The Philosophy Scare: The Politics of Reason in the Early Cold War
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The Philosophy Scare: The Politics of Reason in the Early Cold War
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Overview
This fascinating study reveals the extensive influence of Cold War politics on academia, philosophical inquiry, and the course of intellectual history.
From the rise of popular novels that championed the heroism of the individual to the proliferation of abstract art as a counter to socialist realism, the years of the Cold War had a profound impact on American intellectual life. As John McCumber shows in this fascinating account, philosophy, too, was hit hard by the Red Scare. Detailing the immense political pressures that reshaped philosophy departments in midcentury America, he shows how the path of American philosophy was altered to follow a political agenda.
McCumber begins with the story of Max Otto, whose appointment to the UCLA Philosophy Department in 1947 was met with widespread protest charging him as an atheist. Drawing on Otto’s case, McCumber details the conservative efforts that, by 1960, had all but banished existentialism and pragmatism—not to mention Marxism—from philosophy departments across the country. These paradigms were replaced with what McCumber calls Cold War philosophy, ideas that valorized scientific objectivity and free markets and which downplayed the anti-theistic implications of modern thought. As McCumber shows, the effects of this trend can still be seen at American universities today.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780226396415 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University of Chicago Press |
| Publication date: | 03/04/2020 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 224 |
| Sales rank: | 728,156 |
| File size: | 632 KB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
The Philosophy Scare
The Politics of Reason in the Early Cold War
By John McCumber
The University of Chicago Press
Copyright © 2016 The University of ChicagoAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-226-39641-5
CHAPTER 1
Academic Stealth in the Early Cold War
Economic facts are important, but they will never check the virus of collectivism. ... The only antidote is a revival of American patriotism and religious faith.
H. S. PRENTIS, President, National Association of Manufacturers, 1938
Political and religious pressures of the early Cold War required, I have suggested, a certain amount of conscious dissimulation, or academic "stealth," from both administrators and professors. In the case of philosophy at UCLA, such stealth primarily concerned the movements of philosophers into and out of the philosophy department. Hiring a professor potentially unacceptable to the right wing had to be carefully managed so as not to arouse opposition, while departures, such as Max Otto's, had to be handled so as not to give the impression that UCLA had succumbed to outside pressures.
One problem with uncovering cases of academic stealth is that in order to work, stealth must be as close to invisible as those engaged in it can make it. The argument in this chapter thus proceeds by an accumulation of cases. I present four cases of administrators and professors at UCLA acting in what appear to be stealthy ways for the benefit, as they conceived it, of its philosophy department. If no one case is definitive, the overall pattern is clear.
These four incidents represent the early Cold War phase of what in fact was (at least) two decades of conflict between conservative religious forces and the philosophy department at UCLA. The conflicts began in 1947 with the public outcry against the hiring of Max Otto and ended after the 1967–69 controversies surrounding Angela Davis. In between we find the successful hiring of continental philosopher Hans Meyerhoff in 1948; a strangely incomplete "defense" of philosopher Hugh Miller during the California Oath controversy in 1950; a 1953 effort by the UCLA dean to get the university's philosophy department to hire a non-naturalist philosopher; and a 1965 denunciation of Patrick Wilson, who was teaching philosophy of religion in a manner deemed by clergymen to be insufficiently respectful. The Davis and Wilson affairs postdated the early Cold War, and I mention them only briefly. The four earlier cases, none of which has been publicly known, require closer investigation if we are to understand the tactics imposed not only on UCLA philosophy but throughout academia by the political pressures of the early Cold War.
Academic stealth, finally, could exert political pressures of its own: it tended to favor those individuals and approaches that were most easily hidden from outside pressure groups. These were not necessarily the approaches those groups favored. The religious forces whose efforts to keep atheism out of philosophy occupy much of the next two chapters, for example, failed completely to install the jingoistic Christianity they favored; science-based "naturalistic" approaches carried the day. But that does not mean that those efforts were altogether without effect. As we will see in chapter 2, some versions of naturalism, such as Hans Reichenbach's, were more easily concealed from outsiders than others — such as Max Otto's.
1947: The Max Otto Affair at UCLA
That hiring Max Otto to the Flint Professorship at UCLA would produce strong protests should not be surprising. As the epigraph to this chapter indicates, American society had long been washed by strongly conservative currents of opinion founded mainly on religious and anti-immigrant sentiments — and economic self-interest. Such currents had come to the surface in the Palmer Raids of 1919 and 1920 and in the case of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, which ended with their execution in 1927. They had also flowed into philosophy, most notably in 1940, when (as noted in the prologue) City College in New York attempted to appoint Bertrand Russell to a position in its philosophy department. But the Russell case, like the others, was relatively clear: there is no sense of mystery about the motivations of the parties involved. When we look further into the Otto affair, however, what we find is a deeply confused situation in which not everyone was honest about his goals and tactics, while a complex smokescreen was apparently devised to enable Otto to back out of the professorship without giving the impression that doing so was a capitulation to right-wing forces.
We begin with a closer examination of the nature of the protest itself, as conveyed in the letters attacking Otto. For present purposes, these exhibit five important features. First, as we saw in the introduction, several of them specifically targeted philosophy as a discipline, because only there could atheism be promulgated to students.
Second, while most of the letters were written by individual citizens, rather than on organizational letterheads, those citizens were very religious people who presumably belonged to churches, and there is reason to think that the campaign was to some degree orchestrated by religious leaders. To be sure, the letters do not exhibit the identical wording that often signals a planned campaign. They tend, however, to follow the Examiner in identifying Otto as an "atheist," rather than as a "humanist" or "naturalist," the terms philosophers tended to use of him (Kennedy 2005; Schulz 2002, 114), and different letters often resort to the same metaphors. Most of them, moreover, share the odd argument that the United States has made war on Germany and Japan, not because of their military aggressions or maniacal genocides, but because of their atheism — an evil which, the writers claim, both countries had now renounced. The United States, in the minds of the protestors, had not sacrificed billions of dollars and thousands of lives only to see its war on atheism lost at home.
Evidence that at least some of the letters were not wholly the work of their authors is provided by a Mr. and Mrs. Swanson: "As a Professor of Theosophy, ... [Otto] would be a detriment to society in being in a position to easily poison the minds of young youth [sic] along the line of his teachings." If the Swansons do not know the name of Max Otto's field, how can they know that it provides a place where the "poison" of his teachings can be introduced into young minds? The presumption is strong that someone has told them. Moreover, this "someone" is not the Los Angeles Examiner, which made clear that Otto was a philosopher and not a theosophist. "Philosophy" and "theosophy" do not look alike — but they may sound alike, when heard, for example, from a pulpit.
Third, the letters slightly predate full-blown McCarthyism. Truman's fear-mongering speech on Greece, mentioned in the introduction, was still three weeks away when the Examiner article appeared revealing the Otto appointment. Government operations against Communists would begin ten days after that, with Truman's March 22 Executive Order # 9835 (Schrecker 1986, 4–5). Joseph McCarthy's famous Wheeling Speech, which began his national demagoguery, was not given until 1950 (Caute 1978, 48).
In early 1947, many still thought of the Soviet Union as a wartime ally. Only seven of the letters even mention Communism; the standard foreign connection attributed to Otto is with Germany and Japan, not with the Soviet Union. Though one writer opines that Otto is a "relative of Marx," Otto's main sin even in that letter is identified as atheism, not Communism. The letters of protest thus illustrate how the anti-Communist fervor that was about to erupt was preceded, not merely by earlier versions of anti-Communism, as evidenced in the Palmer Raids, but by wider suspicions about challenges to religious doctrine. What counted as "religious," moreover, was given a broad interpretation. As one writer put it, in words whose echoes have still not died away, "our Constitution is a sacred document."
Fourth, the problem is not Otto's beliefs but that he is being given an opportunity to "teach" them. Several of the letters go out of their way to reiterate that Otto himself, as an American, is free to hold whatever beliefs he wishes. However, "We do not want our American youth to be taught any atheistic doctrines because without firm faith in God our nation and the world will sink beneath the waves of barbarism." As we will see shortly, the Examiner article itself made clear that Otto's aim was not to persuade students of his philosophy, but to engage them in independent thinking. This failed entirely to register with the protestors.
Fifth and finally, the letters generally come, not only from outside academia, but from far outside. Stanley Thatcher's letter, quoted in the prologue, is one of the most ominous because its author is well enough informed to know how to forward his letter to the regents, or at least to say he is doing so. The complaint of Mr. and Mrs. Swanson, who do not know the difference between philosophy and theosophy, exhibits a more usual level of unfamiliarity with academia. Other writers typically have little connection to UCLA, or apparently to any university; while a few identify themselves as alumni, the most that is usually claimed is that the writer is the parent of small children who will (or may) one day attend UCLA. A number of the letters are written on ruled paper, presumably appropriated from schoolchildren in the family. However uninformed the latter writers may be, however, they are very sincere in their concern, and some of the letters are quite moving. The philosophy department chair, Donald Piatt, attempted to answer them; but in those days of carbon paper and mimeographs, he seems to have given up after about half a dozen. His responses give no ground. They stoutly defend Otto both as a philosopher and as an American, and assert, in no uncertain terms, the department's right to hire him.
Piatt's efforts, however, were for nothing. After teaching for UCLA's summer session, Otto resigned the Flint Professorship on August 15, 1947, before taking up any of its functions. The stated reason was his inability to find a place to live in Los Angeles. Piatt opposed the move, partly on the grounds that for Otto to resign the professorship would give rise to gossip that he had been forced to, meaning that UCLA had capitulated to political pressures. Otto thought about it some more, but on August 25, in a letter to Piatt's home adress, he made his resignation definitive.
Piatt's worries about how the resignation would be perceived soon proved justified: rumors that Otto had been forced to resign because of religious opposition spread quickly across the nation. On September 11, 1947, Otto's friend, the psychologist Harry A. Overstreet, wrote him from Bennington, Vermont:
Dear Otto:
This is the most sickening thing I have heard of! What could the vigilantes and cultists of Los Angeles have against you? It makes me more deeply ashamed than ever of my native state. Too bad that your half-year of good work had to be ditched because of a parcel of intolerant half-wits....
Some day send me the inside story of this California stench. I have friends out there and I should like to get to the bottom of the mess.
In any event we hope that you will have a happy and productive half-year in a less fanatical region.
The rumors had spread all the way to Vermont in just over two weeks. They were still abroad in December, when Otto's friend, the New York adult education pioneer Eduard C. Lindeman, wrote bluntly: "What happened in California? I hear contradictory reports."
It is easy to see why the stated reason for the resignation, Otto's inability to find a home, should have aroused skepticism. UCLA was a major university in a major city, and some of the 296 regular professors listed in its General Catalogue for 1947–48 must have been going on leave. There are no records of other Flint Professors encountering housing problems, and as President Sproul said in his offer letter to Otto, the Flint Professorship carried the very highest level of prestige — surely a motivation for the university to find something for the Ottos. Moreover, Piatt had charged the wife of UCLA Provost Clarence Dykstra with finding a home for the Ottos back in January. Problems doing so would have been evident by the time Otto arrived for the summer session, but he had come anyway. More than skepticism was expressed by another friend of Otto's, philosopher Dickinson S. Miller, who had retired to Boston and who wrote him on October 2, 1947: "I am astounded by the conditions you tell me of at Los Angeles which forced you to resign the Flint Professorhip. It seems incredible that the University could not have arranged something."
The implausibility of the resignation's stated reason is not the only puzzling matter about it. Otto's effort, in his letter of August 25, to reassure Piatt that his sudden resignation will not give rise to damaging rumors also rings strange: "And I shall be extremely sorry if, as you feel sure will be the case, unfounded rumors will be spread as to the reasons for my resignation, reasons reflecting unfavorably on freedom of teaching at U. C. L. A. However, such rumors, I believe, will soon be dissipated, since they can only thrive if those responsible for the freedom of educational ideals betray their trust, which I see no reason to anticipate." It was Otto's resignation and so, presumably, his job to explain it. But his letter does not reassure Piatt by promising that Otto himself will make clear to the world that the failure to find housing, rather than political pressures, was responsible for the resignation. Instead, Otto immediately displaces the task onto "those responsible for the freedom of educational ideals" — that is, the university's leaders. The rest of the sentence is an admonition to those leaders not to "betray their trust."
The behavior of one of those leaders, UCLA provost Dykstra, deepens the puzzlement. Dykstra had been chancellor of the University of Wisconsin from 1937 to 1945, and was apparently a friend of Otto's from those days; in the correspondence surrounding the original offer of the Flint Profesorship, they are "Dyke" and "Max." But a letter from Otto's longtime dean at Wisconsin, George Sellery, written just two days after Otto's letter of resignation to Piatt, suggests that Dykstra had ongoing qualms about Otto's appointment. Sellery writes, "I agree in thinking Dyke relieved at your decision not to take the semester appointment [i.e., the Flint chair]. But I very much doubt that the alleged taxpayer would bring suit, since he ought to know — he or the R. C. Hierarchy — that he would have to be licked in defense of Lehrerfreiheit. You, of course, have given the thing up because 1). No home; 2). No business teaching all summer and next semester." According to Sellery, a lawsuit was being threatened by someone associated with the Roman Catholic hierarchy, and both Otto and Sellery believed that Dykstra was worried about this. Given the outcome of the Bertrand Russell case seven years earlier, Dykstra had good reason to be "relieved" when Otto turned down the Flint Professorship — and good reason to hide his relief from Otto, who as an old friend and fellow academic needed and deserved Dykstra's wholehearted support. Dykstra, in other words, was being less than honest — stealthy — with Otto (and perhaps with Sellery) about his real feelings in the matter.
Not finding a home for Otto was an embarrassment for UCLA. But it brought real hardship to Otto, who had rented out his house in Wisconsin and had no place to go back to. Dykstra solved the problem with an act of extreme personal generosty: he offered his weekend home at Laguna Beach to Otto and his wife, who spent the fall there. Laguna Beach is about sixty miles from Westwood and so, in those pre-freeway days, out of range for regular commuting.
The possibility then arises that Dykstra, worried about further opposition to Otto and a possible lawsuit, but unwilling openly to ask Otto to resign, undermined the appointment by stalling help for Otto's housing search from both his own wife and from UCLA. This would explain the odd wording in Otto's August 25 letter to Piatt: he is calling on Dykstra to honor a commitment, open or implicit, to find Otto a place to live for the fall. It would explain as well UCLA's puzzling inability to find housing for the couple, and Dykstra's spectacular offering of his own weekend home to them for a period of several months.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Philosophy Scare by John McCumber. Copyright © 2016 The University of Chicago. Excerpted by permission of The University of Chicago Press.
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Table of Contents
List of AbbreviationsPrologue
Introduction
Part 1 The Cudgels of Freedom: Cold War Philosophy’s Theory of Objects
1 Academic Stealth in the Early Cold War
2 Reductionism as the Favored Form of Naturalism
Part 2 The Carrots of Reason: Cold War Philosophy’s Theory of Subjects
3 The Politics of Rational Choice
4 Rational Choice Philosophy as “Scientific Philosophy”
Part 3 Purifying the Academy
5 Organizing Academic Repression: The California Plan
6 Rationalizing Academic Repression: The Allen Formula
Epilogue: The Two Fates of Cold War Philosophy
Appendix: Roster of UCLA Philosophy Department from 1947–48 to 1959–60
Acknowledgments
Notes
References
Index
What People are Saying About This
“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.”
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