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The four philosophers who the article claims made the 1920's great were Heidegger, Benjamin, Cassirer, and Wittgenstein. Of these, only Heidegger and Wittgenst
by pmoriarty 6y ago
The four philosophers who the article claims made the 1920's great were Heidegger, Benjamin, Cassirer, and Wittgenstein.
Of these, only Heidegger and Wittgenstein are really giants in the field. Benjamin had influence in only a rather circumscribed subfield of philosophy: critical theory. Cassirer is virtually unknown.
So I'm really not sure why this is supposed to make the 20's "philosophy's great decade".
Arguably, Heidegger and Wittgenstein are enough.. but, really, you could easily find many other decades in history when other giants of philosophy lived.
How about the decades when Socrates and Plato lived? Or Plato and Aristotle? There probably were no more influential Western philosophers in history than these, and not only did they live at the same time and know each other, but they were each other's teachers and students.
Or how about the decades of Sartre, Camus, Foucault, Russell, Chomsky, and Popper?
Or those of Rousseau, Voltaire, Hume, and Kant? Or of Marx, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche?
If we expand our horizons to include non-Western philosophy, the choice of "great decades" become even greater. For instance, Confucious was a contemporary of Lao Tzu, and their influence is arguably as great as any of the Western philosophers mentioned earlier.
We could go on and on and on. The 1920s weren't that special.
- gumby 6y agoYou are reading the title too literally: it’s the great decade of 20th century European philosophy; we live in a world deeply shaped by both Heidegger and Wittgenstein (and I would add Russel); other profoundly influential philosophers like Quine, Church, and Kripke (just to pick three influential on my work) would not have “existed” without those three priors. Benjamin gets short shift in this essay which is unfair; outside the philosophy departments he’s been more influential than he is here credited with.
- dalbasal 6y agoWell... these lists are always somewhat contrived. Popper in particular feels like a hole in that list. If we scoot the decade a few years forward (say 1924-1934), he fits. Seems fair, considering he was busy fleeing nazism att and published soon after. That said, there is something to it. The pre-WWII era was philosophically charged, and a lot of today's philosophical perspectives derive from that time. You might even throw in Keynes & Ayn Rand. Maybe Hayek. Rand isn't often quoted or referred to, but its hard to deny influence. A lot of "modern"communist thinkers like Trotsky & Luxembourg are most known from this period. They obviously have a following. Whether or not you'd strictly call those philosophers is debatable but.. I'd also say that much of it seems dated and naive from our vantage 100 years later. I'm not sure any of them are destined to be a plato, or even a Nietzsche.
- vehemenz 6y agoI disagree. The article doesn't make a good case, but the 1920s were a special time, especially for German- and English-language philosophy in the philosophy of logic, language, and science. The 1920s saw the creation of the Vienna Circle and a refutation of Hegel and his ilk, a huge step forward in the progress of analytic philosophy. Carnap alone probably has more influence than Heidegger among the most prominent philosophers today. Also Russell was active in the 1920s, along with Alfred North Whitehead.
- olivermarks 6y agoThe article is reviewing/skimming Wolfram Eilenberger’s 2018 bestseller book, not an in depth article on the topic.