references to work I will engage show, I will be building off of the work of thinkers whose standpoints give them more direct access to the phenomena of racial and gender oppression throughout. Furthermore, I will consistently be looking to come up with suggestions for constraints to be put on the types of engagements I am encouraging—constraints which hopefully limit the potential of hegemonic standpoints to infect analytic philosophizing. That said, I hope that my readers will not hesitate to point out those places where I have failed on these fronts.
§0.5 Previewing the Rest of the Book
As has been alluded to, the main themes of this book will be the history of early analytic philosophy, critical theories of race and gender, the philosophy of language, and logic. Put in relation to these themes, the goals are to investigate what potential there is for logical and linguistic analysis to contribute to scholarship and activism on race and gender, as well as whether or not there is precedent for such work in the history of analytic philosophy. After going through such investigations, we will find evidence for the following subsidiary theses—(a) analytic philosophy should be used to contribute to understanding and eradicating oppression and injustice—the book primarily focusing on racial and gender oppression, but occasionally discussing sexuality, disability, religion, and class, (b) at each stage of early analytic philosophy, there was a significant body of work which was motivated by and/or easily lends itself to such work and, finally, (c) this has been missed because the analytic movement went from a revolutionary to a hegemonic tradition—occupying this position of power in society along with several other trends helping it to develop privileged, dominant tendencies that we find all over power structures in modern western society.
Summing things up in terms of a structure to integrate these primary themes and theses, the nine chapters of the book can be broken down into a four-step progression. This introduction was intended to present the topics (the history of early analytic philosophy and critical theories of race and gender), the background which makes this a worthwhile choice of topics (the extremely varied positions on the relationship, the existence of injustices within the discipline, the public perception of philosophy), and the way I conceive of the methodology and history of early analytic philosophy, which will serve as a framework for the rest of the book (a commitment to the centrality of the philosophy of language and logic to the practice of philosophy, the ability to be broken down into five rough and overlapping stages). The first and second chapters investigate ways in which we can connect the main tools of analytic methodology—the philosophy of language and logic—to social, public, and ethical matters. The third through seventh chapters of the book then go stage by stage through early analytic philosophy, connecting some main trend from each to issues of practical importance involving race and gender such as inclusive discursive practices and the Black Lives Matter movement. Finally, the conclusion ends with some potential roadblocks to a more just, critical, and radical form of analytic philosophy, as well as avenues for further investigation of these matters.
NOTES
1. I mean this in the sense in which there is something true in saying “Hacker (1996)’s history has Wittgenstein as the culmination of analytic philosophy” or “Soames (2003a, 2003b)’s history has Kripke as the culmination of analytic philosophy.” While this is not quite right, it has something to do with saying the best way to tell a history of analytic philosophy, which allows you to get the most combined historical accuracy and theoretical insight is with the culminating philosopher as protagonist. In this way, I think that the best way to tell a history of analytic philosophy, which rates highest with respect to a combination of historical accuracy, theoretical insight, and political expediency is with Bright, Dutilh Novaes, Haslanger, and Mills as protagonists.
2. This summary, which can be found in her abstract for chapter 7 at https://chicago.universitypressscholarship.com/view/10.7208/chicago/9780226464589.001.0001/upso-9780226464305-chapter-008, is far from an exaggeration as well. As Moi later points out, Gellner says that ordinary language philosophy and/or common sense “is conservative in the values which it in fact insinuates” (Gellner 1959, 296), Marcuse that “[i]t leaves the established reality untouched; it abhors transgression” (Marcuse 1964, 173), Butler that it supports “nefarious ideologies” (Butler 1999), and Žižek concurs that rather than supporting a “non-ideological common-sense form of life” this type of philosophy supports “the spontaneously accepted background which is ideology par excellence” (Žižek 2009, 21). Moi rightly argues that there is a significantly problematic elitism built into these responses where “[b]ecause they trust the ordinary, and believe that perfectly ordinary people are at least as capable as philosophers of making relevant and useful distinctions, Marcuse assumes that Wittgenstein and Austin must be marching in lockstep with dominant ideology” (Moi 2017, 152).
3. This Kripke quote and ones similar to it can be found in his interview with Andreas Saugstad, “Saul Kripke, Genius Logician,” accessed June 7, 2019, http://bolesblogs.com/2001/02/25/saul-kripke-genius-logician/.
4. Krishnamurthy’s piece “Decolonizing Analytic Political Philosophy” can be found on her blog at https://politicalphilosopher.net/2016/06/03/meenakrishnamurthy/, accessed June 7, 2019.
5. It should be noted that, while I think this has not been generally accepted, it is certainly not absent from prominent discussions, either. Hacker, for example, seems to be implicitly recognizing this when he says both that “in a loose sense, one might say that all, or the bulk of, philosophy is analytic” (Hacker 1996, 3) and “one (Russellian) root of this new school might be denominated ‘logico-analytic philosophy’ . . . the other (Moorean) root might be termed ‘conceptual analysis’” (Hacker 1996, 4).
Race, Gender, and Analytic Philosophy (The Method)
Discursive Injustice and the History of Analytic Philosophy
§1.0 Overview of the Chapter
The method that analytic philosophers emphasize involves, at the very least, a commitment to the utility of linguistic and logical analysis. In this chapter and the next, I discuss ways in which we can connect such close attention to the philosophy of language and logic, respectively, to issues of social importance where race and gender are particularly salient. These chapters are intended to give direct case studies, which illustrate the need for, and potential of, combining the history of analytic philosophy with considerations of justice. In this chapter, I try to illustrate both sides of this coin by looking at one particular case study—the Ruth Marcus / Saul Kripke dispute over who deserves most credit for initiating the new theory of reference.
While it led to years of heated discussion, which got overly personal at times, I do not believe this debate got to any reasonably settled point. As was mentioned earlier, I hope to show that, while Soames is right that Kripke cannot be accused of plagiarism, there is good reason to believe that the entire discipline should be accused of discursive injustice in its treatment of Marcus’ works. That is to say, because Marcus was a woman in a field dominated by men,1 her speech acts were not given the correct uptake—her expert assertions and arguments being treated as mere suggestions. I begin with this as a case study because it allows us to see a clear case of analytic tools being used to identify a distinctive type of injustice and shows us how analytic tools can actually help us fight such injustices.
