From: Mark Walker (tap@cgocable.net)
Date: Tue Jun 19 2001 - 08:15:26 MDT
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. It can't be the fact that we can point out a
philosophical geneology that distinguishes the socialists and the Nazis.
Furthermore, it seems to me just false that others did not understand the
"power of philosophy" in the same way that the socialists and the Nazis did.
Many liberal thinkers--e.g., Mill and Berlin--understand this all too well.
In fact, this one of their biggest fears, namely, that the state will use
the "power of philosophy" as a "cookie-cutter" to make identical
good-little-citizens. Mark.
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