Analytic Philosophy and McCarthyism: A New Look (guest post)

To what extent is the “the story about the analytic turn” in philosophy a story about politics? There’s been an increased discussion in recent years of externalist explanations of philosophy, and one such explanation that has gotten a fair amount of attention lately is the idea that McCarthyist anti-communism in the United States in the middle of the 20th Century played a significant role in analytic philosophy’s emerging dominance in the discipline at the time. In the following guest post, Sander Verhaegh of Tilburg University, shows how the picture is quite a bit more complicated than that, casting doubt on how much the “McCarthyist thesis” can explain. The post grew out of research Professor Verhaegh conducted for his just-published book, Logical Positivism: An American History (also here and here). Photo by Margaret Bourke-White Analytic Philosophy and McCarthyism: A New Lookby Sander Verhaegh How to explain the analytic turn in American philosophy? One controversial thesis,…