and the
miseries of those less fortunately situated.94
This rich passage suggests that the romance of Burkes England was not lost
on Berlin. Here, we begin to find explicit contrasts drawn between, on the
one hand, the turbulence and miseries of those less fortunately situated
a category that surely includes Maistres France, and possibly the continent
more widely and on the other we have a vision of a British nation where
turbulence is a forgotten aspect of history and where such novel explosions
as Maistres proto-fascism would never gain a serious audience. The idyll of
British life is represented as the inverse of the chaotic world in which ideas
like those of Maistre are taken seriously. This echoes of the same kind of
Whig assumptions that we have seen in Russells ideas and mid-century
British attitudes more widely.
If we turn briefly to another analyst, C. D. Broad, we find another explicit
contrast which highlights the importance of Englishness in the political
sphere. Broad, echoing the phrasing of Mussolini, argued that democracy
was not suitable for export.95 It requires an historical political evolution,
racial homogeneity and inter-class solidarity.96 I would add, for what it is
worth, a certain degree of calmness and phlegm in the average English-
man, Dutchman or Swede which contrasts with the excitability one seems to
notice in many other races.97 Here Broad links English character directly
to the English democratic system, and again offers a familiar contrast. The
calmness and phlegm which we have seen in previous chapters characteriz-
ing English philosophy is also a characteristic of the average Englishman.
Conversely, the excitability, or passion, which we have seen as an important

part of dangerous foreign philosophy, is now seen as a characteristic, not of
philosophy, but of particular foreign races. Broad does not specify which
foreign races but we could probably make some educated guesses.
His specific claim about the exceptional suitability of democracy to the
English was one that echoed strands of thought present since at least the
1920s, when Churchill congratulated the Italians on having liberated them-
selves from a form of government [democracy] to which they had clearly
been unsuited.98 Similar attitudes were also visible in the 1930s. An article
in The Times in August 1936 reflected that it may be that the system of par-
liamentary government which suits Great Britain suits few other countries
besides.99 Broad was a little behind the times in airing these thoughts in the
1950s, but not wildly out of step with wider opinion.
The alliance between British character and liberalism, which we find in
both the analysts work and in wider culture, was not a new one. As Tony
Kushner has pointed out, of both Britain and America: [i]n both coun-
tries liberal ideologies were welded to exclusively national frameworks,
based on notions of Englishness and Americanness . . .100 One was not
English, and latterly liberal, authoritarian or theocratic, ones liberal
credentials were congenital, taken up with ones mothers milk and nur-
tured by society. This view was complemented by a pattern of argument,
not found in the analysts but present in the work of other philosophers,
which linked English virtue to English institutions rather than explicitly to
English character. In an article on the Oxford Political Philosophers, Eric
Voeglin identifies a shared assumption that the principles of right political
order have become historical flesh more perfectly in England than
anywhere else at any time.101 Philosophers such as J. D. Mabbot, A. D.
Lindsay and R. G. Collingwood, shared fundamentally the same assump-
tions about the English body politic and the English character as the ana-
lysts. Voeglin wrote that contemporary political debate is only to a minor
extent theoretical discussion, while to a larger extent it is a cautiously
moving elaboration of civil theology and its adaption, if possible, to the
disquieting events of the age.102
Whether in terms of character or institutions, the peculiar liberality of
Britain was a powerful theme in post-war British thought. The nineteenth-
century Whig view of Britain as charting a specially blessed path through
the turmoil of history found a new lease of life, according to Stefan Collini:
[s]tanding alone, Britain resisted where others crumbled, reinvigorating
the traditional emphasis on British exceptionalism as a consequence.103
Political problems are not British problems

We have seen that the analysts combine claims about the liberal calm of
post-war Britain, with claims about the liberal character and history of the
British. This might be taken to imply a certain complacency about British
political virtue. This attitude did not pass unnoticed, or uncriticized. Irving
Kristol identified the nationalist sentiments of the analytic philosophers on
reading the analytic contributions to the first edition of Philosophy Politics
and Society (1956). His comments are worth quoting in full:
they reject the questions of political and moral philosophy because, in

their heart of hearts, they feel that while such questions might occur to
foreigners, they ought never to occur to well-adjusted Englishmen.
Throughout their essays there runs the crucial assumption that the prob-
lems of political philosophy have been contrived by political philoso-
phers, and that they would never occur to normal, sensible people.104
He goes on:
[t]he contributors to Mr Lasletts volume give the impression of being

convinced that, if only those horrid questions are not permitted to be
asked, then England will remain uncontaminated by the outrageous
perplexities that less fortunate races let themselves in for, and this little
island will be able to float peacefully in its blessed ignorance. 105
Kristol identifies precisely the attitude that we have been seeking to

illustrate. Political philosophy, and indeed moral philosophy when it
seriously challenges cherished convictions, is not to be had any truck with
in Britain. The problems of morals and politics are problems for foreigners,
who are perfectly entitled to get themselves into unnecessary intellectual
knots provided they dont seek to ensnare the British. Philip Pettit has
provided an insightful commentary on this state of affairs:
[t]here was probably little puzzlement in the minds of Western philoso-

phers in the early part of the century as to what are the rational commit-
ments in regard to political values. Continental refugees like Popper may
have felt that they had something to establish, for they would have had a
greater sense of the attractions of totalitarian government; Popper was
one of the very few analytical philosophers to contribute, however
historically and indirectly, to political theory . . . But the majority of
analytic philosophers lived in a world where such values as liberty and

equality and democracy held unchallenged sway.106
Here the definition of Western seems to have been narrowed to Britain

and America excluding all those on the continent. Notwithstanding this
quite significant redrawing of a line that is often taken to mark the bound-
ary of civilization to exclude continental Europe, Pettits analysis seems
highly plausible. Not only did the British have their blessed historical narra-
tives to fall back on, but such narratives appear to have been reinforced by
the first 50 years of the twentieth century. While the idea of moral progress
had been trampled all over Europe, in Britain it retained credibility.
It is interesting in this context to note that when Nol OSullivan set out
to write a paper on the British philosophical response to totalitarianism, all
but one of the thinkers he chose were immigrants from less stable climes.107
Of the thinkers he examines, Michael Oakeshott was the only one to have
been born and brought up in Britain and Isaiah Berlin was the only one
to have been primarily educated in Britain. The other two were more prob-
lematic. Karl Popper, an Austrian citizen, arrived in the UK in 1946. His
philosophical response to totalitarianism, contained in The Poverty of
Historicism and The Open Society and its Enemies has far more claim to be a
New Zealanders response to totalitarianism (the place where Popper wrote
the books), or an Austrian response to totalitarianism (Poppers native
land) than it did to be a British response. Friedrich Hayek, the other thinker
canvassed by ONeill, was Austrian by birth and became a British citizen
only in 1938 at the age of 39, after seven years residence. The Road to
Serfdom (1944) was written by a man well over two-thirds of whose life expe-
rience had been accrued outside Britain. The British philosophical
response to totalitarianism, as characterized by OSullivan then, came very
largely from those whose experience was not characteristically British
those who, unlike most Britons, had been exposed to totalitarian govern-
ment at first hand. Perhaps, as Pettit suggests, in order to be seriously
philosophically concerned by the threat of totalitarianism, one had to live
under it or be intimately acquainted with those who did.
One could fit Hare into this matrix too. Hares war experience separated
him from his colleagues. While many analysts served with distinction in the
war, few were primarily involved in combat. Hare by contrast was actively
involved in fighting the Japanese. As he recounts it, it was the Japanese
tradition of hara kiri that stopped him believing in intuitively graspable
objective moral standards.108 Taken prisoner, Hare was put to work on the
Thailand-Burma railway.109 Given this direct experience of a totalitarian
power in action it is perhaps understandable that Hare was one of the few
analysts to follow up the widely held belief that fascism was at root a flawed
philosophical project. For those whose experience had been of the com-
parative order and safety of Britain, the urgency of the task to correct these
mistakes cannot have been so keenly felt. In this context, that it was Hare
who went to Germany to lecture them on the correct moral outlook is
hardly surprising. Significantly though, as we have seen, he combined a
powerful concern with, and wish to correct, the dangerous ideas at the root
of totalitarianism with a belief that these problems were elsewhere. These
were German problems, or Japanese problems, not British problems.
Important to correct foreign confusions, certainly, but the English had
already learned these lessons. Hares position, then, shared dimensions
both of the migr attitudes of Popper and Hayek, and of the more compla-
cent opinions of his British analyst colleagues.
What we see here is one powerful source of the analysts political confi-
dence. Britain was under no ideological threat. Her values were stable and
homogenous, as they had been through a stable and liberal history. This
must have made a philosophical vindication of liberalism seem a much less
pressing task or, indeed, entirely unnecessary. And of course this set of
attitudes offers an explanation for the analysts wider failure to engage with
political theory. One doesnt start baling the boat until it starts filling up
with water.
Perhaps significantly, this reading of the analysts disengagement from
political philosophy was not simply levelled as an accusation at the analysts
from outside their ranks. When the analysts Bernard Williams and Alan
Montefiore sought to account for the lack of political theory in analytic
philosophy in their book British Analytic Philosophy (1966), they too turned
to a cultural-political explanation:
the lack of political philosophy in the recent British tradition [parenthe-

ses omitted], and most obviously, of course, the lack of a Marxist tradition
are clearly connected with the freedom from disruptive change in British
history, the sort of change that demands fundamental political reflection
on questions that have to be answered.110
Here the analysts read themselves through their cultural politics; instead of
offering a strictly philosophical account of the absence of political philos-
ophy, Bernard Williams, one of the most prominent British analysts of the
second half of the twentieth century, offers us an historical-cultural reading
of his tradition. What is peculiar about this line of argument, if correct,
is the ability of the British to allow victory to obscure the tremendous

disruptive change Britain experienced during the first half of the twentieth
century, not just the millions of deaths in two world wars and the levelling
of some of its major cities, but also its collapse as an imperial power, waves
of immigration from former colonies, the continued rise of the working
classes, and the emergence and victory of a new political force, the Labour
Party.
However, Williams is being rather ungenerous to his colleagues here in
reducing their lack of interest in political philosophy to the lack of an exter-
nal political impetus. As we have seen in the first half of this chapter, the
analysts were not apolitical in their philosophical thinking. Their philoso-
phy itself had crucial political dimensions lessening the perceived require-
ment for a specific engagement with the discipline of political philosophy.
Britishness, liberalism, empiricism

The liberalism of the British reflected straightforwardly on the analysts
buttressing their own sense of their philosophical liberalism. As we saw in
Chapters 2 and 3, the analysts conceived of themselves as part of a charac-
teristically British tradition. The British were liberal, the analysts were
British, and therefore the analysts were liberal.
But the analysts relationship with the heritage of liberal England had
more concrete aspects. For one thing, there was a persuasive coincidence of
personnel between this liberal England and British empiricism. Russell was
convinced that history demonstrated empiricism was associated with
democracy and with a more or less utilitarian ethic.111 He argued that the
historical connection between empiricism and liberalism revealed a philo-
sophical one:
[t]he only philosophy that affords a theoretical justification of democ-

racy, and that accords with democracy in its temper of mind is empiri-
cism. Locke, who may be regarded . . . as the founder of empiricism
makes it clear how closely this is connected with his views on liberty and
toleration.112
Locke combined, both personally and philosophically, empiricism and

liberalism. He stands at the beginning of an empiricist/liberal tradition
which includes the utilitarians and culminates in analytic philosophy. We
will see below that Hare incorporated Bentham and the Mills into this British
empiricist/liberal tradition. Later, Quinton points to their relationship
to Locke: [t]he three great exponents of classical liberalism Locke,

Bentham and John Stuart Mill make up a dialectical sequence.113 The
final link in this liberal chain was arguably Russell himself, whose liberal
credentials appeared almost genetic. In Bertrand Russell: A Political Life, Alan
Ryan points to the fact that [t]he Russells had been defenders of liberal
causes since the end of the seventeenth century.114 Russells Godfather was
John Stuart Mill; his midwife was the pioneering woman doctor Elizabeth
Garrett Anderson.115 And Russell was not merely liberal in heritage. Rich-
ard Wollheim: [i]t would, I think, be a matter only of simplification, and
not of grave distortion, to look on the whole of Russells social philosophy
as an attempt, a sustained attempt, to repair that of John Stuart Mill . . . 116
Philip Ironside, who has made a systematic study of Russells social and
political writing, follows the spirit of this simplification, arguing that Rus-
sells work maintained an underlying consistency of purpose, namely, the
preservation of certain Liberal values . . . 117
While Russell was probably the last great liberal link in the chain binding
empiricism and liberalism, most of his analytic disciples were, as Quinton
subsequently pointed out, staunchly left-liberal in their politics:
[t]here is a rather high correlation between the endorsement of analytic

philosophy and the adoption of liberal, secular, melioristic ideology of
the Enlightenment. On the ideological plane Russell occupies much the
same position as H. G. Wells and his followers are for the most part
spiritually at home with the Guardian and the Observer, a little to the right,
one could say, of Kingsley Martins New Statesman.118
These were liberal people, part of a liberal tradition in a congenitally

liberal country. This is another aspect of the liberal assurance on which the
analysts could draw.
Following on from this coincidence of personnel, liberality, nationality
and epistemology we have the natural drawing of a relationship between all
three in the work of the analysts. Such a relationship exists as an assump-
tion through many of the comments we have seen in this chapter and previ-
ously. Indeed, it is implied in the allotting of philosophical qualities to
nations. British philosophy comes with a bundle of distinctively British
qualities all reconcilable as part of a national identity; all simultaneously
offered as a contrast to a characteristically foreign approach. Isaiah Berlin,
who one might imagine would have been sceptical of English nationalism
by dint of his Latvian heritage and Jewish ethnicity, appeared nevertheless
to divide up the philosophical and political world in clearly nationalistic
terms. He, in fact, gives us one of the most explicit taxonomies of national
philosophies. In John Stuart Mill and the Ends of Life (1959), Berlin
argued that Mill
was a British empiricist and not a French rationalist, or a German meta-

physician, sensitive to day-to-day play of circumstances, differences of
climate as well as to the individual nature of each case, Helvtius or
Saint-Simon or Fichte, concerned as they were with the grandes lignes of
development were not. Hence . . . above all his hatred of the human pack
in full cry against a victim, his desire to protect dissidents and heretics as
such.119
In this quotation the national stereotypes that characterize even Berlins

thought are revealed. The pairings are as we would imagine, British empiri-
cist, German metaphysician.120 Mill is not just an empiricist, he is a British
empiricist, and it is this alliance that sustains his dislike of the human pack,
his liberal tolerance. Empiricism and liberalism are combined in the stew-pot
of the nation. We find the same alliance between Britishness, liberalism and
empiricism in Ayers thought. In his last interview he told Ted Honderich:
British empiricism is insular in the sense that it has its counterpart in

political attitudes in England and so on. We are on the whole a people
rather sceptical of high-falutin talk.121
Again here we have empiricism united to the political attitudes of England

(Ayers own liberal attitudes?) and the character of the British people; in
this case the example is scepticism about the distinctly foreign habit of
high-sounding discussion.
The same combination is also present in Hares thought. When he trav-
elled to Germany to deliver his moral lessons, he took with him a very clear
message. The Germans had made philosophical mistakes. In Peace (1966),
as we saw, Hare argued that if philosophers had done a better job, then
possibly Nazism would not have come about.122 The message he took to
Germany was that British philosophers had done a better job and had
been ignored. The Germans blindness in following orders was the result of
a logical mistake, which was clearly revealed by David Hume, an English
empiricist, back in the eighteenth century.123 Later in the century Hare is
even more explicit about this:
[b]ut the history of Germany is not a good advertisement for romantic

philosophy; I do think that if they had had philosophers of the calibre of
Bentham and the Mills during that period, and they had listened to them,
history might have been very different.124
If German philosophers had been as good as English philosophers, Hare

strongly implies here, Nazism could have been prevented. The breathtak-
ing confidence of this assertion is evident, still more so in that Hare was
prepared to travel to Germany to chide them for their stupidity at close
quarters. What we see here, in far more concrete terms, is the same confi-
dence in the alliance between Britishness, liberalism and empiricism that
characterized the thought of Ayer and Berlin. Indeed, this is the same
alliance that Kushner pointed to when he highlighted the nationalist frame-
works to which notions of liberality were attached.125
The confidence Hare displays in the corrective power of the British
intellectual tradition was entirely continuous with what, until 1955, had
been the British occupation policy in West Germany. The aim of the occu-
pation had been, according to Nicholas Pronay to substitute for [German
militarism] the ethical, philosophical and political ideas of Britain and her
transatlantic descendants.126 One of the pressing questions for the British
in post-war Germany, according to Noel Annan, who was himself involved
in the British occupation administration, was [h]ow, for instance, could
one inculcate a sense of personal responsibility in people used to obeying
orders without reflection.127 Hares approach, and his choice of topics,
then, appears as part of a wider pattern of thinking about Germany in post-
war Britain. Hare attempted to use British philosophy and philosophers,
like Hume, to correct the errors of German militarism, and in so doing
specifically addressed the problem posed by Annan that of bouncing the
Germans out of their supposed habit of blind obedience to authority.
Who better to teach the Germans civilization than the British?128 Who
better among the British than intellectual descendants of John Locke?
What Hares behaviour instantiates, albeit in extreme form, is the assump-
tion among the analysts of the relationship between their twin national tra-
ditions, liberalism and empiricism an assumption so powerful that Hare
felt able to travel across Europe to bring wisdom to the benighted
Germans.
Conclusion
What this chapter has shown, first and most straightforwardly, is that con-
trary to widely held opinion the post-war analysts did believe that their phi-
losophy was politically significant. They clearly saw it as allied to liberalism.
Any discussion, then, of the analyst-inspired death of political theory after

World War II should not make the mistake of assuming that the analysts
lack of interest in writing political philosophy reflected anything apolitical
in their thinking.
Secondly, weve seen that the analysts liberal self-conception was bound
up with their characterization of the political vices of the anti-canon philo-
sophers and with their diagnoses of the philosophical roots of those politi-
cal vices. We have also seen that the analysts confidence, both in their own
liberality and about the security of liberal politics after World War II, was
bound up with a celebration of the liberal character of the British people.
These two strands of the analysts thinking are complementary indeed
they are interconnected, as we have seen that the characterization of the
canon/anti-canon divide is in part based on assumptions about the nature
of British and German philosophy, British and German character. The
analysts characterization of the philosophical divide between canon and
anti-canon on this reading is a construction adapted from pre-existing
cultural tropes about national character.
Finally, what this chapter suggests is the strength of these cultural politi-
cal assumptions for the analysts. When the analysts critics looked at their
moral philosophy after 1945 and declared that they had no basis on which
to assert their liberal credentials, they were, philosophically, largely correct.
The analysts subjectivism significantly undermined any strictly philosophi-
cal attempt to build a strong defence of liberalism. What the critics failed to
see was a web of assumptions based on the analytic/anti-canon binary and
the perceived nature of British thought and culture. These ideas provided
multifaceted and culturally powerful reasons for the analysts to have confi-
dence in their own liberality. In the face of this identity, the accusations
of nihilism and fostering Nazism were negligible pinpricks for all their
philosophical power.
Epilogue
[I]f philosophy professors provide no account of themselves, of how they got to be

where they are or of where theyre going, then the impression given to their students
is inevitably that they somehow dropped from heaven. What drops from heaven is
hardly open to discussion much less to criticism. The usefulness of such a stand-
point to the professor can hardly be disputed. But neither can its harm to the
student.1
(John McCumber 2001)
The excitement that surrounded Derrida often seemed to be premised on the thought
that something called Theory enabled you to avoid the hard work, and effortlessly
attain some vantage point from which the Western novel, or Western philosophy, or
patriarchal science, or whatever the next target might be, could be diagnosed as
just another self-undermining discourse or narrative. This is of course an attitude
especially appealing to the young, and I think much of the heat of laffaire Derrida
came from the indignation of those who thought, rightly, that mockery and igno-
rance need taking down a peg, and that universities are a good place to do it. Seen
like this, Derrida or his disciples are like mentors encouraging people not to read.
And, alas, many in the world, whether ideologues in the White House, or similar
fundamentalists in Arabia, have found that a highly congenial lesson to absorb.
Hostility to this adolescent attitude also explains an apparent paradox that defend-
ers of postmodernism often seize on. This is that their opponents, careful academics,
managed in one breath to say both that Derridas works were gibberish, and that
they represented a dire threat to Western civilization. The paradox is only superfi-
cial, though. Some gibberish Lewis Carroll comes to mind emanates not con-
tempt but affection for its targets. But postmodernist gibberish does not. Out from
the confusion comes a distinct whiff of the complacency and superiority that come
from having seen through something by which the vulgar are taken in.2
(Simon Blackburn 2004)
By way of conclusion, I would like to make a several points about the

attitudes that we have uncovered, and their significance in their historical
context, before going on to talk about their wider significance and the
relationship of analytic philosophy to its history.
Most straightforwardly, perhaps, what we have seen throughout this
project is an inter-relationship between what historians of analytic philoso-
phy and analytic philosophers themselves would consider the strictly phil-
osophical, and wider political, cultural assumptions. This inter-relationship
between philosophy, politics, and character is not one that we have imposed
upon an otherwise rarefied sphere; it is one that we read about in the
writing of the early analytic philosophers themselves. This books principal
task was simply to show the weight of these cultural assumptions, their wide-
spread nature among the most significant analysts, and the way in which
they inter-relate with the strictly philosophical: with the critique of meta-
physics and theory; the demand for clarity, temperate debate and small scale
arguments; the critique of idealism. Many of the central hallmarks of ana-
lytic philosophy in its early phase have been shown to have according to
the analysts own testimony significant cultural and political dimensions.
The pervasive nature of these assumptions should, by now, be self-evident.
This, then, raises the question of the significance of these attitudes for
particular familiar features of the philosophical landscape. The attempted
exclusion of continental philosophy from British philosophy departments
by the analysts was to a significant degree volitional. There was, as discussed
in Chapter 2, an active process of forgetting and exclusion; it was not
merely absent-minded, nor a change of focus, though the latter certainly
did occur. It was significantly more hostile than that. This process of exclu-
sion took place at a time when there was a widely held belief among the
analysts that continental philosophy was culpable for the political crimes of
Germany in the twentieth century. This assumption of culpability does not
just run through the analysts assessment of the anti-canons political philos-
ophy. Its also present in the analysts broader characterization of anti-canon
thought and in their writing of the history of the emergence of analytic
philosophy and the collapse of idealism. And because, as I argued in
Chapter 3, the identification and condemnation of the anti-canon helped
the analysts construct their own distinctive nature, we can even say that the
cultural political assumptions about Hegel, Nietzsche, and their allies were
partly constitutive of the analysts own identity.
What all this suggests is that the divide between analytic philosophy and
continental philosophy, from the perspective of the British analysts at least,
was never a strictly philosophical one. It was a divide that encompassed the
Epilogue 165
philosophical, personal, cultural and political; and it was this web of belief
that mandated the expulsion of continental philosophy. It may, now, be
possible, with the help of hindsight and some precise logical instruments,
to separate the strictly philosophical critique of the anti-canon from the
cultural, political critique. But to do so would require us to do violence to
the historical record, and to the writing of some very significant and widely
respected analytic philosophers.
The nationalism of analytic philosophy has been another significant, and
perhaps more disturbing, theme of this book; of all the assumptions that we
have canvassed in this project, these appear to be the most visceral. The
analysts did, at least, sketch the conceptual relationship between the politi-
cal crimes of the Nazis and the philosophy of the post-Kantian philoso-
phers. But they never offer even such a limited justification of their
nationalist assumptions. They simply state them. The relationship between
types of philosophy and particular nations appears to be assumed: the
German susceptibility for metaphysics; the alliance between specifically
German philosophy and Nazism; the alliance between analysis and liberal-
ism, predicated to a great degree on assumptions about British national
history and character. Such views do not appear to fit with the empiricist
rhetoric and practice of the analysts which, one would think, would abjure
such national generalizations unless they could be supported by a tremen-
dous amount of evidence; evidence the analysts conspicuously lacked.
Two general points follow from these observations. The first is an histori-
cal point: that while the analysts nationalist assumptions do not fit comfort-
ably with their philosophical commitments, their beliefs both about their
own virtue and continental vice do fit neatly into strands of the wider public
debate on these subjects in the period 19301960. The analysts, then, can
be read as part of their culture, their time and place. In particular, and
rather ironically given the analysts stated lack of interest in history, we can
read the analysts as part of a post-war culture championing a revitalized
Whig history emphasizing the exceptional liberality of these islands, and
the qualities of the inhabitants which have formed it. We do not, then, have
to accept the claim that analytic philosophy operates in a realm of rarefied
debates on universal questions. This represents an invitation to historians
of twentieth-century British culture to go to work on the philosophers
with the same care and interest as they have shown to other academic and
cultural groups.
The second point to be made is more concerned with contemporary
philosophy. One of the striking aspects of the research for this book has
been the discontinuity between the rhetoric of the analysts about the
virtues instilled by their own approach and their treatment of these

political, cultural questions. Russell wrote that logic immunizes people
from passionate dogma and that the philosophy of analytic empiricism
suggests or inspires a way of life. The analysts demanded careful scrutiny of
arguments, rigour and clarity. None of this prevented them from entertain-
ing prejudices of a nationalist kind. Nor did their subscription to low
temperature of argument prevent them from writing in the most vivid and
dismissive way about the anti-canon. Indeed, many of the vices imputed to
the anti-canon by the analysts have been exhibited by the analysts them-
selves in these pages.
This was clear to some commentators in the mid-twentieth century. H. J.
Paton wrote of Russells History of Western Philosophy: [a] large field is thus
opened up for the display of personal prejudices from which, curiously
enough, he imagines himself and his philosophy to be largely immune.3
The gulf that we have seen between self-image and actual practice is
staggering, and was not confined to Russell. This is important, in that it
contributes to the debate, started by the analysts themselves, about the rela-
tionship between analytic philosophy and character. It appears that, con-
trary to the analysts beliefs, subscription to logic, rigour and the minute
analysis of words offered no wider immunization against enthusiasm or
prejudice. This might, perhaps, prompt a more thorough philosophical or
anthropological enquiry into the actual intellectual ramifications of
analytic training.
Having, with this last point, already broadened the scope of discussion
from the material covered in this book, I want now to go on to make a
couple of observations on the legacy of the ideas that weve canvassed in
these pages. The divide between analytic and continental philosophy
persists, although continental philosophy is far more visible in the UK than
it once was. As Bernard Williams has pointed out, the analytic/continental
distinction now exists within British philosophy departments, or in some
cases divides philosophy departments from departments of literature.4 The
career of Williams himself also offers us signs of an increasing catholicism
in analytic philosophy. His work marked the beginning of the rehabilitation
of a, suitably analyticized, Nietzsche. Many analytic philosophers, among
them my own teachers, do now engage with continental philosophers.
It is no part of this book to make a comprehensive case for the persis-
tence of the assumptions that Ive outlined if Im right they had a signifi-
cant impact on the profession through their influence on the first three
generations of British analysts, and the legacy of this impact remains in
structures like the analytic/continental divide, even if the attitudes
Epilogue 167
themselves are no longer visible. However, there is a good, albeit somewhat

speculative, argument to be made for the persistence of these views.
After all, we have seen in this book how tied up the analysts positive char-
acterization of themselves became with their negative characterization of
the anti-canon. It may be that this identity position makes it almost impossi-
ble to dispense with the condemnation of continental philosophy. Where
would analytic philosophy be without its nemesis?
More concretely, it is clear that such attitudes have not disappeared; sig-
nificant strands of continuity remain between the founding fathers of
analytic philosophy and their late twentieth and twenty-first century
successors. What is so interesting about the lengthy quotation from Simon
Blackburn, the Professor of Philosophy at Cambridge University, which
opens this chapter is that we here find the analysts critique of the anti-
canon intact in the twenty-first century. As Hegel encouraged the loss of
faith in reason, Derrida encouraged people to stop reading, which is fuel to
the fire of the fundamentalists and indeed represents, for some, a dire threat
to western civilization. It is the evil machinations of something called The-
ory that perpetuates these problems. Again, on closer inspection it turns
out to be gibberish, confused and ignorant. It is precisely the combina-
tion of vices that we have seen throughout this project, bad philosophy, lead-
ing to bad politics and once again it is the continentals who are at fault.
Jerry Foder recently bemoaned the popularity of continental philosophy
compared to the analytic variety before consoling himself with a familiar
analytic assumption: [a]nyway, our arguments are better than theirs.5
In 1997, Dagfinn Fllesdal argued that the traditional barrier between ana-
lytic and continental philosophy should be set aside and that instead any
philosophy which is very strongly concerned with argument and justifica-
tion should be considered analysis.6 Leaving aside the slight sense of
intellectual imperialism in the analysts deigning to allow such groups as
the phenomenologists into their club, it is interesting that the only two
examples Fllesdal offers to demonstrate that his definition is tight enough
not to allow in any intellectual riffraff are Derrida and Heidegger because
both, according to Fllesdal, are concerned with rhetoric rather than argu-
ment.7 Here central continental figures still serve, by their exclusion, to
reinforce the virtues claimed for analysis. There remains, then, an ongoing
culture of hostility towards at least some continental philosophy within at
least some sectors of analytic philosophy; the precise nature and scope of
this is for others to investigate.
The contemporary persistence and significance of the analysts assump-
tion of their own liberality is also an area that merits further investigation.
Analytic philosophy remains a discipline that is not conducive to political

radicalism. The pre-eminent figure in analytic political philosophy in the
last 50 years, the American John Rawls, takes liberal values not as question-
able but in an important sense as a starting point. Part of the reason for
Rawls positive reception in Britain, perhaps, is the persistence of liberalism
as an intellectual given for British philosophers, for reasons of an essentially
Whiggish kind.
There also appear to be important questions about the relationship of
the analytic canon of liberal empiricists to the history of British imperial-
ism. Harry Bracken raised these questions in the 1970s, yet they appear to
have been ignored within the discipline.8 Is the lack of engagement with
such topics among philosophers in part due to the fact that to break the
link between Britishness, logic and liberty would upset assumptions that
remain fundamental to British analytic philosophy? As this speculation
indicates, the field for this kind of research is wide open.
One teasing starting point is provided by Philip Ironside in his political
biography of Russell. Ironside points out that it was the most empiricist and
positivist aspects of Russells thought that brought him closest to fascist
ideas. His scientism contributed to his racism and was a crucial plank of his
belief in eugenics. In contrast it was the romanticism that he shared with
J. S. Mill, and which he castigated in others as a source of fascism, that gave
rise to his humanism.9 This insight apparently upsets the whole structure of
the analysts thought on these issues, inverting the equation between empir-
icism and virtue. As well as offering an interesting prism through which to
view Russells political engagement, this also has the potential to disrupt the
binary between analyst and anti-canon, virtue and vice.
To conclude: in historical context, one can begin to understand both the
analysts hostility to continental philosophy as a dangerous, inverted other
and the role played by the assumptions of English exceptionalism and the
attendant progressive Whig historical narrative. Both were beliefs with long
histories, present in Britain at least since the nineteenth century. However,
the dislike of history as a contextual subject, which characterized the ana-
lytic philosophers in the twentieth century, has for a long time rendered the
discipline blind to its own biases. The founders of twentieth-century British
analytic philosophy were children of their time and there is no question of
blaming people for their historical situation. Rather, the problem is with
the tradition of analytic philosophy which they inaugurated, a tradition
which, as McCumber notes in the quotation that begins this chapter, does
not seek seriously to scrutinize its own origins and assumptions. Analytic
philosophy did not drop from heaven; it is conducted in an historical
Epilogue 169
situation. Acknowledgement and exploration of this can be philosophically

invigorating, and may help the discipline forward from its much discussed
and seemingly perpetual state of crisis. The alternative, a continuing refusal
to engage seriously in the practice of history, will see analytic philosophy in
Britain continue unconsciously to be moulded by the very political and cul-
tural assumptions it seeks to ignore.
Notes
Introduction
1
Bertrand Russell, Religion and Science (Oxford University Press, 1960), 210. First
published in 1935.
2
Gilbert Ryle, The Open Society and its Enemies, Mind 56, 222 (April 1947),
1701.
3
H. H. Price, The Permanent Significance of Humes Philosophy, Philosophy 15,
57. (January 1940), 8.
4
Russell quoted in Gilbert Ryle, John Locke, in Collected Papers Volume 1, edited by
Gilbert Ryle (Hutchinson, 1971), 147.
5
R. M. Hare, The Role of Philosophers in the Legislative Process, in Essays on
Political Morality, edited by R. M. Hare (Clarendon Press, 1989), 1.
6
Ernest Gellner, Words and Things (Victor Gollancz, 1959), 245.
7
Aaron Preston, Analytic Philosophy: The History of an Illusion (Continuum,
2007), 25.
8
G. J. Warnock, English Philosophy since 1900 (Oxford University Press, 1958), 170.
9
It is no part of this project to engage in a parallel, but strictly separate debate
about the actual historical relationship between German philosophy and events
in twentieth-century German history.
10
Peter Simons, Whose Fault? The Origins and Evitability of the Analytic
Continental Rift, International Journal of Philosophical Studies 9, no. 3 (August
2001), 302, 304, 306.
11
Quoted in John McCumber, Time in the Ditch: American Philosophy and the McCarthy
Era (Northwestern University Press, 2001), xxi.
12
Peter Laslett (ed.), Philosophy Politics and Society (Basil Blackwell, 1956), ix.
13
For a discussion of this see Jonathan Re, Michael Ayers, and Adam Westoby,
Philosophy and its Past (Harvester Press, 1978).
14
David Bell, Philosophy, in The Twentieth Century Mind: History, Ideas, and Literature
in Britain Vol. 1 19001918, edited by C. B. Cox and A. E. Dyson (Oxford Univer-
sity Press, 1972), 174.
15
Bruce Kuklick, Modern Anglophone Philosophy: Between the Seminar Room
and the Cold War, Modern Intellectual History 3, no. 3 (2006), 551.
16
Robert Hanna, Kant and the Foundations of Analytic Philosophy (Clarendon, 2001);
Peter Hylton, Russell, Idealism and the Emergence of Analytic Philosophy (Clarendon
Press, 1990); Tom Rockmore, Hegel, Idealism and Analytic Philosophy (Yale University
Press, 2005).
17
McCumber, Time in the Ditch: American Philosophy and the McCarthy Era, 12. Material
in square brackets is my addition.
Notes 171
18
Ibid., George A. Reisch, How the Cold War Transformed Philosophy of Science: To the
Icy Slopes of Logic (Cambridge University Press, 2005).
19
As well as those already mentioned, it is worth noting Martin Kusch (ed.), The
Sociology of Philosophical Knowledge (Kluwer, 2000). Jonathan Re has been working
on analytic culture since the 1980s.
20
See the special issue, Imagining Germany from Abroad: The View from Britain,
German History 26, no. 4 (Winter 2008).
21
H. J. Paton, Fifty Years of Philosophy, in Contemporary British Philosophy, edited by
H. D. Lewis (George Allen and Unwin, 1961), 34950.
22
Nicola Lacey, A Life of H. L. A. Hart: The Nightmare and the Noble Dream
(Oxford University Press, 2004), 132.
23
Ibid.
24
Jonathan Re, English Philosophy in the Fifties, Radical Philosophy, no. 65
(Autumn 1993), 7.
25
Bryan Magee, Confessions of a Philosopher (Phoenix, 2000), 89.
26
There is more than a suggestion that Wittgenstein was understood, especially by
the Oxford philosophers, in part through his alien nationality. See, for example,
Lacey, A Life of H. L. A. Hart, 139.
27
See for example Bryan Magee, The Philosophy of Schopenhauer (Clarendon Press,
1997).
28
Quoted in Geoffrey Thomas, Cyril Joad (Birkbeck College, University of London,
1992), 17.
29
Gellner, Words and Things, Ray Monk, Bertrand Russell: The Ghost of Madness
19211970 (Vintage, 2001), 3856.
30
On the quality of Russells work see Monk, Bertrand Russell: The Ghost of Madness
19211970, xii.
31
See Chapter 4.
32
I am not seeking, here, to make a broader point about the necessity or otherwise
of some kind of theoretical approach to the writing of history or establishing
authors intentions. I simply want to highlight that the directness of the analysts
comments is helpful in interpreting them. A more explicitly theoretical approach
to the writing of the history of analysis would be fascinating and worthwhile.
It may, however, precisely because of its methodology, be less acceptable to its
potential audience.
33
Bryan Magee, Men of Ideas (BBC Books, 1978).
34
I would like to thank Stefan Collini for pointing out this potential line of
argument.
Chapter 1
1
Quoted in Thomas Baldwin, Interlude: Philosophy and the First World War,
in The Cambridge History of Philosophy 18701945, edited by Thomas Baldwin
(Cambridge University Press, 2003), 367.
2
Bertrand Russell, The Ancestry of Fascism, in In Praise of Idleness (George Allen
and Unwin, 1935), 82. Hereafter Ancestry.
172 Notes
3
Isaiah Berlin, Freedom and Its Betrayal: Six Enemies of Human Liberty, edited
by H. Hardy (Chatto and Windus, 2002), 95.
4
Indeed, if one were writing about British philosophers, rather than British
analytic philosophers, there would be a powerful justification for dispensing with
chronological structures altogether and displaying philosophers attitudes
towards certain continental thinkers as being essentially continuous from 1914
until the 1960s. This is not a route I can take here, simply because the analytic
movement was too young in 1914 for its views, as a movement, to be identified.
5
Karl Popper, Unended Quest: An Intellectual Autobiography (Open Court,
1982), 122.
6
Michael Ignatieff, Isaiah Berlin: A Life (Vintage, 2000), 2045.
7
An idea suggested by Hannah Arendt, The Burden of Our Time (Secker & Warburg,
1951).
8
Jonathan Re, Philosophical Tales (Routledge, 1987), 423.
9
Quoted in Stuart Wallace, War and the Image of Germany: British Academics
19141918 ( John Donald, 1988), 6.
10
Ibid., 34.
11
Ibid., 32.
12
Ibid., 33.
13
Baldwin, Interlude: Philosophy and the First World War, 367.
14
John Morrow, British Idealism, German Philosophy and the First World War,
The Australian Journal of Politics and History, no. 28 (1982), 380.
15
Hobhouse, quoted in Wallace, War and the Image of Germany: British Academics
19141918, 49.
16
Ibid.
17
Morrow, British Idealism, German Philosophy and the First World War, 385.
18
Thomas Weber, H-Net Book Review of Peter Hoeres Krieg Der Philosophen: Die
Deutsche Und Die Britische Philosophie Im Ersten Weltkrieg (H-Net, January
2006 [cited]); available from H-German@h-net.msu.edu.
19
David Boucher and Andrew Vincent, A Radical Hegelian: The Political and Social
Philosophy of Henry Jones (University of Wales Press, 1993), 15960.
20
J. H. Muirhead, German Philosophy in Relation to the War (John Murray, 1915). On
the reception of this see Baldwin, Interlude: Philosophy and the First World
War, 367; Morrow, British Idealism, German Philosophy and the First World
War, 382. On Ernest Barker see Julia Stapleton, Englishness and the Study of
Politics: The Social and Political Thought of Ernest Barker (Cambridge University
Press, 1994), 95.
21
Quoted in Nicholas Martin, Fighting a Philosophy: The Figure of Nietzsche in
British Propaganda of the First World War, The Modern Language Review 98, no. 2
(April 2003), 372.
22
Wallace, War and the Image of Germany: British Academics 19141918, 50.
23
C. E. M. Joad, Essays in Common Sense Philosophy (first edition). (Headley Bros.
Publishers Ltd, 1919), 167.
24
25
Joad, Essays in Common Sense Philosophy, 2389.
26
27
Ibid., 192.
Notes 173
28
Ibid., 198.
29
Ibid., v.
30
Joad, Essays in Common Sense Philosophy, 239.
31
Anthony Quinton, Ayers Place in the History of Philosophy, in A. J. Ayer Memorial
Essays, edited by A. Phillips Griffith (Cambridge University Press, 1991), 33.
32
Gilbert Ryle quoted in Ben Rogers, A. J. Ayer: A Life (Chatto and Windus,
1999), 66.
33
T. E. B. Howarth, Cambridge between Two Wars (Collins, 1978), 130.
34
Quoted in Rogers, A. J. Ayer, 68.
35
C. E. M. Joad, John Strachey, and G. C. Field, Liberty and the Modern State,
Aristotelian Society Supplementary Proceedings XIII (1934), 1718.
36
Russell, Ancestry, 89. The essay was subsequently reprinted again in a timely
collection of Russells political essays: Bertrand Russell, Let the People Think (Watts
and Co., 1941).
37
Ernest Barker, The Romantic Factor in Modern Politics, Philosophy 11, no. 44
(October 1936), 38991; Sir Herbert Samuel, Civilization, Philosophy 13, no. 49
(January 1938), 14; Sir Herbert Samuel, Presidential Address: Philosophy, Religion
and the Present World Conditions, Philosophy 10, no. 38 (April 1935), 141.
38
One squeak of a defence came from F. H. Heinemann, A Review of Friedrich
Nietzsche, Philosopher of Culture by Frederic Copleston, Philosophy 19 (1944),
889.
39
These exchanges are reproduced in Walter Kaufmann (ed.), Hegels Political
Philosophy (Atherton Press, 1970). The debate itself took place in 1940.
40
Joad, Strachey, and Field, Liberty and the Modern State, 42.
41
G. R. G. Mure, Oxford and Philosophy, Philosophy 12, no. 47 (July 1937), 299.
42
T. E. Jessop, Review of the Man Versus the State as a Present Issue by J. H.
Muirhead, ibid.,15, no. 57 (January 1940), 1056.
43
L. T. Hobhouse, The Metaphysical Theory of the State (George, Allen and Unwin,
1960).
44
William Montgomery McGovern, From Luther to Hitler: The History of Fascist-Nazi
Political Philosophy (George G. Harrap and Co., 1946). Wickham Steed and Aurel
Kolnai, The War against the West (Victor Gollancz, 1938).
45
F. C. Copleston, Nietzsche and National Socialism, Dublin Review, London (1941),
226.
46
Sir Paul Dukes, The Trouble with Germans, Current Affairs, no. 49 (14 August
1943), 78.
47
Rogers, A. J. Ayer, 132.
48
Ibid., 131.
49
Ibid., 144.
50
I will suggest some reasons for this in later chapters. Ayer did attempt to write a
book on liberty in collaboration with Stephen Spender in 19367. The collabora-
tion failed. Tantalizingly, Ayer then gave a series of lectures and seminars on
political philosophy in the summer and autumn of 1937. No records of these
events survive, though, as his biographer comments, one can guess at their
general spirit strongly anti-Hegelian. Ibid., 132.
51
Bertrand Russell, History, of Western Philosophy (George Allen and Unwin, 1946),
746. Hereafter History.
174 Notes
52
Bertrand Russell, Philosophy and Politics, in Unpopular Essays, edited by Bertrand
Russell (George Allen and Unwin, 1950), 10.
53
Ignatieff, Isaiah Berlin, 247.
54
Berlin, Freedom and Its Betrayal, 41.
55
Ibid., 95.
56
Ayer in Magee, Men of Ideas, 132.
57
A. J. Ayer, The Concept of Freedom, in The Meaning of Life and Other Essays,
edited by A. J. Ayer (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1990), 134. First published in
1944.
58
Price, The Permanent Significance of Humes Philosophy, 8.
59
Ryle, The Open Society and its Enemies, 1701.
60
Hare in Magee, Men of Ideas, 156.
61
Warnock, English Philosophy since 1900, 53.
62
63
Russell quoted in Wallace, War and the Image of Germany: British Academics 1914
1918, 47.
64
Russell quoted in Ibid., 131.
65
C. Delisle Burns, Bertrand Russell, and G. D. H. Cole, Symposium: The Nature
of the State in View of its External Relations, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society
XVI (19151916), 17.
66
Bertrand Russell, Dr Schillers Analysis of the Analysis of Mind, in The Collected
Papers of Bertrand Russell 9, edited by John G. Slater (Unwin Hyman, 1988), 39.
67
A book length study by Isaiah Berlin of relevance to this subject has recently been
produced by Henry Hardy Political Ideas in The Romantic Age. This is formed of a
manuscript that Berlin composed in the early 1950s. The attitudes revealed in
this volume reflect very closely those expressed by Berlin in Freedom and Its Betrayal.
The advantage of working with the latter, however, is that Berlin chose to make it
public whereas according to Hardy Berlin laid the manuscript of Political Ideas
aside in the 1950s and did not return to it. Isaiah Berlin, Political Ideas in the
Romantic Age: Their Rise and Influence on Modern Thought, edited by H. Hardy
(Pimlico, 2007).
68
On this see the editors introduction to Berlin, Freedom and Its Betrayal, Isaiah
Berlin, The Roots of Romanticism the A. W. Mellon Lectures in Fine Arts, 1965, edited
by H. Hardy (Pimlico, 2000).
69
Isaiah Berlin, Joseph de Maistre and the Origins of Fascism, in The Crooked
Timber of Humanity, edited by H. Hardy and Isaiah Berlin (Princeton University
Press, 1990).
70
Russell, History, 711.
71
Ibid., 727.
72
Ibid., 723.
73
Ibid., 725.
74
Ibid., 727.
75
76
Ibid., 47.
77
Bertrand Russell et al., Hegel: Philosophy and History, in The Collected Papers of
Bertrand Russell 10, edited by John G. Slater (Routledge, 1996), 494. From an
original broadcast in 1941. The quotation is from Cairns, who is in turn quoting
Russell.
Notes 175
78
Ibid., 496.
79
Ibid.
80
Ibid., 502.
81
82
Ayer, The Concept of Freedom, 134.
83
84
For an important critique of this perspective see Walter Kaufmann, The Hegel
Myth and its Method, in Hegel: A Collection of Critical Essays, edited by Alasdair
MacIntyre (Anchor Books, 1972).
85
Russell, Ancestry, 82.
86
Ibid., 93.
87
88
89
90
Ibid.
91
Ibid.
92
Heine quoted ibid., 72.
93
Heine quoted ibid.
94
Ibid., 73.
95
Isaiah Berlin, Two Concepts of Liberty, in Four Essays on Liberty, edited by
Isaiah Berlin (Oxford University Press, 1969), 150.
96
Ibid., 15051.
97
Ibid., 133, note 1.
98
Bertrand Russell, Freedom and Organization 18141914 (George Allen and Unwin,
1945), 4089. Thomas Carlyle is worth mentioning briefly here; Russell includes
Carlyle, an English thinker from the mid-nineteenth century, in his anticanon
mostly because he was a follower of Fichte. Russell, Ancestry, 946.
99
Andrew Vincent, Green, Thomas Hill (18361882). (Oxford Dictionary of National
Biography, 2004 [cited 6 October 2006]); available from http://www.oxforddnb.
com/view/article/11404.
100
101
Richard Wollheim, Democracy, in Political Thought since World War 2, edited by
W. J. Stankiewicz (The Free Press of Glencoe, 1964), 117. There is an allusion
here to Jacob Talmons critique of totalitarian democracy and its roots in
anticanon philosophy. Talmons book, first published in 1952, can only have
furthered the analysts existing belief in the relationship between Nazism and
nineteenthcentury philosophy. Jacob L. Talmon, The Origins of Totalitarian
Democracy (Heinemann, 1961).
102
C. E. M. Joad, What is at Stake and Why Not Say So? (Victor Gollancz: Victory
Books, 1940), chapter VI.
103
E. F. Carritt, Mr Carritts Reply, Philosophy 15, no. 59 (July 1940).
104
Berlin, Freedom and Its Betrayal, 41. Ayer in Magee, Men of Ideas, 132.
105
106
Russell, Religion and Science, 210.
107
108
Ibid., 779.
109
Nietzsche quoted in Russell, Ancestry, 90.
110
176 Notes
111
Ibid.
112
Ibid.
113
He is also not definitely antiSemitic, though he thinks Germany contains as
many Jews as it can assimilate, and ought not to permit any further influx of
Jews. Ibid., 7912.
114
Ibid., 792.
115
116
Ibid., See also Russell, Freedom and Organization 18141914, 401.
117
Bertrand Russell, Autobiography (Unwin Paperbacks, 1978), 244. Though, as we
will shortly see, Berlin saw Lawrence as very much a part of the proto-fascist
tradition.
118
Ibid., 245.
119
Russell, Freedom and Organization 18141914, 410.
120
On Schopenhauer, see Russell, History, 746. On Houston Chamberlain, see
121
122
Ibid.
123
Russell et al., Hegel: Philosophy and History, 502.
124
125
Monk, Bertrand Russell: The Ghost of Madness 19211970,175. This is Monks para-
phrase of Russells text.
126
127
Berlin, The Roots of Romanticism, 119, Russell, Ancestry, 1078.
128
129
Berlin, The Roots of Romanticism, 145. Precisely because it is not concerned with
simple, given, facts about the world romanticism can, for Berlin, be either reac-
tionary or revolutionary. Berlin, The Roots of Romanticism, 127.
130
131
Bertrand Russell, Power: A New Social Analysis (Routledge, 2000), 175.
132
133
Ibid., 739.
134
Bertrand Russell, Philosophys Ulterior Motives, in The Collected Papers of Bertrand
Russell 10, edited by John G. Slater (Routledge, 1996), 341.
135
136
Ibid., 223.
137
Ibid., 25.
138
In ibid.
139
Berlin, Joseph de Maistre, 126.
140
Ibid., 119.
141
142
Ibid., 82.
143
Ibid., 210.
144
Ibid., 96.
145
Ibid., 97.
146
Ibid., 105.
147
Monk, Bertrand Russell: The Ghost of Madness 19211970, 177. It has been suggested
that pragmatism owes something to Hegelianism. This, in turn, suggests that
Notes 177
Russell may be drawing a link this way between pragmatism and fascism. (M. J.
Inwood, Hegelianism, in The Oxford Companion to Philosophy, edited by Ted
Honderich, Oxford University Press, 1995.) If this was Russells thought, and this
is conjecture, it still does not help in establishing an historical influence by the
pragmatists, on the Nazis. Interestingly the relationship of pragmatism to Italian
Fascism was one that had some currency in the United States in the 1920s.
Some of those allied to pragmatism did welcome Benito Mussolini. However,
while Mussolini was keen to drop the names of pragmatists when talking to an
American audience, he rather betrayed himself by being unable to name a single
text written by William James. (John P. Diggins, Flirtation with Fascism: American
Pragmatic Liberals and Mussolinis Italy, The American Historical Review 71, no. 2,
January 1966, 489.) Russell, who visited America in the 1920s, may have picked
up this atmosphere. But it is one thing to say that some American pragmatists
liked Mussolini in the 1920s, and quite another to say, as Russell does, that prag-
matism helped cause fascism.
148
Bertrand Russell, The Thinkers Behind Germanys Sins, in The Collected Papers
of Bertrand Russell 11, edited by John G. Slater (Routledge, 1997), 368. First pub-
lished in 1944.
149
150
Ibid., 819. See also Russell, Ancestry, 83.
151
152
Russell, The Thinkers Behind Germanys Sins, 368.
153
Copleston, Nietzsche and National Socialism, 231.
154
Russell, The Thinkers Behind Germanys Sins, 368.
155
156
157
Ibid., 174.
158
Ibid., 127.
159
Ibid., 170.
160
Stanley G. Payne, A History of Fascism, 19141945 (University of Wisconsin Press,
1995), 11.
161
Zeev Sternhell has undertaken to show that all the significant fascist ideas first
appear in France, an argument that may bolster Berlins case. But it is not clear
that this is the type of historical link that Berlin was trying to draw; and it doesnt
alter the fact that in the 1950s Berlin did not have the warrant for this belief,
which was to be provided by Sternhell only in the late 1970s. Ibid., 291.
162
Isaiah Berlin, European Unity and its Vicissitudes, in The Crooked Timber of
Humanity, edited by H. Hardy and Isaiah Berlin (Princeton University Press,
1990), 196, 202. Berlin, Joseph de Maistre, 126.
163
164
Kaufmann, The Hegel Myth and its Method, 27. After this, therefore, because
of this.
165
Other thinkers treating this issue had similar problems. Joad, the other philoso-
pher to treat this question in detail, ties himself in causal knots. Ernest Barker
acknowledges that: [t]he interpretation of Nietzsche, if not Nietzsche himself,
is a parent of the dictator but does not allow this to detract too significantly
from criticizing Nietzsche as a progenitor of fascism. C. E. M. Joad, Guide to
178 Notes
Philosophy (Victor Gollancz, 1946), C. E. M. Joad, Guide to the Philosophy of Morals

and Politics (Victor Gollancz, 1944). Barker, The Romantic Factor in Modern
Politics, 389.
166
167
Isaiah Berlin, Kant as an Unfamiliar Source of Nationalism, in The Sense of
Reality, edited by H. Hardy (Chatto and Windus, 1996), 234.
168
There was clearly some softening of the analytic/continental divide in the 1970s.
This, however, has to be distinguished from the softening of Berlins own
attitudes which appear to become more nuanced on the issue of anticanon
thinkers the further he distances himself from analytic philosophy.
169
Martin, Fighting a Philosophy: The Figure of Nietzsche in British Propaganda
of the First World War, 376.
170
Stapleton, Englishness and the Study of Politics, 93.
171
Roland N. Stromberg, Redemption by War: The Intellectuals and 1914 (The Regents
Press of Kansas, 1982), 82.
172
On Carlyle see: Russell, Ancestry, 9496. On Nietzsche and Byron see above.
173
Bertrand Russell, Deweys New Logic, in The Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell
10, edited by John G. Slater (Routledge, 1996), 145.
174
175
Ibid., 752.
176
Ibid., 746.
177
Ibid.
178
Russell, Philosophy and Politics, 10.
179
180
A similar notion is found in Ernest Barkers essay on this subject. He identifies
only one Briton as a progenitor of fascism, and then is keen to emphasize that
he was a Scot who read German philosophy: [a]t any rate the only votary for
Heroes and Hero-worship in the history of English thought was a romantic
Scotsman who had steeped himself in German philosophy. Barker, The Roman-
tic Factor in Modern Politics, 401.
181
Bertrand Russell, My Debt to German Learning, in The Collected Papers of
Bertrand Russell 11, edited by John G. Slater (Routledge, 1997), 107. First pub-
lished 1955. One a logician, the other a mathematician, they did not occupy the
same philosophical territory as did the anti-canon thinkers.
182
Russell, The Thinkers Behind Germanys Sins, 370. First published in 1944.
183
Berlin, The Roots of Romanticism, 6. Elsewhere he strengthens this and speaks of
the romantic revolt occurring principally in Germany. Isaiah Berlin, The
Romantic Revolution, in The Sense of Reality, edited by H. Hardy (Chatto and
Windus, 1996), 169.
184
Berlin, The Roots of Romanticism, 121. Both Berlin and Russell accept that there
have been nonGerman romantics. But Germany is both the origin and the
natural home of the movement.
185
186
Berlin, European Unity and its Vicissitudes, 198.
187
188
189
Notes 179
190
Ibid.
191
T. M. Knox, Hegel and Prussianism, Philosophy 15, no. 57 (January 1940).
192
Although as we have noted, Berlin does do so some decades later.
Chapter 2
1
David West, The Contribution of Continental Philosophy, in A Companion to
Contemporary Political Philosophy, edited by Robert E. Goodin and Philip Pettit,
Blackwell Companions to Contemporary Political Philosophy (Blackwell, 1995), 39.
2
Peter P. Nicholson, The Political Philosophy of the British Idealists: Selected Studies
(Cambridge University Press, 1990), 230.
3
4
West, The Contribution of Continental Philosophy, 39.
5
Iris Murdoch, Hegel in Modern Dress, in Iris Murdoch: Existentialists and Mystics,
edited by Peter J. Conradi (Chatto and Windus, 1997), 146. First published: May
1957.
6
Quoted in P. M. S. Hacker, Analytic Philosophy: What, Whence and Whither?,
in The Story of Analytic Philosophy: Plots and Heroes, edited by Anat Biletzki and
Anat Matar (Routledge, 1998), 13. In actual fact Ryle himself had seen a copy of
Sein und Zeit, having reviewed it for Mind in 1929.
7
Walter Kaufmann, Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist, third edition,
(Princeton University Press, 1974), v.
8
A. J. Ayer, More of My Life (Collins, 1984), 24.
9
Thomas L. Akehurst, Ayer and the Existentialists. (MA dissertation, University
of Sussex, 2003). For a view more sympathetic to Ayers cosmopolitan credentials
see Stefan Collini, Absent Minds: Intellectuals in Britain (Oxford University Press,
2006), 397.
10
Rogers, A. J. Ayer, 237. My italics.
11
Magee, Confessions of a Philosopher, 157.
12
This claim was not unusual. There was a pattern among the analysts of dismiss-
ing continental philosophers as poets, or mystics. I cant fully address this point
here, although some of the explanation for it is implied in Chapter 3.
13
Raymond Plant, Philosophy, in The Twentieth Century Mind: History, Ideas, and
Literature in Britain Vol. 3 19451965, edited by C. B. Cox and A. E. Dyson (Oxford
University Press, 1972), 97.
14
Re, English Philosophy in the Fifties, 15.
15
Berlin quoted in Magee, Confessions of a Philosopher, 135. Again the significance
here of Vienna as an ally against the mainstream of continental thought.
16
Collini, Absent Minds: Intellectuals in Britain, 334.
17
G. J. Warnock, Gilbert Ryles Editorship, Mind 85, no. 337 (January 1976), 48.
18
Though Joseph had started out life as a realist and Collingwood would have
greatly preferred to be thought of in another way. R. G. Collingwood, An Autobi-
ography (Oxford University Press, 1970), 56; Clement C. J. Webb and C. A.
Creffield, Joseph, Horace William Brindley (18671943). (Oxford Dictionary of
National Biography, 2004 [cited 24 October 2006]); available from http://www.
oxforddnb.com/view/article/34243.
180 Notes
19
Anthony Quinton, Victorian Philosophy, in Thoughts and Thinkers, edited by
Anthony Quinton (Duckworth, 1982), 179.
20
21
22
23
Lynd Forguson, Oxford and the Epidemic of Ordinary Language Philosophy,
The Monist 84, no. 3 (2001), 333.
24
Mark J. Schofield, Findlay, John Niemeyer (19031987). (Oxford Dictionary of National
Biography, 2004 [cited 13 June 2006]); available from http://www.oxforddnb.
25
Richard Wollheim, Ayer the Man, the Philosopher, the Teacher, in A. J. Ayer
Memorial Essays, edited by A. Phillips Griffiths (Cambridge University Press,
1991), 25.
26
27
Ibid.
28
See for example Warnock, Gilbert Ryles Editorship, 55.
29
Quoted in Re, English Philosophy in the Fifties, 78.
30
Gilbert Ryle, Review of the Foundations of Phenomenology by Martin Forber,
Philosophy 21 (1946), 268.
31
At least in the early period of his editorship. Ryle was editor of Mind until
1971 it is not clear whether his stance changed over the years.
32
R. M. Hare, A Philosophical Autobiography, Utilitas 14, no. 3 (2002), 284.
33
34
Forguson, Oxford and the Epidemic of Ordinary Language Philosophy, 336.
Of course, not all of these would have been analytic philosophers. Forguson does
not provide numbers on this; though he does tell us that at any time the total
number of ordinary language philosophers in the UK was never more than
20 per cent of the total. The percentage would be far higher taking into account
all philosophers in the analytic tradition.
35
Howarth, Cambridge between Two Wars, 126.
36
Berlin is actually an exception to the general picture in that we know he read
Hegel and some postHegelian philosophy during the research for his biography
of Marx. See Isaiah Berlin, Flourishing: Letters 19281946, edited by H. Hardy
(Chatto and Windus, 2004), 43, 67, 174.
37
Collingwood, An Autobiography, 60.
38
Hare, A Philosophical Autobiography, 282.
39
P. F. Strawson, The PostLinguistic Thaw, Times Literary Supplement (Friday
9 September 1960).
40
41
A. J. Ayer et al., The Revolution in Philosophy (Macmillan, 1956).
42
See Stewart Candlish, The Truth About F. H. Bradley, Mind 98, no. 391 ( July
1989), 331; Nicholson, The Political Philosophy of the British Idealists: Selected Studies
230; Rockmore, Hegel, Idealism and Analytic Philosophy, 50.
43
Kaufmann, The Hegel Myth and its Method, 589.
44
The only study apparently being Richard Wollheim, F. H. Bradley (Penguin,
1959).
45
Rockmore, Hegel, Idealism and Analytic Philosophy, 50.
Notes 181
46
Ray Monk, Bertrand Russell: The Spirit of Solitude (Vintage, 1997), 114.
47
For this conclusion to be solid, more work would have to be done on both Russell
and Moore.
48
Richard A Watson, Shadow History in Philosophy, Journal of the History of
Philosophy 31 (1993), 99.
49
A. J. Ayer, Language, Truth and Logic (Penguin, 1990), 9.
50
Ibid., 42.
51
G. O. Wood, A ReAssessment of Hume: Critics of the Philosopher and the Man.
Reparation to an Ambiguous Shade, Times Literary Supplement (Saturday 1 March
1941).
52
53
D. F. Pears, Bertrand Russell and the British Tradition in Philosophy (Fontana Library,
1967), 11. Pears later also involves the eminent Oxford philosopher J. L. Austin
in the revival, writing: Austin made philosophy more empirical . . . D. F. Pears,
An Original Philosopher, in Symposium on J. L. Austin, edited by K. T. Fann
(Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1969), 56.
54
Stuart Hampshire, Ideas Propositions and Signs, Proceedings of the Aristotelian
Society XL (19391940), 1. While Hampshire is clear on the sources of the
tradition, he goes on to attempt to unpick the two traditions to some extent.
55
56
57
Stuart Hampshire, Scepticism and Meaning, Philosophy XXV, no. 94 (July 1950),
235.
58
Re, English Philosophy in the Fifties, 13. Res first quotation here comes from
D. F. Pears, Logical Atomism: Russell and Wittgenstein, in The Revolution in
Philosophy (Macmillan, 1956).
59
Bertrand Russell and Woodrow Wyatt, Bertrand Russell Speaks His Mind (The
World Publishing Company, 1960), 116.
60
Interesting to note that the belief in the characteristically British nature of
empiricism was shared by those, like G. R. G. Mure, Warden of Merton College
Oxford, who were openly hostile to the analysts. In the years between the wars
I had watched without enthusiasm the return of British philosophy to its
native empiricist tradition. G. R. G. Mure, Retreat from Truth (Basil Blackwell,
1958), vii.
61
This line of descent became such a powerful guiding feature, according to
Peter Hylton, that many analytic philosophers forgot Russell was far from
being an empiricist before World War I. Their reading of the early Russell
as an empiricist has, for Hylton, seriously distorted modern understanding
of Russells early career. Hylton, Russell, Idealism and the Emergence of Analytic
Philosophy, 9.
62
63
64
Bryan Appleyard, The Pleasures of Peace: Art and Imagination in PostWar Britain
(Faber, 1989), 49.
65
66
Quinton, Victorian Philosophy, 179. First published 1958.
67
182 Notes
68
Richard Rorty, The Historiography of Philosophy: Four Genres, in Philosophy in
History: Essay on the Historiography of Philosophy, edited by Richard Rorty, J. B.
Schneewind, and Quentin Skinner (Cambridge University Press, 1984), 60.
69
Jonathan Re, Philosophy and the History of Philosophy, in Philosophy and its
Past, edited by Jonathan Re, Michael Ayers, and Adam Westoby (Harvester
Press, 1978), 12.
70
Hanna, Kant and the Foundations of Analytic Philosophy, vii. Kant was one of the few
figures who appeared to rest on the dividing line between analysis and continen-
tal philosophy. Some of the analysts thought he was fundamentally a sound
philosopher, who got involved with the wrong people. As Quinton, summarizing
the attitudes of his colleagues, put it: Kant, himself a serious philosopher fallen
among the metaphysicians. (Quinton, Victorian Philosophy, 178) This seems
to be the attitude of R. M. Hare. He was greatly influenced by Kantian philoso-
phy, but a substantially analyticized version of this philosophy. (A similar analytic
appropriation is characteristic of Strawsons monograph on Kant. P. F. Strawson,
The Bounds of Sense: An Essay on Kants Critique of Pure Reason [Routledge, 1999].
First published 1966.) As we have seen already, and will have further cause to
observe, this debt does not prevent Hare making a critique of the German tradi-
tion. The inclusion of Kant in canon or anticanon seems, then, to be a question
of which side of the line he falls. It didnt appear, in this period, to upset the
fundamental analytic/continental taxonomy. On Hares debt to Kant see Hare,
A Philosophical Autobiography, 284, 97.
71
Quinton, Victorian Philosophy, 178.
72
Hanna, Kant and the Foundations of Analytic Philosophy, vii.
73
Paul Redding, Analytic Philosophy and the Return of Hegelian Thought (Cambridge
University Press, 2007), 8.
74
McCumber, Time in the Ditch: American Philosophy and the McCarthy Era, 68.
75
Magee, The Philosophy of Schopenhauer.
76
Michael Dummett, Origins of Analytic Philosophy (Duckworth, 1993), ix.
77
David Bell, The Revolution of Moore and Russell: A Very British Coup?, in
German Philosophy since Kant, edited by Anthony OHear (Cambridge University
Press, 1999), 206.
78
Russell, Autobiography, 61.
79
John Passmore, A Hundred Years of Philosophy (Penguin, 1968), 207. One analyst
who clearly distanced himself from this belief was G. J. Warnock: [i]dealism . . .
wasnt refuted though it was damaged by criticism. (Warnock, English Philosophy
since 1900, 10) This claim was not due to Warnocks disputing of the power
of Moores arguments, but rather to his belief that metaphysical systems: are
more vulnerable to ennui than to disproof. (Warnock, English Philosophy since
1900, 11)
80
A. J. Ayer, Philosophy in the Twentieth Century (Weidenfeld and Nicolson,
1982), 20.
81
82
83
Mary Warnock, Ethics since 1900, first edition (Oxford University Press,
1960), 14.
84
Ernest Gellner, Ayer on Moore and Russell, in The Devil in Modern Philosophy,
edited by I. C. Jarvie, Joseph Agassi, and Ernest Gellner (Routledge and Kegan
Notes 183
Paul, 1974), 185. This comment is directed at Ayers Russell and Moore: the analytic
heritage (1971). Gellner goes on to claim that in fact the plot of Ayers book is
an attack on Wittgenstein. While this may very well be true of Ayers 1971 text, by
which point, Gellner rightly claims, idealism was not a target worthy of serious
assault, the image sums up the case in hand very well.
85
86
Ibid., 9.
87
88
A. J. Ayer, Editors Introduction, in Logical Positivism, edited by A. J. Ayer
(The Free Press, 1959), 9.
89
Bernard Williams, Man as Agent on Stuart Hampshires Recent Work,
Encounter xv, no. 5 (November 1960), 39.
90
A. J. Ayer, An Appraisal of Bertrand Russells Philosophy, in Metaphysics and
Common Sense, edited by A. J. Ayer (Macmillan, 1969), 168. First published 1967.
91
92
Russell quoted in Philip Ironside, The Social and Political Thought of Bertrand
Russell: The Development of an Aristocratic Liberalism (Cambridge University Press,
1996), 46.
93
On this see, for example Dan Stone, Breeding Superman: Nietzsche, Race and
Eugenics in Edwardian and Interwar Britain, edited by Gerard Delanty, Studies in
Social and Political Thought (Liverpool University Press, 2002). We have already
seen C. D. Broad also distances himself from Nietzsche, but again in private as a
response to an enquiry.
94
Anthony Quinton, Thoughts and Thinkers (Duckworth, 1982), 160.
95
Warnock, Gilbert Ryles Editorship, 52.
96
Ibid.
97
Hylton, Russell, Idealism and the Emergence of Analytic Philosophy, 105.
98
99
Ibid., 35.
100
Ibid., 8.
101
Paton, Fifty Years of Philosophy, 3423.
102
103
Quinton, Thoughts and Thinkers, 160. Hare, A Philosophical Autobiography,
284; Warnock, Gilbert Ryles Editorship, 49. Following them Leslie Armour
implies that, aside from a couple of stragglers, the game was up for idealism after
1945. Leslie Armour, The Continuing Idealist Tradition, in The Cambridge
History of Philosophy 18701945, edited by Thomas Baldwin (Cambridge Univer-
sity Press, 2003), 428.
104
Quinton, Thoughts and Thinkers, 160.
105
D. A. Russell, Mabbott, John David (18981988). (Oxford Dictionary of National
Biography, 2004 [cited 18 April 2006]); available from http://www.oxforddnb.
com/view/article/65671. Gary McCulloch, Lindsay, Alexander Dunlop, First Baron
Lindsay of Birker (18791952) (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 2004 [cited
31 October 2006]); available from http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/
34537.
106
Josiah Lee Auspitz, Michael Joseph Oakeshott (19011990), in The Achievement
of Michael Oakeshott, edited by Jessie Norman (Duckworth, 1993), 11.
184 Notes
107
Kenneth Minogue, Oakeshott, Michael Joseph (19011990). (Oxford Dictionary of
National Biography, 2004 [cited 14 June 2006]); available from http://www.
108
Julia Stapleton, Barker, Sir Ernest (18741960). (Oxford University Press,
2004 [cited 22 November 2005]); available from http://www.oxforddnb.com/
view/article/30588.
109
Re, English Philosophy in the Fifties, 20. Note 128.
110
111
See Dorothy M. Emmet, Philosophers and Friends (Macmillan, 1996).
112
113
Ibid.
114
What Quintons texts do provide is a clue to the ease with which the analysts were
able to ignore those idealists who remained they had been removed from phi-
losophy and relocated elsewhere. Julia Stapleton argues that the decline of
idealism after the First World War has been greatly over-stated, and that, in fact,
idealism exerted a considerable influence on the emerging discipline of politi-
cal science, represented by Barker, Lindsay, and Alfred Eckhard Zimmern. It is
significant too that Oakeshotts chair was in political science, and Mabbots prin-
cipal interests were in the same area. This doesnt of course alter the fact that the
analysts were claiming that idealism had arrived and then been thrown out not
that idealism arrived and then diversified into other areas. Julia Stapleton,
Academic Political Thought and the Development of Political Studies in Britain
19001950 (D.Phil., University of Sussex, 1986).
115
116
Quoted in D. C. Band, The Critical Reception of English Neo-Hegelianism in
Britain and America, 19141960, The Australian Journal of Politics and History 26,
no. 2 (1980), 237.
117
Stapleton, Englishness and the Study of Politics, 162. Note 32.
118
Vincent, Green, Thomas Hill (18361882) ([cited]). It was also, among others,
Ernest Barker and three idealist colleagues who sat on the education consulta-
tive committee that set the groundwork for the grammar school system. The
influence of idealist political thought, then, extended in multiple directions into
the postwar world. Stapleton, Englishness and the Study of Politics, 117.
119
120
Anthony Quinton, Social Thought in Britain, in The Twentieth Century Mind:
History Ideas, and Literature in Britain Vol. 1 19001918, edited by C. B. Cox and A.
E. Dyson (Oxford University Press, 1972), 1312.
121
122
Howarth, Cambridge between Two Wars, 126.
123
West, The Contribution of Continental Philosophy, 39.
124
125
Russell and Wyatt, Bertrand Russell Speaks His Mind, 116.
126
127
Ibid., 36.
128
Quinton, Thoughts and Thinkers, x.
129
Mary Warnock, Ethics since 1900, third edition (Oxford University Press,
1978), 1.
Notes 185
130
Alan Sinfield has pointed to the significance of these allusions to the market in
creating a link between commercial freedom and intellectual freedom. Alan
Sinfield, Literature, Politics and Culture in Postwar Britain, second edition (Athlone
Press, 1997), 86.
131
Quinton, Social Thought in Britain, 131.
132
We do not, yet, have a concrete idea as to whether the critique of idealism during
World War I did in fact contribute to its decline. John Morrow writes that: only
a detailed biographical investigation would allow one to determine the extent to
which the other interests provided by men like G. E. Moore and Bertrand
Russell came to appear particularly attractive to those developing an interest in
philosophy in the years after 1914, in the light of claims about the dangerous
implications of Idealist political theory. Morrow, British Idealism, German
Philosophy and the First World War, 388.
133
134
Ibid., 160.
135
136
Warnock, Gilbert Ryles Editorship, 49.
137
Anthony Quinton, From Wodehouse to Wittgenstein (Carcanet Press, 1998), 302.
138
Though there is no explicit mention of this it is quite possible that the Italian
idealists could also be encompassed under the rubric continental philosophy.
139
Ayer, Editors Introduction, 9.
140
A. J. Ayer, Reflections on Language Truth and Logic, in Logical Positivism in
Perspective: Essays on Language Truth and Logic, edited by Barry Gower (Croom
Helm, 1987), 24.
141
Ayer, More of My Life, 28. The implication, made explicit elsewhere by Ayer, is that
there is in fact very little to understand.
142
Berlin, The Roots of Romanticism, 143. For Berlin, existentialism is a product of
romanticism, which is a German movement. R. M. Hare in Magee, Men of Ideas,
156.
143
Colin Wilson, The Outsider (Victor Gollancz, 1956).
144
Sinfield, Literature, Politics and Culture in Postwar Britain, 93.
145
Sir Herbert Samuel, Address, Philosophy 20 (1945), 287.
146
C. E. M. Joad, For Civilization, Macmillan War Pamphlets (Macmillan and Co. Ltd,
1940).
147
Monk, Bertrand Russell: The Ghost of Madness 19211970, 253.
148
R. M. Hare, Freedom and Reason (Clarendon Press, 1963), 158.
149
150
Berlin, Two Concepts of Liberty, 119.
151
For example R. M. Hare, Peace, in Applications of Moral Philosophy, edited by
R. M. Hare (Macmillan, 1972), 72. Given as a lecture in 1966.
152
Russell quoted in Barry Feinburg and Ronald Kasrils, Bertrand Russells America:
His Transatlantic Travels and Writings 18961945 (George Allen and Unwin,
1973), 203.
153
154
Popper quoted in Alan Ryan, The Critique of Individualism, in The British Study
of Politics in the Twentieth Century, edited by Jack Haywood, Brian Barry, and Archie
Brown (Oxford University Press for the British Academy, 1999), 94.
186 Notes
155
The British occupiers sought, according to Nicholas Pronay to stamp out the
whole tradition the ideas and the ideals on which the authoritarian and
militaristic political systems of Germany had been based and this was to include
the purging of the principles of Hegelian idealism. Nicholas Pronay, Introduc-
tion: to Stamp out a Whole Tradition, in The Political ReEducation of Germany
and Her Allies after World War 2, edited by Nicholas Pronay and Keith Wilson
(Croom Helm, 1985), 1.
156
Even Anthony Quinton, who by the 1980s was prepared to follow Kaufmann in
denying explicitly that Hegel was a Nazi (Quinton, Thoughts and Thinkers, 174) in
the same collection talks of German philosophy conquering Britain.
157
158
A. J. Ayer and R. Winch (eds), British Empirical Philosophers: Locke, Berkeley, Hume,
Reid and J. S. Mill (Routledge, 1952).
159
160
Ibid.
161
Dudley Knowles, Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Hegel and the Philosophy of Right
(Routledge, 2002), 66.
162
B. A. O. Williams, English Philosophy since 1900, by G. J. Warnock, Philosophy
XXXIV, no. 129 (April 1959), 168.
163
Strawson, The PostLinguistic Thaw.
164
165
Ibid., 312.
166
Quoted in Collini, Absent Minds: Intellectuals in Britain, 138.
167
Appleyard, The Pleasures of Peace, 49. Samuel goes further: [f]or a country at war
with Fascism, wartime Britain appears remarkably xenophobic. Raphael
Samuel, Introduction: Exciting to be English, in Patriotism: The Making and
Unmaking of British National Identity: Vol. 1 History and Politics, edited by Raphael
Samuel (Routledge, 1989), xxvi.
Chapter 3
1
Ryle, John Locke, 147. First published 1965.
2
3
4
5
6
7
Hampshire, Ideas Propositions and Signs, 1.
8
9
Ibid., 669.
10
Warnock, Ethics since 1900, 56.
11
Ibid., 162. This strong claim, like that about the death of idealism, is overstated.
I will not have space to demonstrate this here; but the list of idealist metaphysi-
cians canvassed in Chapter 2 can be considerably enhanced with nonidealist
metaphysical philosophers among whom G. E. Moore himself could feature.
12
Ayer, An Appraisal of Bertrand Russells Philosophy, 168.
Notes 187
13
A. J. Ayer, Demonstration of the Impossibility of Metaphysics, Mind 43, no. 171
(July 1934).
14
H. Stuart Hughes, Consciousness and Society (The Harvester Press, 1979), 398.
A view echoed by circle members. Herbert Feigl, The Origin and Spirit of
Logical Positivism, in The Legacy of Logical Positivism: Studies in the Philosophy
of Science, edited by Peter Achinstein and Stephen F. Barker (The John Hopkins
Press, 1969), 3. Moritz Schlick, The Turning Point in Philosophy, in Logical
Positivism, edited by A. J. Ayer (The Free Press, 1959), 54. First published as
Die Wende Der Philosophe in the journal Erkenntnis, Vol. 1, 19301.
15
Feigl, The Origin and Spirit of Logical Positivism, 12.
16
Magee, Confessions of a Philosopher, 47. See also Dale Jacquette, Fin de Sicle
Austrian Thought and the Rise of Scientific Philosophy, History of European Ideas
27 (2001), 309.
17
Ayer, Reflections on Language Truth and Logic, 27.
18
For example A. J. Ayer (ed.), Logical Positivism (The Free Press, 1959); Passmore,
A Hundred Years of Philosophy.
19
Gilbert Ryle, Systematically Misleading Expressions, Proceedings of the Aristotelian
Society 32 (19323).
20
21
Berlin quoted in Ibid., 88.
22
Ibid., 87.
23
R. M. Hare, A School for Philosophers, Ratio (1960), 117.
24
25
Stuart Hampshire, J. L. Austin 19111960, in Symposium on J. L. Austin, edited by
K. T. Fann (Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1969), 44.
26
27
Isaiah Berlin, My Intellectual Path, in The First and the Last, edited by H. Hardy
(Granta Books, 1999), 31.
28
D. F. Pears (ed.), The Nature of Metaphysics (Macmillan, 1957).
29
Hare, A School for Philosophers, 115.
30
Ibid.
31
Analysis manifesto quoted in Passmore, A Hundred Years of Philosophy, 363.
32
Russell quoted in ibid.
33
John Passmore, A Hundred Years of Philosophy (Duckworth, 1978), 389.
34
35
36
37
38
Ibid., 86.
39
Ibid., 85.
40
Russell, Philosophys Ulterior Motives, 340. First published in 1937.
41
Ibid.
42
Ibid., 3412.
43
Ibid., 342.
44
45
46
188 Notes
47
48
49
Ibid., 633.
50
Ibid., 669.
51
G. J. Warnock, Criticisms of Metaphysics, in The Nature of Metaphysics, edited by
P. F. Strawson (Macmillan, 1957), 124.
52
53
Ibid., 12.
54
Ibid., 55.
55
Gellner, Ayer on Moore and Russell, 187.
56
Warnock, English Philosophy since 1900, 12. His italics.
57
Ibid.
58
Ibid., 28. Warnock repeated the same claims to Bryan Magee some years later.
See Magee, Confessions of a Philosopher, 512.
59
60
Ibid., 40. The accommodation of Russells more systematic, metaphysical thought
with the postwar analysts tendency to abhor all system was a tricky balance.
Warnock provides space for Russell as offering metaphysics of a nonvicious kind.
Pears speculates that Russells taste for systematizing came from Leibniz, and
that: [h]is philosophical temperament combines in an unusual way the caution
which is characteristic of British philosophers with the kind of speculation which,
rather absurdly, we call Continental. (Pears, Bertrand Russell and the British Tradi-
tion in Philosophy, 269) While Pears appears to scoff at the absurdity of the
Continental appellation, this passage only reinforces the separation of the two
schools. Pears generalizes over the characteristic of the British philosopher as
such. He suggests that Russells philosophy cannot be entirely British due to his
tendency to systematize a feature he has picked up from a foreigner, Leibniz.
That Russell himself should, on occasion, fall foul of the analytic drawing of lines,
simply reinforces the importance of those lines.
61
62
Ibid., 56.
63
Ibid.
64
65
Berlin, My Intellectual Path, 31.
66
67
Gilbert Ryle, Hume, in Collected Papers Volume 1, edited by Gilbert Ryle
(Hutchinson, 1971), 1656.
68
Ryle, Review of the Foundations of Phenomenology by Martin Forber, 268. Ryle
is commenting on the philosophical scene in Britain.
69
Samuel, Introduction: Exciting to be English, xxv.
70
Ryle quoted in Re, English Philosophy in the Fifties, 15.
71
72
Ibid., 712.
73
74
75
76
Ibid., 40.
Notes 189
77
Ibid., 401.
78
Russell, Power: A New Social Analysis, 178.
79
80
Ibid., 856.
81
Ibid., 717.
82
Ibid., 19.
83
Ibid., 794.
84
Berlin, The Roots of Romanticism, 145.
85
86
87
Ibid., 757.
88
On Nietzsche see Russell, Ancestry, 90. Russell, Power: A New Social Analysis, 178.
Russell, History, 624. On Fichte see: Russell, Power: A New Social Analysis, 174.
89
Monk, Bertrand Russell: The Ghost of Madness 19211970, 255. See also Rockmore,
Hegel, Idealism and Analytic Philosophy, 49; and R. F. Hoernl, Concerning
Reason in Human Affairs, Mind XLV, no. 179 (July 1936), 285.
90
91
Isaiah Berlin, A History of Western Philosophy [Review], Mind 56, no. 222
(April 1947), 165.
92
93
94
95
96
Ibid., 1612.
97
A. J. Ayer, The Claims of Philosophy, in The Meaning of Life and Other Essays,
edited by A. J. Ayer (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1990), 2. First published 1947.
98
Ibid., 3.
99
Some Aspects of Existentialism, 13.
100
A. J. Ayer, Part of My Life (Collins, 1977), 81, 264.
101
Warnock, Ethics since 1900, 163.
102
103
Berlin, Flourishing: Letters 19281946, 43. Letter written approx. 30 September
1936.
104
Ayer, More of My Life, 267.
105
Redding, Analytic Philosophy and the Return of Hegelian Thought, 8.
106
107
Bertrand Russell, An Outline of Philosophy (Routledge, 1993), 64. First published
in 1927
108
Russell, History, 769. My italics.
109
On Hegel; see also ibid., 857.
110
Bertrand Russell, Our Knowledge of the External World (George Allen and Unwin,
1969), 1718.
111
112
Berlin, Flourishing: Letters 19281946, 44. Though Berlin also credited him with
many virtues.
113
Quinton, Victorian Philosophy, 179.
114
Passmore, A Hundred Years of Philosophy, 209.
190 Notes
115
116
117
118
Ibid., 134.
119
Isaiah Berlin, The Sense of Reality, in The Sense of Reality, edited by H. Hardy
(Chatto and Windus, 1996), 35.
120
Hare, A School for Philosophers, 115.
121
122
Ibid., 751.
123
124
125
Ibid., 43.
126
A. J. Ayer, Some Aspects of Existentialism, The Rationalist Annual (1948), 12.
127
Quoted in Howarth, Cambridge between Two Wars, 126.
128
129
Quinton, much later in the century, echoes these criticisms, though in a rather
more measured way: [t]he lesser idealists were content to repeat what their
predecessors had already said in the typically amorphous and rhapsodic style of
the movement. Quinton, Social Thought in Britain, 131.
130
131
132
Ibid., 107.
133
134
Bernard Williams and Alan Montefiore, Introduction, in British Analytical
Philosophy, edited by Bernard Williams and Alan Montefiore (Routledge and
Kegan Paul, 1966), 13.
135
136
Russell, An Outline of Philosophy, 64.
137
Berlin, The Romantic Revolution, 185. First delivered as a lecture in 1960.
138
139
140
Ibid., 112.
141
Ibid., 36.
142
Isaiah Berlin, Political Judgement, in The Sense of Reality, edited by H. Hardy
(Chatto and Windus, 1996), 50. First broadcast 19 June 1957 on the Third
Programme.
143
Ibid., 106.
144
145
146
Ibid., 170.
147
148
Ryle quoted in ibid.
149
150
Williams, Man as Agent on Stuart Hampshires Recent Work, 39.
151
Ayer, Part of My Life, 264.
152
Quinton, Social Thought in Britain, 116.
153
Notes 191
154
155
156
A. J. Ayer, Correspondence, The New Statesman (10 July 1948).
157
Ayer, Reflections on Language Truth and Logic, 24.
158
Quoted in John ONeill, Unified Science and Political Philosophy: Positivism,
Pluralism and Liberalism, Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science 34 (2003),
589.
159
See Russell, History, 66970.
160
Ibid., 668.
161
162
Ayer, An Appraisal of Bertrand Russells Philosophy, 168.
163
164
Quinton, From Wodehouse to Wittgenstein, 335.
165
Ryle, John Locke, 147. Ryle goes on to argue that there is truth in these remarks.
Ryle, John Locke, 148.
166
Noel Annan, Tribute to Isaiah Berlin, in The First and the Last, edited by
H. Hardy (Granta, 1999), 86.
167
The common-sense strand of British thought in its twentieth-century form
emanates from Moore (Passmore, A Hundred Years of Philosophy, 2045). Russell
was always less of a subscriber to the simple veracity of ordinary beliefs but Ayer,
one of Russells disciples, was keen to bring the scientism of Russell together
with the common sense of Moore, arguing in Language Truth and Logic that there
is no difference in kind between, the laws of science and the maxims of
common sense. (Ayer, Language, Truth and Logic, 33) Russell himself did not
believe that common sense was to have the last word, arguing in The Problems of
Philosophy that common sense could not offer a guide to life. Nevertheless, when
not elevated to the level of a credo, as he felt it was in the work of Moore, Russell
was, as we can see from this quotation, prepared to accept the virtue and the
characteristic Englishness, the idea enshrined. For a discussion of Russell on
common sense, including the relevant passage from The Problems of Philosophy,
see Magee, Confessions of a Philosopher, 53. Significantly, regardless of whether an
analyst sat on the scientific or the common-sensical side, the rhetoric was much
the same reflecting the fact that, as the Gellner quotation below reveals, the
stereotype of the scientist was very much of a piece with the stereotype of the
unintellectual Brit.
168
Collini, Absent Minds: Intellectuals in Britain.
169
Ayer, The Claims of Philosophy, 6.
170
Quoted in Istvn Mzros, The Possibility of a Dialogue, in British Analytical
Philosophy, edited by Bernard Williams and Alan Montefiore (Routledge and
Kegan Paul, 1966), 320. This is Mzross translation.
171
See for example, Hares equation of the philosopher and the plumber in Magee,
Men of Ideas, 154.
172
Ernest Gellner, Contemporary Thought and Politics, Philosophy XXXII, no. 123
(October 1957), 3423.
173
George Orwell, The Lion and the Unicorn (Secker and Warburg, 1962). First
published 1941.
174
192 Notes
175
Berlin, Flourishing: Letters 19281946, 44.
176
Appleyard, The Pleasures of Peace, 165.
177
Irving Kristol, A Philosophy for Little England, Encounter VII, no. 1 (July 1956),
85. We a find similar, equally hostile, view in the idealist G. R. G. Mures
comments about analytic empiricism. Mure, Retreat from Truth, 1920.
178
Specifically of Englishness as Re has pointed out and not Scottish or Welshness.
179
180
David Simpson, Romanticism, Nationalism and the Revolt against Theory (University
of Chicago Press, 1993), 84.
181
Ibid., 89.
182
Ibid., 85. Roland Stromberg discusses the blending of the idealistic, the irratio-
nal and the martial in the British image of Germany. Stromberg, Redemption by
War, 144.
183
Martin, Fighting a Philosophy: The Figure of Nietzsche in British Propaganda
of the First World War, 371.
Chapter 4
1
2
3
A. J. Ayer, Arne Naess and Fons Elders, The Glass Is on the Table: An Empiricist
versus a Total View, in Reflexive Water: The Basic Concerns of Mankind, edited by
Fons Elders (Souvenir Press, 1974), 28. Dots appear in original text.
4
5
See, among others, Giles Romilly, A Visit to Oxford, New Statesman and Nation
26 June 1948. C. E. M. Joad, A Critique of Logical Positivism (Victor Gollancz,
1950); C. E. M. Joad, Logical Positivism Fascism and Value, The New Statesman
and Nation, 31 July 1948.
6
Marjorie Grene, Discussion: on Heidegger, Encounter x, no. 4 (April 1958),
67; Hoernl, Concerning Reason in Human Affairs, 285; Joad, A Critique of
Logical Positivism, 1223; Leslie Paul, The English Philosophers (Faber and Faber,
1953), 338.
7
Joad, A Critique of Logical Positivism, 148.
8
Mary Warnock (ed.), Women Philosophers (J. M. Dent, 1996), xlixlii.
9
Laslett (ed.), Philosophy Politics and Society, vii.
10
Ibid., ix. This is a mislabelling on Lasletts part. Only Ayer would have identified
as a logical positivist.
11
For a range of contemporary perspectives see: Isaiah Berlin, Does Political
Theory Still Exist?, in Philosophy Politics and Society Second Series, edited by Peter
Laslett and W. G. Runciman (Basil Blackwell, 1962); Gellner, Contemporary
Thought and Politics; Peter Laslett and W. G. Runciman, Philosophy Politics
and Society Second Series (Basil Blackwell, 1962); Mary Warnock, Gilbert Ryle,
and Anthony Quinton, Final Discussion, in The Nature of Metaphysics, edited by
P. F. Strawson (Macmillan, 1957), 161.
12
Hare, Peace. First delivered as a lecture in 1966.
Notes 193
13
R. M. Hare, Reasons of State, in Applications of Moral Philosophy, edited by R. M.
Hare (Macmillan, 1972).
14
R. M. Hare, Ethics and Politics 1: Can I be blamed for obeying orders?, in
Applications of Moral Philosophy, edited by R. M. Hare (Macmillan, 1972), 4.
15
R. M. Hare, Ethics and Politics 2: Have I a duty to my country as such?, The
Listener (20 October 1955).
16
Ayer, Correspondence.
17
18
A. J. Ayer, The Vienna Circle, in Freedom and Morality and Other Essays, edited by
A. J. Ayer (Oxford University Press, 1982), 1756.
19
Neurath 1943 letter to Carnap, quoted in ONeill, Unified Science and Political
Philosophy: Positivism, Pluralism and Liberalism, 588. Eccentric capitalization
appears in the original.
20
G. J. Warnock, Morality and Language (Basil Blackwell, 1983), 2.
21
Ibid., 3.
22
Ibid.
23
Williams and Montefiore, Introduction, 11.
24
Stuart Hampshire, Innocence and Experience (Allen Lane The Penguin Press,
1989), 10.
25
26
A. J. Ayer, Philosophy and Politics, in Metaphysics and Common Sense, edited by
A. J. Ayer (Macmillan, 1969), 242.
27
Ibid., 246.
28
Iris Murdoch, A House of Theory, in Iris Murdoch: Existentialists and Mystics,
edited by Peter J. Conradi (Chatto and Windus, 1997), 179. First published
1958.
29
Ibid., 180. Marcuse makes a similar point. Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional
Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society (Arc Paperbacks, 1986),
1989.
30
Mary Warnock, A Memoir: People and Places (Duckbacks, 2002), 45.
31
Williams, Man as Agent on Stuart Hampshires Recent Work, 39.
32
33
G. J. Warnock, John Langshaw Austin, a Biographical Sketch, in Symposium on
J. L. Austin, edited by K. T. Fann (Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1969), 7. Stuart
Hampshire made a similar suggestion about Austin: Hampshire, J. L. Austin
19111960, 42.
34
Warnock is writing after much of the criticism of the analysts for their failures in
political philosophy. There may be an element of retrospective justification
here.
35
Ted Honderich, An Interview with A. J. Ayer, in A. J. Ayer Memorial Essays, edited
by A. Phillips Griffith (Cambridge University Press, 1991), 212.
36
Ibid., 225.
37
38
Hare, Freedom and Reason, 185.
39
In a footnote Price assures us that this is a tradition that Hume shared despite
being a Tory.
40
194 Notes
41
42
Ibid.
43
Ayer, Arne, and Elders, The Glass Is on the Table: An Empiricist versus a Total
View, 2728.
44
Ibid., 28. Dots appear in original text.
45
Ibid., 27. Arne Naess, the philosopher to whom Ayer refers here, was also trained
in the analytic tradition.
46
We can detect the same idea in Wollheim, Democracy, 118.
47
48
Ibid., 1945.
49
Alan Lacey, Empiricism, in The Oxford Companion to Philosophy, edited by
Ted Honderich (Oxford University Press, 1995).
50
Berlin, The Sense of Reality, 31.
51
Berlin, The Roots of Romanticism, 146.
52
Benjamin R. Barber, Solipsistic Politics: Russells Empiricist Liberalism, in
Bertrand Russell Memorial Volume, edited by George W. Roberts (George Allen and
Unwin, 1979).
53
54
55
56
Ibid., 1801. The role of imagination in Hares moral reeducation of Germany
is an important one, but it is not centrally relevant to our concerns here. Imagina-
tion, he says, is the domain of the artist.
57
Hare, Can I be blamed for obeying orders?, 4.
58
Ibid., 8.
59
60
Ibid., 181.
61
Ibid., 184.
62
Stuart Hampshire, The Philosopher as Superman, Encounter x, no. 3 (March
1958), 73.
63
Ibid. The other countries mentioned all had an analytic tradition.
64
Russell, quoted in Rogers, A. J. Ayer, 116.
65
66
67
Ryle, John Locke, 1523. First published in 1965.
68
Ibid., 153.
69
Ibid., 156.
70
Stuart Hampshire, Humes Place in Philosophy, in David Hume: A Symposium,
edited by D. F. Pears (Macmillan, 1963), 10.
71
72
Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human, trans. Marion Faber and Stephen
Lehmann (Penguin, 1994), 238.
73
For one recent study, see Preston, Analytic Philosophy: The History of an Illusion.
74
See Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morality, edited by Keith
AnsellPearson (Cambridge University Press, 1994). Book 3.
75
A. J. Ayer, On Making Philosophy Intelligible, in Metaphysics and Common Sense,
edited by A. J. Ayer (Macmillan, 1969), 7. First published 1963.
Notes 195
76
Ayer, Philosophy and Politics, 259.
77
Hampshire, Innocence and Experience, 9.
78
79
80
81
C. E. M. Joad, Guide to Modern Wickedness (Faber and Faber, 1939), 372.
82
Judy Giles and Tim Middleton, Writing Englishness 19001950 (Routledge, 1995),
110. Angus Calder, The Peoples War: 19391945 (Pimlico, 1969).
83
David Morgan and Mary Evans, The Battle for Britain: Citizenship and Ideology in the
Second World War (Routledge, 1993), 24.
84
Julia Stapleton, Political Intellectuals and Public Identities in Britain since 1850
(Manchester University Press, 2001), 114.
85
Samuel, Introduction: Exciting to be English, xxiv.
86
R. Aris, Germanys New Order, Current Affairs, no. 41 (10 April 1943), 13.
87
Butterfield quoted in Stapleton, Political Intellectuals and Public Identities in Britain
since 1850, 173.
88
89
Ibid., 625.
90
Ibid., 628.
91
92
Ibid., 115.
93
Russell, Religion and Science 248. First published 1935. Russell, who as I will suggest
below was a part of the British liberal tradition, did not come to these ideas only
as a result of World War II. As far back as German Social Democracy (1896) Russell
argued that while the English mind was accustomed to compromise in
politics, the German mind was not, showing from an early point a predilection
towards making fundamental assumptions along nationalist lines (Ironside,
The Social and Political Thought of Bertrand Russell: The Development of an Aristocratic
Liberalism, 31). But it should be acknowledged that Russell is far from uncompli-
cated on this issue. He seeks to distinguish the Englishman at home from the
Englishman abroad (Russell and Wyatt, Bertrand Russell Speaks His Mind, 123).
He is powerfully critical of particular manifestations of British imperial power:
[t]he characteristic doctrines of German nationalism are all to be found in
Carlyle . . . And in British imperialism as practised in Asia and Africa, all the
impulses that seem repulsive in German nationalism have found vent. The
Empire has been a cesspool for British moral refuse; Germany had no such out-
let, and had to endure its despots at home. I wanted to take service in India
under the English flag, said Bismarck in his youth; then I thought after all, what
harm have the Indians done me? The selfrighteous Englishman will do well to
ponder this reflection. (Russell, Freedom and Organization 18141914, 4156)
This is another example of Russells ability to occupy, within very short periods of
time, apparently mutually exclusive positions. The selfrighteous Englishman
who Russell is cautioning here, could on another day have been himself.
94
95
C. D. Broad, Some Common Fallacies in Political Thinking, Philosophy XXV, no.
93 (April 1950), 101. Mussolini famously claimed that Fascism was not suitable
for export.
196 Notes
96
Ibid., 1023.
97
Ibid., 103.
98
Mark Mazower, Dark Continent: Europes Twentieth Century (Penguin, 1999), 15.
Material in square brackets is my addition.
99
Ibid., 25.
100
Tony Kushner, The Holocaust and the Liberal Imagination (Blackwell, 1994), 273.
101
Eric Voeglin, The Oxford Political Philosophers, Philosophical Quarterly 3, no. 11
(April 1953), 100.
102
Ibid., 107. This notion of an English civil theology is a fascinating one; sadly
there is no time here to explore it.
103
104
Irving Kristol, A Philosophy for Little England, Encounter VII, no. 3 (September
1956), 74. Kristol, an American and a part of The Congress for Cultural
Freedom, set up to combat Soviet ideas, clearly felt that this confidence was not
helpful to the struggle for the free world. On Kristol and the Congress see Volker
Berghahn, America and the Intellectual Cold Wars in Europe (Princeton University
Press, 2001), 108.
105
Kristol, A Philosophy for Little England, 74.
106
Philip Pettit, The Contribution of Analytical Philosophy, in A Companion to
Contemporary Political Philosophy, edited by Robert E. Goodin and Philip Pettit,
Blackwell Companions to Contemporary Political Philosophy (Blackwell, 1995), 10.
107
Nol OSullivan, Visions of Freedom the Response to Totalitarianism, in
The British Study of Politics in the Twentieth Century, edited by Jack Haywood, Brian
Barry, and Archie Brown (Oxford University Press for the British Academy,
1999).
108
109
Ibid., 2823.
110
Williams and Montefiore, Introduction, 15.
111
112
Ibid., 25.
113
114
Alan Ryan, Bertrand Russell: A Political Life (Allen Lane The Penguin Press,
1988), 3.
115
Ibid.
116
Richard Wollheim, Bertrand Russell and the Liberal Tradition, in Bertrand
Russells Philosophy, edited by George Nakhnikian (Duckworth, 1974), 209.
117
Ironside, The Social and Political Thought of Bertrand Russell: The Development of an
Aristocratic Liberalism, 5.
118
119
Isaiah Berlin, John Stuart Mill and the Ends of Life, in Four Essays on Liberty,
edited by Isaiah Berlin (Oxford University Press, 1969), 193. First published
1959.
120
We have not needed to deal with the English image of the French philosophe. For
more on this see Re, Philosophical Tales, Re, Philosophy and the History of
Philosophy.
121
Honderich, An Interview with A. J. Ayer, 213.
122
Hare, Peace. First delivered as a lecture in 1966.
Notes 197
123
Hare, Can I be blamed for obeying orders?, 4.
124
Hare, The Role of Philosophers in the Legislative Process, 1.
125
Kushner, The Holocaust and the Liberal Imagination, 273.
126
Pronay, Introduction: to Stamp out a Whole Tradition, 1.
127
Noel Annan, Changing Enemies: The Defeat and Regeneration of Germany
(HarperCollins, 1995), 160.
128
The British desire to civilize Germany is discussed in Francis GrahamDixon,
Civilizing the Germans: British Occupation Policy and the Refugee and
Expellee Crisis, 19441949. (D.Phil, University of Sussex, 2008).
Epilogue
1
McCumber, Time in the Ditch: American Philosophy and the McCarthy
Era, 11.
2
Simon Blackburn, Derrida May Deserve Some Credit for Trying, but Less for
Succeeding, The Times Higher Education Supplement, no. 1666 (12 November
2004).
3
H. J. Paton, History of Western Philosophy and its Connection with Political and
Social Circumstances from the Earliest Times to the Present Day, International
Affairs 24, no. 4 (October 1948), 566.
4
Bernard Williams, Contemporary Philosophy: A Second Look, in The Blackwell
Companion to Philosophy, edited by Nicholas Bunnin and E. P. TsuiJones
(Blackwell, 1996), 26.
5
Jerry Foder, Waters Water Everywhere, London Review of Books 26, no. 20
(21 October 2004), 17.
6
Dagfinn Fllesdal, Analytic Philosophy: What Is It and Why Should One Engage
with It?, in The Rise of Analytic Philosophy, edited by HansJohann Glock
(Blackwell, 1997), 7.
7
Ibid., 12.
8
Harry Bracken, Essence, Accident and Race, Hermathena, no. 116 (1973).
9
Ironside, The Social and Political Thought of Bertrand Russell: The Development of an
Aristocratic Liberalism, 200.
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Index
anti-canon see also continental 94103, 116, 11825, 137, 1448,

philosophy, German philosophy, 1505, 162, 1646
nationalism, political philosophy national 46, 4950, 83, 151, 162
definition of 18 Collingwood, R. G. 57, 75, 108, 121,
analysts write exclusionary history 154
of 14, 54, 5660, 6275, 76, common sense 1, 5, 60, 84, 88, 978,
812, 1316, 164, 167 1202, 139, 145, 150
analysts view of communism 1, 18, 27, 312, 39, 115,
deception of 1069, 112, 132 133, 149
irrationality/irrationalism continental philosophy 35, 15, 16, 25,
of 10316 278, 48, 52, 5360, 62, 646,
Nazism of see Nazism 759, 81, 87, 889, 91, 100, 106,
obscurity of see obscurity 110, 11719, 135, 147, 1648
poor arguments of 1036 see also anti-canon
seduction of 10912 cultural history of philosophy 610,
analytic disengagement from 5462 15
Austin, J. L. 2, 5, 7, 23, 25, 57, 61, 92,
120, 132, 135 Derrida, Jacques 136, 163, 167
Ayer, A. J. 2, 5, 7, 23, 256, 28, 32, 35, 37,
456, 55, 579, 64, 689, 78, 834, empiricism,
903, 97, 1045, 110, 116, 11820, analysts view of
1269, 1316, 138, 1489, 151, 161 as ally to liberalism 4, 10, 15, 126,
1305, 13644, 145, 1478, 150,
Berlin, Isaiah 2, 5, 56, 58, 601, 7781, 15861, 166, 168
92, 945, 98, 1012, 1045, of analytic philosophers 625, 69, 88,
10811, 11315, 11718, 1201, 91, 93, 122
123, 13840, 142, 147, 153, 156, Englishness see Britishness
15961 Chapter 1 Europe 3, 5, 15, 27, 33, 35, 42, 478,
Bosanquet, Bernard 1819, 33, 35, 54, 689, 75, 7781, 867, 100, 115,
72, 74, 77, 107 119, 1223, 129, 135, 145,
Bradley, F. H. 18, 33, 35, 54, 6970, 72, 14951, 156, 161
74, 98, 107 existentialism 55, 789, 1045, 110,
Britishness 4, 27, 64, 1212, 14861, 112, 119, 123
168
Broad, C. D. 22, 29, 47, 55, 111, 1534 fascism see Nazism
Fichte, J. G. 16, 1920, 234, 267,
Carritt, E. F. 23, 35 325, 38, 402, 479, 57, 80, 96,
character, importance of for the 1012, 104, 108, 113, 160
analysts 45, 9, 15, 47, 65, 86, 89, First World War see World War I
210 Index
Gellner, Ernest 1, 13, 68, 97, 121 liberalism, analysts view of 38, 801,
German philosophy/philosophers 5, 118 see also Britishness
15, 19, 215, 29, 32, 468, of analytic philosophy 1, 45, 15,
4950, 51, 55, 58, 60, 768, 82, 1267, 1308, 165, 168
87, 912, 945, 1045, 108, 115, allied to empiricism 13644
118, 136, 1612, 165 see also and emotional control 1448
anti-canon and nationalism of Britain 14862
Green, T. H. 334, 478, 54, 734 Locke, John 1, 30, 578, 634, 70, 88,
90, 93, 967, 99, 120, 133, 1378,
Hampshire, Stuart 2, 5, 7, 61, 634, 90, 1456, 152, 1589, 161
92, 132, 1437, 149 logical positivism 10, 13, 55, 912
Hare, R. M. 1, 3, 5, 27, 5961, 72, 778, as anti-Nazi 131, 145
801, 92, 108, 11112, 117, 119, critique of as nihilistic 1279
12930, 1356, 1424, 151,
1568, 1601 Magee, Bryan 14, 56, 58, 67, 112, 131
Hegel, G. W. F. 1, 3, 135, 137, 1424, Mazzini, Giuseppe 18, 36, 41, 47
164, 167, de Maistre, Joseph 30, 39, 434, 49,
accused of Nazism Chapter 1 104, 110, 153
accused of philosophical vices metaphysics 74
Chapter 3 analysts view of 10, 13, 38, 42, 77,
followers excluded from British 834, 89, 90103, 1045, 107,
philosophy Chapter 2 111, 114, 11619, 1225, 1302,
Heidegger, Martin 45, 50, 536, 589, 135, 139, 144, 147, 160, 1645
78, 1045, 110, 112, 114, 118, allied to obscurity 94, 105, 1089
120, 132, 1434, 167 related to character 949
Hobhouse, L. T. 16, 19, 24, 46 Moore, G. E. 23, 6, 1112, 22, 29,
Hume, David 578, 626, 87, 90, 935, 467, 578, 601, 648, 702, 77,
97, 99100, 107, 130, 143, 146, 81, 845, 90, 978, 108, 127
1601 Murdoch, Iris 54, 134
idealism 2, 1820, 234 National Socialism see Nazism

analysts exclusion of 5962, 6675, nationalism see also Britishness
856 of British philosophers
analysts view of 15, 267, 345, 38, characterisation of philosophy
46, 48, 534, 57, 82, 84 11823, 127, 136, 159, 165
invasion of 7581 characterisation of the
infection, language of 27, 51, 11516, anti-canon 4551
129, 135, 145, 166 German philosophers accused of 20,
29, 35
Joad, C. E. M. 17, 20, 223, 35, 46, 80, Nazism
128, 130, 150 analysts view of
as related to anti-canon/continental
Kant, Immanuel 3, 5, 1921, 26,30, 38, philosophy Chapter 1 3, 5, 15,
40, 47, 53, 55, 578, 60, 62, 659, 53, 59, 802, 867, 90, 956,
72, 76, 78, 82, 87, 91, 947, 99100, 99, 102, 11318, 125, 1301,
1057, 113, 116, 139, 165 144, 1478, 153, 157, 1602,
Knox, T. M. 23, 50 165, 168
Kristol, Irving 122, 155 logical positivism as fostering 127
Index 211
Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm 1, 3, 53, Schopenhauer, Arthur 12, 26, 356,

558, 6970, 74, 78, 96, 1014, 578, 67
114, 124, 1478, 164, 166 science 9, 12, 18, 21, 38, 43, 45, 63,
accused of Nazism Chapter 1 70, 88, 91, 94, 968, 101, 104,
109, 115, 121, 1378, 141,
obscurity in philosophy, analysts 1445, 1478, 1501, 153,
view of 89, 1036, 109, 112, 114, 163, 168
11718, 123, 125, 132, 1357, 147 Second World War see World War II
see also metaphysics seduction, philosophy as see anti-canon
Strawson, P. F. 5, 7, 61, 85, 92
Pears, D. F. 61, 634, 74 subjectivism 95, 99, 102, 1245
political philosophy 9, 12, 73, 133, 155, 12730, 142, 1478, 162
157
of the anti-canon 20, 25, 32, 35, 38, theory, analysts suspicion of 121, 123,
Chapter 1 130, 1314, 136, 1412, 147,
death of 4, 12730 14950, 152, 1634, 167
Popper, Karl 1, 11, 27, 45, 49, 61, 77,
801, 1557 Voeglin, Eric 154
pragmatism 35, 37, 47
Price, H. H. 1, 4, 7, 22, 26, 28, 64, 126, Warnock, Geoffrey 2, 27, 34, 53, 57, 61,
1378 635, 689, 712, 767, 82, 90,
978, 1078, 111, 117,119, 132,
Quinton, Anthony 5, 22, 57, 66, 704, 135, 146
768, 108, 116, 11819, 126, Warnock, Mary 2, 5, 61, 68, 76, 82, 90,
1589 105, 128, 1345
Williams, Bernard 2, 69, 84, 113, 115,
romanticism 267, 35, 37, 47, 102, 115, 119, 132, 135, 1578, 166
135, 168 Wittgenstein, Ludwig 1112, 48, 58, 62,
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 16, 26, 301, 667, 84, 91, 93, 129
38, 40, 47, 49, 945, 1012, Wollheim, Richard 2, 34, 58, 61,
11011, 114, 117, 120 159
Russell, Bertrand Introduction, World War I 6, 12, 16 24, 26, 2930, 33,
Chapters 1, 2, 3, 4, 166, 168 467, 4950, 74, 76, 87, 124
importance of 1112, 2830 and anti Germanism in
war work 81 philosophy 1823
Ryle, Gilbert 13, 5, 7, 1112, 22, 279, World War II 1112, 17, 30, 58, 60,
45, 47, 4951, 54, 57, 5960, 67, 64, 71, 75, 867, 116, 124, 127,
77, 801, 84, 88, 923, 1001, 12930, 150, 162
115, 117, 120, 129, 1456 as a war of ideas 7981, 82

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The Cultural Politics of Analytic Philosophy

Continuum Studies in British Philosophy

Continuum Studies in British Philosophy is a major monograph series from

Applying Wittgenstein Rupert Read

Thomas L. Akehurst 2010

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Chapter 1 Nazi Philosophy 16

Chapter 2 The Expulsion of the Invaders 53

Chapter 3 Philosophical Method: Virtue vs Vice 88

Chapter 4 The Virtuous Tradition: Analysis, Liberalism,

Extracts from Russells History of Western Philosophy are reproduced by

Hitlers ideals come mainly from Nietzsche.1

If Empiricist philosophy is strong to-day, perhaps we may hope to see a revival of

British analytic philosophy has something of a reputation. Particularly in its

have suggested that this existential gap, separating analytic philosophy

discipline was barely recognizable; it was practised by only a handful of

beyond reasonable doubt that these beliefs were widespread among

A Cultural History of Philosophy

[t]he year 1900 is a comparatively meaningless date in philosophy; the

Here, analytic philosophy is painted as occupying a sphere of its own,

The notion of a cultural history of philosophy, then, should be admissible

However, I would suggest that the cultural history of philosophy can

Because cultural histories of analytic philosophy are still relatively rare

be read through his subscription to certain continental philosophies. Sadly

By 1945, a broad consensus existed among the analytic philosophers that

go on to illustrate the political case made against certain key nineteenth-

World War I and Anti-Germanism in Philosophy

adherents occupied high offices of state.13 The wartime debates were to

It was Hegels state supreme, authoritarian, warlike and opposed to

Hegel by arguing that it was late nineteenth-century German thought that

Post-war British academics continued the backlash against German

and A. J. Ayer, recently in possession of his undergraduate degree, was

The Revival of the Critique

I should question, for instance, his [Joads] association of intolerance of

The Analysts Account for Nazism

Rousseau is the greatest militant lowbrow of history, a kind of guttersnipe

[t]he totalitarian political systems which now afflict the continent of

Nor is it news to philosophers that Nazi, Fascist and Communist doctrines

By 1947, so established is it among analytic philosophers that Hegel lies

. . . they have affected history in a way that we analytical philosophers

[t]he second, and more elusive, aspect of Oxford philosophys English-

fascism, and that there was therefore something inherently politically

Here Lacey provides another explanation for the concentration of criticism

The central figures

[t]he state is sometimes spoken of as though it were an actual

deserving of quasi-adoration which none of them deserve. But this is, of

By 1922, Russell seems to have developed a much keener desire to look

Rousseau, Hegel and the idealists

Following Rousseau, Hegel is next in line. Russell is forthright: Hegels

Hegel started two movements in philosophy, the one of extreme conser-

Whether Russell has the Nazis in mind when he talks of conservative

good, a view Russell holds to be entirely repellent.80 The following quota-

[s]uch is Hegels doctrine of the state a doctrine which, if accepted,

The authoritarian view of freedom was perpetuated by Hegel . . . The

Each of these analytic philosophers find in Hegels ideas the aggressive

as a liberal, he quickly overrides this: Green was a genuine liberal: but

Green taught a whole generation at Oxford to regard him [Fichte] as the

[i]dealist thinkers have been led to support the notion of a supreme

Nietzsche, pragmatism, romanticism