Time in the Ditch: American Philosophy and the McCarthy Era [Hardcover]

John McCumber (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

A distinguished Hegel scholar and something of an expert on philosophical postmodernism who now chairs the German department at Northwestern, McCumber here argues that McCarthyism turned American philosophers away from serious concerns with social reality. He explains how under McCarthyism most departments rejected the flow of new ideas coming from Europe, failed to defend each other's rights to free speech, and lost much of their traditional audience. Philosophy became mired in the safe technicalities of logic and language, and, as a long-range result, 100 philosophy departments were closed each year between 1992 and 1996. McCumber offers sobering truths, but he inflates some issues and misses others. In the Ivy League universities and the largest of their state counterparts, conceptual analysis, logic, language, and scientific method most often dominate the agenda, but this is not necessarily true elsewhere. McCumber allows that much philosophy has moved to literature, social science, and even science departments, but he fails to acknowledge that institutions that must raise massive funds from rich donors or are constantly under scrutiny by state legislators frequently exhibit caution and, by silent consent, seek safe teachers. Without McCarthyism, the phenomenon he describes occurred in Canada following an influx of American philosophers. They brought with them the cultural conviction that respectability demanded that they become "scientific" and that traditional philosophical methods did not yield knowledge. The widespread rejection of "continental philosophy" was buttressed by the Nazi associations of Heidegger and a few others and the excesses of some "post-modernists," who seemed to decry and evade argument and evidence, reinforced the dominance of analytic philosophy. For larger academic collections. Leslie Armour, Univ. of Ottawa, ON
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About the Author

German Department, Northwestern University

Product Details

• Hardcover: 213 pages
• Publisher: Northwestern University Press; 1 edition (March 28, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0810118092
• ISBN-13: 978-0810118096
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.3 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #580,519 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars What happened to American philosophy?, March 13, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Time in the Ditch: American Philosophy and the McCarthy Era (Hardcover)

This book finds a connection between the McCarthy witchhunts of the early 1950s and the decline of American philosophy in the second half of the 20th century. McCumber argues that accusations about communist sympathies drove many American philosophy professors into analytic philosophy and away from metaphysical questions. In the years following the McCarthy witchhunts, American philosophy drifted apart from European philosophy, while at the same time American philosophy departments shrank. Philosophy in America had less and less to do with the practical considerations of everyday life. In the latter half of the book, Professor McCumber reviews the course of western philosophy through the entire 20th century and lays out a program for a revival of philosophy in America that will restore it not only to a central position in academia but to a vital role in the life of the republic. I strongly recommend this book to anybody interested in 20th-century American thought.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The simple explanations are usually best., July 12, 2006

By 

Mark C. E. Peterson (West Bend, WI USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Time in the Ditch: American Philosophy and the McCarthy Era (Hardcover)

I read this book when it came out and have used it to hone the edge of my irritability with the discipline of philosophy for the past few years. It was good then; it gets better with time.

If you need to make sense of why and how philosophy has devolved into the academic and theoretical vacuum it has, lash yourself to the mast, stuff your crew's ears with bees wax, and have them row slowly between John McCumber and Bruce Wilshire. Afterwards you'll be able to shake off the Trojan wasteland of the last 100 years and return to the company of human life, there to enjoy the wine of conversation and the company of good and decent friends. -- and if you can't parse out the metaphor here, then you really really need to read this book.

5.0 out of 5 stars Here's A Really Good Book Published By A University Press, August 8, 2011

By 

Peter P. Fuchs (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Time in the Ditch: American Philosophy and the McCarthy Era (Hardcover)

I loved this book. It basic idea makes so much sense of what has happened in this country to philosophy. I would have just emphasized two things more. One, that the turning away from questions of metaphysical meaning in philosophy, in long-term reaction to McCarthyism, not only circumscribed philosophy itself, but emboldened various reactions to that impoverishment. And, second, this reaction took different forms on the left and right. On the left it emboldened the vast hermeneutical floridness which buried the likely decent concerns under a mountain of intellectual refraction. On the right, it gave a sort of cover for revival of almost childish "returns to religion" under whatever conceptual scheme that could be cobbled together for that effort. It is particularly egregious on the right, because it has provided a real evidence to which they can point, and say they are in fact saving philosophy itself, from itself. McCumber deserves credit for having the honesty to have actually provided the etiology for the disease. The disease has allowed monied interests to fill in the gaps, and that is the story for for many phenomena in universities. But the etiology, was actually the bizarreness of the McCarthy era.