From: Samantha Atkins (samantha@objectent.com)
Date: Wed Jun 20 2001 - 01:24:38 MDT
Mark Walker wrote:
>
> Samantha Atkins wrote:
> > Mark Walker wrote:
> > >
> When you say that socialists and Nazis "showed respect for the
> > > power of philosophy" you cannot mean respect for the great tradition of
> > > philosophy started by Plato.
> >
> > Actually, yes, you can point to a pretty direct line of
> > philosophical thought from Marx through Engels through the
> > Idealist school of philosophy all the way back to Plato. This
> > doesn't mean that all or most Nazis or socialists had strong
> > philosophical roots. But it does show something of the power of
> > philosophy and its importance.
> >
> The point of the original post was that socialists and Nazis understood the
> power of philosophy in the way that others in the 20th century did not. What
> you say about Marx and Engels is well-known. The same could be said for some
> of the Nazis' favorite philosophers, e.g., Nietzsche and Heidegger (for a
> time). But of course this same point can be made about liberal thinkers like
> Mills, Dewey, Berlin and Rawls.
Rawls and Dewey are most certainly NOT liberal thinkers, at
least not in the classical liberal sense.
> It can't be the fact that we can point out a
> philosophical geneology that distinguishes the socialists and the Nazis.
It is a fact however, that America especially has been largely
philosophically unarmed and that many of her best and brightest
have an active aversion and contempt for philosophy. How many
times have I watched discussions here that broadly claimed that
philosophy was and is irrelevant?
- samantha
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