I took a philosophy course in college and never heard it used this way until I got into the left.
This shows two things:
i.) that philosophy in the Anglosphere is bad and still glued to old eurocentric greek philosophy and a few non continentals, but more importantly ignoring Marxism and the Materialist turn, which was one of the most important ones in practice. Sure you can just go to a random empiricist and say: See how much better this is?! But ignore the material base of the shift that way.
ii.) that you didn't hear enough courses. While in Germany you can do also finish your degree without encountering Marx (if you chose your university accordingly and your focus accordingly) you will have plenty of student and other groups that give some kind of introduction to Marxist though. However if you look at German philosophy of Hegel and around there is no way materialist/idealist conception and I did actually learn the philosophical definition before uni in school in regards to the materialism/idealism battle linked to Plato's idealism conception.
So maybe use the word but say half a sentence in what way you use it (then people might still not accept the word or understand it, but if that is the crux they might be able to say: "Wait a minute!" and then they learn something that is beneficial even outside of Marxism).
my philosophy course called Hegel the first materialist, which is hilarious in retrospect. but at the time I was like hmm, maybe I should read some Hegel.
I have a PhD and specialize in philosophy of science. I never encountered Marx in a single course at any level. I picked all of that up on my own out of interest. It's just not taught in anglophone philosophy programs unless you very deliberately seek it out.
That is quite interesting, though in terms of philosophy of science I get when you skip Marx in the three semesters before research starts and focus on the meat and bones of the base and what is important for your specialization. Quite a cultural difference. It really interests me (but don't give yourself away). How large were philosophers of the linguist in your degree? I guess as substitution for Marx/Hegel/etc. you could go a line between Frege to Russel and Wittgenstein maybe with a bit of Quine (Popper/Kuhn and alike I take for granted).
If not do they substitute Marx with a few people like Hegel/Feuerbach etc. to get some turn towards scientific materialism going?
Of those you mentioned (other than Popper and Kuhn, whom I got a lot of), I definitely got the most Quine, mostly by osmosis. A bit of Frege and a bit more of Russell, but mostly in the context of general history of analytic philosophy stuff as an undergrad. Of the two graduate-level history of philosophy classes I had to take, one of them was on Darwin and the other was on early modern philosophy of science (mostly Descartes, but some Hobbes and Hooke, and so on). My exposure to the classic "Western canon" is actually pretty minimal considering the number of years I spent studying philosophy.
This isn't necessarily a bad thing, in my opinion: I do philosophy of complex systems theory and climate science (especially computational climate models), and I ended up taking a lot more courses on that stuff (and math) than on traditional philosophy. I think that was actually much more useful to me, on the whole: my work doesn't make a whole lot of contact with "regular" philosophy, and I was mostly in a philosophy department because my project was so screamingly interdisciplinary that I didn't really fit anywhere.
Thanks that is quite interesting. I still have some texts about Haeckel in my pile of shame (bit of support of Darwin, bit of finding the threads of eugenic and scientific racism in his work and where the anchors of the nazi racial science were and what parts they did not dock on to).
(bit of support of Darwin, bit of finding the threads of eugenic and scientific racism in his work and where the anchors of the nazi racial science were and what parts they did not dock on to).
Yeah, we actually spent quite a bit of time on this part, and when I've taught this stuff in years since, that tends to be what I emphasize too. The thread from his work to contemporary "social Darwinist" and neo-reactionary stuff is really interesting. Darwin was pretty hostile to that sort of use of his work in his time, and seems to have been a decently chill dude for an English bourgeoisie weirdo.
Insisting that people learn your jargon instead of meeting them where they are at is ultraleftism. If you can't understand that you're going to have a miserable time convincing anyone of anything.
Insisting that people learn your jargon instead of meeting them where they are at is ultraleftism. If you can't understand that you're going to have a miserable time convincing anyone of anything.
There is a large space between: "giving up your terms completely" and "meeting people where they are".
This shows two things:
i.) that philosophy in the Anglosphere is bad and still glued to old eurocentric greek philosophy and a few non continentals, but more importantly ignoring Marxism and the Materialist turn, which was one of the most important ones in practice. Sure you can just go to a random empiricist and say: See how much better this is?! But ignore the material base of the shift that way.
ii.) that you didn't hear enough courses. While in Germany you can do also finish your degree without encountering Marx (if you chose your university accordingly and your focus accordingly) you will have plenty of student and other groups that give some kind of introduction to Marxist though. However if you look at German philosophy of Hegel and around there is no way materialist/idealist conception and I did actually learn the philosophical definition before uni in school in regards to the materialism/idealism battle linked to Plato's idealism conception.
So maybe use the word but say half a sentence in what way you use it (then people might still not accept the word or understand it, but if that is the crux they might be able to say: "Wait a minute!" and then they learn something that is beneficial even outside of Marxism).
deleted by creator
my philosophy course called Hegel the first materialist, which is hilarious in retrospect. but at the time I was like hmm, maybe I should read some Hegel.
I have a PhD and specialize in philosophy of science. I never encountered Marx in a single course at any level. I picked all of that up on my own out of interest. It's just not taught in anglophone philosophy programs unless you very deliberately seek it out.
That is quite interesting, though in terms of philosophy of science I get when you skip Marx in the three semesters before research starts and focus on the meat and bones of the base and what is important for your specialization. Quite a cultural difference. It really interests me (but don't give yourself away). How large were philosophers of the linguist in your degree? I guess as substitution for Marx/Hegel/etc. you could go a line between Frege to Russel and Wittgenstein maybe with a bit of Quine (Popper/Kuhn and alike I take for granted).
If not do they substitute Marx with a few people like Hegel/Feuerbach etc. to get some turn towards scientific materialism going?
Of those you mentioned (other than Popper and Kuhn, whom I got a lot of), I definitely got the most Quine, mostly by osmosis. A bit of Frege and a bit more of Russell, but mostly in the context of general history of analytic philosophy stuff as an undergrad. Of the two graduate-level history of philosophy classes I had to take, one of them was on Darwin and the other was on early modern philosophy of science (mostly Descartes, but some Hobbes and Hooke, and so on). My exposure to the classic "Western canon" is actually pretty minimal considering the number of years I spent studying philosophy.
This isn't necessarily a bad thing, in my opinion: I do philosophy of complex systems theory and climate science (especially computational climate models), and I ended up taking a lot more courses on that stuff (and math) than on traditional philosophy. I think that was actually much more useful to me, on the whole: my work doesn't make a whole lot of contact with "regular" philosophy, and I was mostly in a philosophy department because my project was so screamingly interdisciplinary that I didn't really fit anywhere.
Thanks that is quite interesting. I still have some texts about Haeckel in my pile of shame (bit of support of Darwin, bit of finding the threads of eugenic and scientific racism in his work and where the anchors of the nazi racial science were and what parts they did not dock on to).
Yeah, we actually spent quite a bit of time on this part, and when I've taught this stuff in years since, that tends to be what I emphasize too. The thread from his work to contemporary "social Darwinist" and neo-reactionary stuff is really interesting. Darwin was pretty hostile to that sort of use of his work in his time, and seems to have been a decently chill dude for an English bourgeoisie weirdo.
Insisting that people learn your jargon instead of meeting them where they are at is ultraleftism. If you can't understand that you're going to have a miserable time convincing anyone of anything.
There is a large space between: "giving up your terms completely" and "meeting people where they are".