The Philosophy Scare

“McCumber moves confidently from particular administrative facts to generalizations about the theoretical biases of professional philosophers."
 

“McCumber’s analysis opens up space for long-overdue debates about the effects of the Cold War on US philosophic thought and intellectual life more generally. It illuminates the consequent struggles between analytic and continental philosophy as well as the still powerful failure of so many intellectuals to grasp the legitimacy and cognitive value of social justice philosophic issues. Focusing on the infamous administrative fearmongering and intrusive regulation in the UCLA Department of Philosophy’s hiring practices makes vivid the strategies used to institutionalize Cold War philosophy. This is a must-read for philosophers, historians, and university administrators.”

“The Philosophy Scare enlarges McCumber’s earlier treatment of an important but neglected story. His earlier Time in the Ditch rightly downplays the explicit theoretical flaws and scientistic intentions of midcentury American philosophy to show how its basic outlook formed a convenient response to Cold War politics but also survived to plague later philosophy. In The Philosophy Scare, McCumber identifies a broader ‘Cold War Philosophy’ that runs in the background of many disciplines, not just (albeit especially) philosophy, after World War II. He employs Kuhn and Foucault positively and Reichenbach negatively to show how American academies responded to anti-communist fearmongering by touting ‘objective science’ and ‘dispassionate’ rationality as the essential preferences of real educators. Armed with this pinched image of intellectual life, administrators projected a dissimulating portrait of the academy as respectful of politico-religious reactionaries and supportive of free market capitalism. I am especially impressed by McCumber’s extensive use of UCLA’s archives to demonstrate its key role in disseminating Cold War Philosophy by implementing the infamous, widely copied ‘California Plan’ for hiring new faculty and the pernicious ‘Allen Formula’ for rationalizing academic repression. He is right to worry that this story has not ended.”