A Turd in the Punchbowl: Initial Thoughts on Christoph Shuringa’s “A Social History of Analytic Philosophy,” Or, An Epigone Crashes the Party, #8–Philipp Frank.

(Schuringa, 2025)

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. Introduction

2. The Myth of Socially Disconnected Analytic Philosophy

3. The Death of Moritz Schlick

4. The Vienna Circle Takes On the German Philosophical Society

5. Otto Neurath

6. Rudoph Carnap

7. Hans Hahn

8. Philipp Frank

9. Edgar Zilsel

10. Rose Rand

11. Susan Stebbing

12. Russell and Moore

13. Michael Dummett

14. Schuringa’s Philosophical Hallucinations

15. Analytic Philosophy in the Cold War Deep Freezer

16. Analytic Philosophy and Angela Davis

17. Jean van Heijenoort

18. Noam Chomsky

19. On the Origins of Neoliberalism and Austrian Economics

20. On the Philosophical Roots of the “Dark Enlightenment”

21. The Horkheimer-Neurath Reconciliation Attempt

22. The Punch Bowl Revisited

REFERENCES

The following essay,* by EJ Spode,** will be published here in 22 installments; this, the eighth, contains section 8.

But you can also download and read or share a .pdf of the complete text of this essay by scrolling down to the bottom of this post and clicking on the Download tab.

*Originally published in the 3:16am blog.

** “EJ Spode” is a pseudonym of Peter Ludlow.

A Turd in the Punchbowl: Initial Thoughts on Christoph Shuringa’s “A Social History of Analytic Philosophy,” Or, An Epigone Crashes the Party, #8

8. Philipp Frank

Philipp Frank was a physicist and a student of Boltzmann, which is impressive in itself. He was definitely part of the Left Wing of the Circle, but was certainly not as far left as Neurath or Hahn. He was, like many other members of the Circle, a liberal-socialist / Social Democratic sympathizer, closely allied with Hahn and Neurath in the Red Vienna intellectual projects. He was, of course, involved in the Verein Ernst Mach and the Volkshochschule/workers’ education program, teaching modern physics.

Frank is going to play a big picture in our story during the Cold War, when he came under scrutiny from the FBI and when he was trying to raise money for the Unity of Science Project, but there is one important point that I want to make concerning the understanding of the Enlightenment that the members of the Vienna Circle had.

Schuringa, as is clear from his book, is not a big fan of Enlightenment philosophy, and he works hard to situate the members of the Vienna Circle within the Enlightenment project. And for sure, the members of the Circle did view their project as being part of the “Enlightenment,” but they were not using that word in the same way we do today. For example, Neurath considered Marx to be an Enlightenment thinker (Neurath, 1931/1973: p. 315). And you can see how that would make sense—it was, at least for Marx, a social-scientific project. It was evidence-based. It worked to overthrow ideologies just as earlier Enlightenment thinkers had. Perhaps all the members of the Circle felt this way about Marx. But there was someone else that they loved too: Nietzsche!

Frank spoke of Nietzsche as a “great Enlightenment thinker,” and you can see how they would think of Nietzsche as a continuation of the Enlightenment project, even if, in the end, it seemed destructive of that very project. But Frank notices things in The Will to Power that were aligned with the thinking of the Circle.

Nietzsche’s most significant expression of the positivistic world conception is probably given in the aphorism, called “On the Psychology of Metaphysics,” where he attacks with cutting sharpness the employment of very frequently misused concepts:

This world is apparent: consequently there exists a true world;—this world is conditional: consequently there exists an unconditional world;—this world is full of contradictions: consequently there exists a world that is free from contradictions;—this world is changing: consequently there exists a permanent world;—all false conclusions: (blind faith in the reasoning: if there is A, there must also be its antithetical concept B). (Nietzsche, 1968: p. 252)

It is not to be denied that the philosophy of Enlightenment possesses a tragic feature. It destroys the old systems of concepts, but while it is constructing a new system, it is also already laying the foundations for new misuse. For there is no theory without auxiliary concepts, and every such concept is necessarily misused in the course of time. The progress of science takes place in eternal circles. The creative forces must of necessity create perishable buds. They are destroyed in the human consciousness by forces which are themselves marked for destruction. And yet, it is this restless spirit of Enlightenment that keeps science from petrifying into a new scholasticism. If physics is to become a church, Mach cries out, I would rather not be called a physicist. And with a paradoxical turn, Nietzsche comes out in defense of the cause of Enlightenment against the self-satisfied possessor of an enduring truth.

Apologies for the length of that, but it highlights two important points that we are going to return to throughout this review. The first is the idea that one wants to be suspicious of the sketchy arguments deployed to justify metaphysical concepts. But the second point, and one that speaks to Analytic philosophy as well, is the last paragraph in which Frank observes that science (and I would say philosophy) is at its best when there is not a stable set of doctrines—when it is a constant demolition derby of ideas. As we will see, this seems to be a feature of Analytic philosophy that Schuringa absolutely cannot abide.

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