7 ms·

Why are some of the greatest thinkers being expelled from their disciplines?

19 points by crocus 18y ago

ComputerGuru 18y ago
For the same reasons that universities stopped teaching Fortran and Pascal: They've been replaced by newer, better alternatives.
- mojonixon 18y ago
  Bad example. Fortran and Pascal aren't required knowledge for Java or Python. How can one understand contemporary philosophy, economics, or psychology without being familiar with Hegel, Marx and Freud? A liberal arts education is about context. I read all three in political science classes. I think philosophy might be a dead academic discipline, at least in the US. Most of the big names seem to have moved to more focused disciplines; e.g political science and women's studies.
  - deleted 18y ago
    [deleted]
  - Prrometheus 18y ago
    Marx was never as influential in Economics as he was in Politics. His political philosophy is interesting and challenging while his Economics always seems chosen to suit his politics. It wasn't bad compared to the Economics of his contemporaries, but it had a short shelf-life. He lost the battle of ideas pretty rapidly, and fairly in my opinion. True, one will be a better Economist if he understands the evolution of Economic thought in the 19th century, but there is no reason to single out Marx for particular study by the average student.
- jackdied 18y ago
  You are too kind. Two of the names he listed, Freud and Marx, were wrong. His third "forgotten man" is Hegel and while you can't call a philosophy wrong he certainly is harder to read than similar alternatives. The author might have had more luck finding Marx if he hadn't been looking for him in the Economics Dept.
  - mlinsey 18y ago
    Agreed with the rest of the replies here about Marx and Freud, but what's with the detraction of Hegel because he's "hard to read"? Lisp is pretty hard to read too when you've only read C-style syntax before. And I think you can most definitely call a philosophy wrong, philosophers do it routinely! At its core philosophy is simply making good arguments, something that HN posters should be striving for. And while it's hard to "prove" a philosophy wrong in the sense one can prove that an algorithm doesn't work, you can certainly prove its arguments to be unsound. There is the ongoing strict separation between "Continental" and "Analytic" philosophy, which is both relatively new and quite tragic. I will say that in a discipline like philosophy, which when it is at its best treasures subversiveness and independence just as much as entrepreneurs do, it's all the more important to read thinkers from different schools of thought. Hegel is not just any "Continental" philosopher but one of the most important pillars of the field
  - IsaacSchlueter 18y ago
    you can't call a philosophy wrong Sure you can. Philosophers do it all the time.
- yummyfajitas 18y ago
  Indeed. Perhaps a better question is, "how come the humanities have not come up with newer, better alternatives?"
  - tyn 18y ago
    They have
parenthesis 18y ago
"Freud is not taught in psychology departments, Marx is not taught in economics, and Hegel is hardly taught in philosophy" Modern academic psychology and economics aim at being scientific; the works of Freud and Marx fall very short in this respect, according to contemporary standards. Both are, of course, very important in the history of ideas. And their ideas are not necessarily irrelevant to the psychologist (childhood traumas can cause persisting psychological problems) or economist. But their actual works probably are irrelevant to the work of most psychologists and economists. Hegel expelled from philosophy? First, his works are particularly difficult to read and understand (and difficult to translate into English). So he isn't popular with philosophy undergraduates. So not many courses are offered on his work. (But some are: http://www.philosophy.ed.ac.uk/ug_study/ug_honours/documents/EarlyContinentalsCourseOutline.pdf http://www.philosophy.ed.ac.uk/ug_study/ug_honours/documents... ) Also, Hegel fits on the 'continental' side of the 'analytic' vs. 'continental' philosophy binary opposition. That is probably the main reason for his lack of presence in English-speaking philosophy departments, which are overwhelmingly analytical in bent.
- smalter 18y ago
  yes, you make the good point. the author of the piece is a historian. he's not only bemoaning the eradication of freud, marx, and hegel from their respective disciplines, he's bemoaning the scientific-ization of those disciplines themselves, ya dig? take economics, for example. it didn't always have such a "rigorous" mathematical foundation. and though economics has sought to be more and more scientific, it's unclear whether that's the "true" nature of the discipline of economics. in other words, the way, say, undergraduates are taught intro programming might have more to do with contemporary trends, e.g., object oriented programming, rather than other important things endemic to the discipline of computer science. from my point of view, economics/psychology/philosophy (maybe less so) seek legitimacy in the present moment through the scientific-ization of their processes/thought. i'm with the author of this piece that history of thought, as in philosophy, is an important part of the discipline if not the discipline itself.
  - menloparkbum 18y ago
    Purely rhetorical: why is it important that philosophy is taught as the history of thought, rather than attempting to make it more scientific? Perhaps philosophers who were important and popular 400 years ago had really bad ideas that are no longer worth thinking about. The history of mathematics is interesting, but learning how the ancient babylonians did mathematics doesn't help anyone learn category theory.
deleted 18y ago
[deleted]
menloparkbum 18y ago
Hegel is still studied if the philosophy department requires a historical survey of Western Philosophy. It is hard to understand the historical context of Marx, Nietzsche and Kierkegaard if you don't know anything about Hegel. Not many schools approach it this way anymore. Coursework now is more pick and choose. Medieval thought and the 19th century are the first to be ignored. The reason Hegel is not taught in depth in philosophy departments anymore is because he was an intellectual fraud. In other news, medical schools no longer teach leeching or phrenology. Consider it progress. However, if you disagree with progress, you can still get leeched from an alternative medicine quack or pick up Hegel from the literary criticism department.
- lg 18y ago
  Agreed. There are very active communities of philosophers that work on non-fraud 19th century thinkers; Leiter's blog is probably the center of philosophy on the web, and he's a Nietzsche expert. Anyway, it seems like criticism of "logic-chopping" always evaluates to "why do these philosophers' papers make me think so hard instead of just spouting the politicized nonsense that I expect from 'intellectuals'?"
DanielBMarkham 18y ago
This is an interesting question. I think the main reason is time -- universities only have so much time. But yet these were major icons on the world stage: surely some classroom time should be given to them. As another possibility, it may be the way humans think of science that is at issue. If we believe that science is always progressing forward towards some idealistic picture of reality and that exceptions are rare, what's the point in studying old dead guys who were obviously wrong? If, however, we believe that science is always progressing forward towards some idealistic picuter of reality and that exceptions are NOT rare, then we should pay attention to each little turn in the road we took -- we may have to go back to there. I hear a lot of Marx in the political arena -- lots of times by people who have no idea they are channeling him. It might be useful for our universities to at least provide students with a good background on Karl. Likewise, to fail to understand historicism and the dialectic of the spiritis to miss out on some great ideas -- even if Marx took those ideas way too far later on.
mdasen 18y ago
To be a little bit snippy, why isn't Genesis taught in evolutionary biology courses? I mean, Darwin wrote "On the Origins of Species", but Genesis was there before Darwin and wrote about the origins of all life on earth so clearly Darwin should be put in that context. How can someone understand Darwin without knowing creationism? As the anti-intelligent-design folks would say, science is a harsh place for ideas and ideas need to prove themselves over and over and be verifiable. You don't get to be taught just because you wrote about something earlier. There are places where these things should be taught - because they are important to our history and culture. They don't belong in the sciences anymore for varying reasons. Freud wasn't scientific in his studies (meaning things like double-blind, verifiable results). He has influenced a lot, but the field has moved past him. Marx worked under economic assumptions that were held as true by economists of the time that were later proved false (and which greatly affect his outcomes). However, there are some things that have held up over time. Ricardo's Comparative Advantage (from the 17th century I believe) is still taught. The Pythagorean Theorem from over two millenia ago is huge in math. And I believe both Newton and Einstein still hold in their fields. At the same time, as we learned about the universe, Plato/Aristotle went from astronomy (they did write a lot about what was in space) to philosophy - because they were simply wrong. Thinkers who thought the earth was flat might be mentioned in a history course, but not in a science one. And sometimes there is still value there. I'm a religious person myself, but I think it would be stupid to teach it in a history or science class - its ideas just have no place there. Maybe they did at one point in human history, but not today. Likewise, I think a lot of psychology today is going to fall into nothing as we learn more and at that time, the authors of today will cease to be taught in psyc. Science moves forward. It's unforgiving. Once something has been proved false, it can remain, but more in the "history of ideas" way.
- DanielBMarkham 18y ago
  Er -- philosophy is not science. It's outside of science. So it cannot be wrong. It either is more or less appropriate for various circumstances (just like science, but we won't go there) So Hegel is not wrong. Heck, Freud and Marx weren't even scientific, so they really can't be wrong either. I know what you're saying -- we wouldn't take time in chemistry to go over alchemy -- but there is a difference between a person, a time, and the best way of thinking for that time and the current state of the scientific model. Lots of times we can use heuristics and methods of thinkers who ended up in wrong spots in current problems. Likewise, not being aware of old ad beaten-to-death canards like Marxism means we end up going over the same old ground again. Or looking at it from another angle: wouldn't you want to remember Carl Sagan a thousand years from now? Even if he appeared no smarter than a primitive cave man worshiping the sun? You see, everybody wants to throw away the old guys -- they're so obviously wrong. It's much harder to take the good with the bad. To ignore thinkers from another age because the current scientific belief has changed deprives the current generation of everything else those thinkers had -- their powers of deduction, observation of human nature, the ability to put various disparate pieces together in synthesis, etc. It's throwing the baby out with the bath water. Over and over again we see thinkers trashed and the later parts of what they had turn out to be extremely useful. Plato missed the boat in certain ways, but who the heck could predict forms would turn into OOAD? This is not a boolean question. (to quote another dis-remembered scientist who eventually gave us something useful) In most human affairs, there is a give and take of ideas, a dialectic. But there I go again.
jfarmer 18y ago
For that matter, I don't know of any biology classes that teach Darwin or economics classes that teach Adam Smith, except in a passing, general sort of way. I'm sure everyone knows about Darwin's finches and Smith's reasoning about the butcher's benevolence but that's a far cry from making a detailed study. Fields move on. Ideas are refined and re-expressed in terms not available to the originators of those fields. These texts are all valuable as historiography but it shouldn't be surprising that students learning the material don't go to them first. More often that not they were wrong about a great many things, Smith and Darwin included.
gaius 18y ago
Freud is not taught in psychology departments, Marx is not taught in economics, and Hegel is hardly taught in philosophy I don't know much about Hegel but there's a simple reason that Marx and Freud are not taught anymore: because we know that they were wrong.
- gruseom 18y ago
  because we know that they were wrong About everything? Or just something? What about thinkers who are still being taught? Was Descartes "wrong" or "right"? How about Nietzsche?
  - gaius 18y ago
    Well, for instance, Marx believed that all history could be understood in terms of conflict between the working, middle and upper classes. But that simply isn't the case. Freud believed that a persons personality was shaped by their relationship with their mother. We now know that that is only one of many variables. Time will tell on Nietzsche :-)
    - gruseom 18y ago
      So they were wrong about something. By that definition, who isn't "wrong"? Edit: Since my point seems not to have been obvious, let me make it explicit. Putting a binary label of "right" or "wrong" on the entire work of Freud, Marx, or anybody else is so crude as to be useless.

19 points by crocus 18y ago

For the same reasons that universities stopped teaching Fortran and Pascal: They've been replaced by newer, better alternatives.

mojonixon 18y ago
Bad example. Fortran and Pascal aren't required knowledge for Java or Python. How can one understand contemporary philosophy, economics, or psychology without being familiar with Hegel, Marx and Freud? A liberal arts education is about context. I read all three in political science classes. I think philosophy might be a dead academic discipline, at least in the US. Most of the big names seem to have moved to more focused disciplines; e.g political science and women's studies.
- deleted 18y ago
  [deleted]
- Prrometheus 18y ago
  Marx was never as influential in Economics as he was in Politics. His political philosophy is interesting and challenging while his Economics always seems chosen to suit his politics. It wasn't bad compared to the Economics of his contemporaries, but it had a short shelf-life. He lost the battle of ideas pretty rapidly, and fairly in my opinion. True, one will be a better Economist if he understands the evolution of Economic thought in the 19th century, but there is no reason to single out Marx for particular study by the average student.
jackdied 18y ago
You are too kind. Two of the names he listed, Freud and Marx, were wrong. His third "forgotten man" is Hegel and while you can't call a philosophy wrong he certainly is harder to read than similar alternatives. The author might have had more luck finding Marx if he hadn't been looking for him in the Economics Dept.
- mlinsey 18y ago
  Agreed with the rest of the replies here about Marx and Freud, but what's with the detraction of Hegel because he's "hard to read"? Lisp is pretty hard to read too when you've only read C-style syntax before. And I think you can most definitely call a philosophy wrong, philosophers do it routinely! At its core philosophy is simply making good arguments, something that HN posters should be striving for. And while it's hard to "prove" a philosophy wrong in the sense one can prove that an algorithm doesn't work, you can certainly prove its arguments to be unsound. There is the ongoing strict separation between "Continental" and "Analytic" philosophy, which is both relatively new and quite tragic. I will say that in a discipline like philosophy, which when it is at its best treasures subversiveness and independence just as much as entrepreneurs do, it's all the more important to read thinkers from different schools of thought. Hegel is not just any "Continental" philosopher but one of the most important pillars of the field
- IsaacSchlueter 18y ago
  you can't call a philosophy wrong Sure you can. Philosophers do it all the time.
yummyfajitas 18y ago
Indeed. Perhaps a better question is, "how come the humanities have not come up with newer, better alternatives?"
- tyn 18y ago
  They have

parenthesis 18y ago

"Freud is not taught in psychology departments, Marx is not taught in economics, and Hegel is hardly taught in philosophy" Modern academic psychology and economics aim at being scientific; the works of Freud and Marx fall very short in this respect, according to contemporary standards. Both are, of course, very important in the history of ideas. And their ideas are not necessarily irrelevant to the psychologist (childhood traumas can cause persisting psychological problems) or economist. But their actual works probably are irrelevant to the work of most psychologists and economists. Hegel expelled from philosophy? First, his works are particularly difficult to read and understand (and difficult to translate into English). So he isn't popular with philosophy undergraduates. So not many courses are offered on his work. (But some are: http://www.philosophy.ed.ac.uk/ug_study/ug_honours/documents/EarlyContinentalsCourseOutline.pdf http://www.philosophy.ed.ac.uk/ug_study/ug_honours/documents... ) Also, Hegel fits on the 'continental' side of the 'analytic' vs. 'continental' philosophy binary opposition. That is probably the main reason for his lack of presence in English-speaking philosophy departments, which are overwhelmingly analytical in bent.

smalter 18y ago
yes, you make the good point. the author of the piece is a historian. he's not only bemoaning the eradication of freud, marx, and hegel from their respective disciplines, he's bemoaning the scientific-ization of those disciplines themselves, ya dig? take economics, for example. it didn't always have such a "rigorous" mathematical foundation. and though economics has sought to be more and more scientific, it's unclear whether that's the "true" nature of the discipline of economics. in other words, the way, say, undergraduates are taught intro programming might have more to do with contemporary trends, e.g., object oriented programming, rather than other important things endemic to the discipline of computer science. from my point of view, economics/psychology/philosophy (maybe less so) seek legitimacy in the present moment through the scientific-ization of their processes/thought. i'm with the author of this piece that history of thought, as in philosophy, is an important part of the discipline if not the discipline itself.
- menloparkbum 18y ago
  Purely rhetorical: why is it important that philosophy is taught as the history of thought, rather than attempting to make it more scientific? Perhaps philosophers who were important and popular 400 years ago had really bad ideas that are no longer worth thinking about. The history of mathematics is interesting, but learning how the ancient babylonians did mathematics doesn't help anyone learn category theory.

deleted 18y ago

[deleted]

menloparkbum 18y ago

Hegel is still studied if the philosophy department requires a historical survey of Western Philosophy. It is hard to understand the historical context of Marx, Nietzsche and Kierkegaard if you don't know anything about Hegel. Not many schools approach it this way anymore. Coursework now is more pick and choose. Medieval thought and the 19th century are the first to be ignored. The reason Hegel is not taught in depth in philosophy departments anymore is because he was an intellectual fraud. In other news, medical schools no longer teach leeching or phrenology. Consider it progress. However, if you disagree with progress, you can still get leeched from an alternative medicine quack or pick up Hegel from the literary criticism department.

lg 18y ago
Agreed. There are very active communities of philosophers that work on non-fraud 19th century thinkers; Leiter's blog is probably the center of philosophy on the web, and he's a Nietzsche expert. Anyway, it seems like criticism of "logic-chopping" always evaluates to "why do these philosophers' papers make me think so hard instead of just spouting the politicized nonsense that I expect from 'intellectuals'?"

DanielBMarkham 18y ago

This is an interesting question. I think the main reason is time -- universities only have so much time. But yet these were major icons on the world stage: surely some classroom time should be given to them. As another possibility, it may be the way humans think of science that is at issue. If we believe that science is always progressing forward towards some idealistic picture of reality and that exceptions are rare, what's the point in studying old dead guys who were obviously wrong? If, however, we believe that science is always progressing forward towards some idealistic picuter of reality and that exceptions are NOT rare, then we should pay attention to each little turn in the road we took -- we may have to go back to there. I hear a lot of Marx in the political arena -- lots of times by people who have no idea they are channeling him. It might be useful for our universities to at least provide students with a good background on Karl. Likewise, to fail to understand historicism and the dialectic of the spiritis to miss out on some great ideas -- even if Marx took those ideas way too far later on.

mdasen 18y ago

To be a little bit snippy, why isn't Genesis taught in evolutionary biology courses? I mean, Darwin wrote "On the Origins of Species", but Genesis was there before Darwin and wrote about the origins of all life on earth so clearly Darwin should be put in that context. How can someone understand Darwin without knowing creationism? As the anti-intelligent-design folks would say, science is a harsh place for ideas and ideas need to prove themselves over and over and be verifiable. You don't get to be taught just because you wrote about something earlier. There are places where these things should be taught - because they are important to our history and culture. They don't belong in the sciences anymore for varying reasons. Freud wasn't scientific in his studies (meaning things like double-blind, verifiable results). He has influenced a lot, but the field has moved past him. Marx worked under economic assumptions that were held as true by economists of the time that were later proved false (and which greatly affect his outcomes). However, there are some things that have held up over time. Ricardo's Comparative Advantage (from the 17th century I believe) is still taught. The Pythagorean Theorem from over two millenia ago is huge in math. And I believe both Newton and Einstein still hold in their fields. At the same time, as we learned about the universe, Plato/Aristotle went from astronomy (they did write a lot about what was in space) to philosophy - because they were simply wrong. Thinkers who thought the earth was flat might be mentioned in a history course, but not in a science one. And sometimes there is still value there. I'm a religious person myself, but I think it would be stupid to teach it in a history or science class - its ideas just have no place there. Maybe they did at one point in human history, but not today. Likewise, I think a lot of psychology today is going to fall into nothing as we learn more and at that time, the authors of today will cease to be taught in psyc. Science moves forward. It's unforgiving. Once something has been proved false, it can remain, but more in the "history of ideas" way.

DanielBMarkham 18y ago
Er -- philosophy is not science. It's outside of science. So it cannot be wrong. It either is more or less appropriate for various circumstances (just like science, but we won't go there) So Hegel is not wrong. Heck, Freud and Marx weren't even scientific, so they really can't be wrong either. I know what you're saying -- we wouldn't take time in chemistry to go over alchemy -- but there is a difference between a person, a time, and the best way of thinking for that time and the current state of the scientific model. Lots of times we can use heuristics and methods of thinkers who ended up in wrong spots in current problems. Likewise, not being aware of old ad beaten-to-death canards like Marxism means we end up going over the same old ground again. Or looking at it from another angle: wouldn't you want to remember Carl Sagan a thousand years from now? Even if he appeared no smarter than a primitive cave man worshiping the sun? You see, everybody wants to throw away the old guys -- they're so obviously wrong. It's much harder to take the good with the bad. To ignore thinkers from another age because the current scientific belief has changed deprives the current generation of everything else those thinkers had -- their powers of deduction, observation of human nature, the ability to put various disparate pieces together in synthesis, etc. It's throwing the baby out with the bath water. Over and over again we see thinkers trashed and the later parts of what they had turn out to be extremely useful. Plato missed the boat in certain ways, but who the heck could predict forms would turn into OOAD? This is not a boolean question. (to quote another dis-remembered scientist who eventually gave us something useful) In most human affairs, there is a give and take of ideas, a dialectic. But there I go again.

jfarmer 18y ago

For that matter, I don't know of any biology classes that teach Darwin or economics classes that teach Adam Smith, except in a passing, general sort of way. I'm sure everyone knows about Darwin's finches and Smith's reasoning about the butcher's benevolence but that's a far cry from making a detailed study. Fields move on. Ideas are refined and re-expressed in terms not available to the originators of those fields. These texts are all valuable as historiography but it shouldn't be surprising that students learning the material don't go to them first. More often that not they were wrong about a great many things, Smith and Darwin included.

gaius 18y ago

Freud is not taught in psychology departments, Marx is not taught in economics, and Hegel is hardly taught in philosophy I don't know much about Hegel but there's a simple reason that Marx and Freud are not taught anymore: because we know that they were wrong.

gruseom 18y ago
because we know that they were wrong About everything? Or just something? What about thinkers who are still being taught? Was Descartes "wrong" or "right"? How about Nietzsche?
- gaius 18y ago
  Well, for instance, Marx believed that all history could be understood in terms of conflict between the working, middle and upper classes. But that simply isn't the case. Freud believed that a persons personality was shaped by their relationship with their mother. We now know that that is only one of many variables. Time will tell on Nietzsche :-)
  - gruseom 18y ago
    So they were wrong about something. By that definition, who isn't "wrong"? Edit: Since my point seems not to have been obvious, let me make it explicit. Putting a binary label of "right" or "wrong" on the entire work of Freud, Marx, or anybody else is so crude as to be useless.