See George Reisch's paper "McCarthyism in Philosophy, or, the Wrath of Sidney Hook" at
http://pages.ripco.net/~reischg/Hopos_mtl_003.pdf There, he discusses how the transformation of American Logical Empiricism from a leftist Marxist-leaning philosophy at the time of its reception in the 1930s to strictly apolitical one by the 1950s. This transformation, Reisch insists was do to three sorts of pressures that were being exerted on American philosophers in the early Cold War period, or as he puts it: "First, there were general intellectualpressures and fashions against "collectivism" in economic and social theory (evidenced by Hayek's influential and popular Road to Serfdom). In philosophy of science, the trend was illustrated by Popper's writings against "closed societies" and Marxisthistoricism and by the New York philosopher Horace Kallen, who attacked Neurathand the Unity of Science Movement as promoting a kind of "totalitarian" philosophy and methodology of science.(Kallen 1940; 1946) The political resonance of Kallen'sargument is obvious." "Second were institutional pressures stemming from anticommunist investigations atmost major colleges and universities in America beginning in the late 1940s and continuing through the 1950s and 60s. Around 30 philosophers according to JohnMcCumber (1996)--were interrogated by federal, state and university officials and manymore prominent scientists (such as Robert Oppenheimer and Edward Condon) were publicly scrutinized and ostracized for actual or suspected past-membership in thecommunist party." "Another kind of institutional pressure came from J. Edgar Hoover's Federal Bureau ofInvestigation. The FBI investigated not only Blumberg and Malisoff, for obviousreasons, but also Carnap and Philipp Frank, at a time when both were in the letterheadstationary of the short-lived Institute for the Unity of Science, which Frank and Morris,mainly, had set up to continue the Unity of Science Movement in the wake of Neurath'sdeath in 1945. In Carnap's case, since the file was opened at roughly the time when hebegan relocating to work at UCLA, he was being investigated most likely because of hisprotest of the loyalty oaths. That FBI investigators found the name "Rudolf Carnap" in support of umpteen different letters of protest or support published in the communist newspaper, The Daily Worker, in the early 1950s surely piqued their interested in himeven more, though they never found evidence that he was actively engaged in subversion of any kind. (In Frank's case, we still don't know why he was being investigated.)" In his paper, Reisch places heavy emphasis on the role of Sidney Hook in promoting this transformation both in logical empiricism, specifically, and in the philosophy of science, generally, away from the political activism of the 1930s. And he details, what he sees as Hook's attempts to bully American philosophers, in general, as well intimidate particular philosophers such as John Somerville, and Rudolf Carnap into conformity. Jim Farmelant ________________________________________________________________ GET INTERNET ACCESS FROM JUNO! Juno offers FREE or PREMIUM Internet access for less! Join Juno today! For your FREE software, visit: http://dl.www.juno.com/get/web/. _______________________________________________ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
