[FRA:] Positivist Dispute (Positivismusstreit) - 1
Ralph Dumain
rdumain at autodidactproject.org
Thu Sep 4 16:12:33 BST 2008
This past weekend a visiting friend and I initiated a close reading
of an essay by Adorno included in the book, parts of which I am
uploading as feasible. See:
Adorno, Theodor W.; et al. The Positivist Dispute in German
Sociology, translated by Glyn Adey and David Frisby. London: Heinemann, 1976.
Title pages, contents, index of sources
http://www.autodidactproject.org/other/positivismusstreit/contents.html
and:
Adorno, Theodor W. "On the Logic of the Social Sciences," pp. 105-122.
http://www.autodidactproject.org/other/positivismusstreit/adorno-logic.html
We recorded our Saturday night discussion, so eventually I will be
able to use pieces of it for commentary to come. One thing of
interest about Adorno's intervention; he reveals that he is
conversant with a number of major trends in 20th century philosophy
outside of the one in which he is included, and that he is
sophisticated enough to elude a number of traps. Substantive or even
passing references to Wittgenstein and Tarski, granting the obvious
but limited validity of Popper's concerns, etc., betray a
sophistication that I think could be easily missed due to the
provincialism of contemporary commentators on the critical theory of
the past, who seem to be much more provincial than the early
Frankfurters. But the Positivist Dispute highlights a contact
between philosophical traditions which appears not to have been
sufficiently studied, in the anglophone world at any rate. Of all the
crap being written about the meeting of analytical and continental
philosophy these days, the confrontation of the Frankfurters with the
Popperians is left out of account, and I suspect it is far more
significant, given the artificial and sterile problems that large
chunks of both analytical and continental philosophy wasted the 20th
century with.
See also:
Alker, Hayward R.. Jr. "Logic, Dialectics, Politics: Some Recent
Controversies," in Dialectical Logics for the Political Sciences;
guest editor, Hayward R. Alker, Jr. (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1982), pp.
65-94. (Poznan Studies in the Philosophy of the Sciences and the
Humanities; v. 7)
http://www.autodidactproject.org/other/poznan5.html
Some of the secondary literature on the Positivismusstreit is
included in my bibliography:
<http://www.autodidactproject.org/bib/vienna1.html>Vienna Circle,
Karl Popper, Frankfurt School, Marxism, McCarthyism & American
Philosophy: Selected Bibliography
. . . mostly under the section "Popper & the Frankfurt School".
I need to review the journal literature I unearthed earlier in the
year and check its eventual incorporation into my bibliographies.
I still have not looked up:
Holub, Robert C. JURGEN HABERMAS: CRITIC IN THE PUBLIC SPHERE. New
York: Routledge, 1991.
This book reportedly deals with all Habermas' major public
controversies with intellectuals to date of publication, including an
apparently detailed analysis of the Positivismusstreit.
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