[Marxism] Studying philosophy at the New School

[Louis Proyect]

A couple of items that I stumbled across on the net lately have gotten 
me thinking about time spent as a graduate student in the philosophy 
department of the New School back in 1965 to 1967.

The first was an article titled “Why are some of the greatest thinkers 
being expelled from their disciplines?” that appeared in the July 25th 
Chronicle of Higher Education (unfortunately limited to subscribers or 
some university employees like myself). Written by UCLA professor and 
long-time semi-Marxist social commentator Russell Jacoby, it called 
attention to the disappearance of Freud, Marx and Hegel from academia:

"How is it that Freud is not taught in psychology departments, Marx is 
not taught in economics, and Hegel is hardly taught in philosophy? 
Instead these masters of Western thought are taught in fields far from 
their own. Nowadays Freud is found in literature departments, Marx in 
film studies, and Hegel in German. But have they migrated, or have they 
been expelled? Perhaps the home fields of Freud, Marx, and Hegel have 
turned arid. Perhaps those disciplines have come to prize a scientistic 
ethos that drives away unruly thinkers. Or maybe they simply progress by 
sloughing off the past."

I was fortunate to study at the New School from 1965-1967 long before 
this trend set in. But I am afraid that Jacoby is not that well tuned in 
to the philosophy scene on campus if he thought that Hegel was ever some 
hot commodity for the sad fact is that philosophy departments have been 
Hegel-free (and Descarte-free, etc.) for an entire generation except as 
examples of how not to “do” philosophy. The so-called Continental 
philosophy that traces its lineage back to Descartes is for the most 
part not practiced nowadays. And if it is taught, it is taught as a part 
of true philosophy’s prehistory. This school, descended from Logical 
Positivism, has also been described as linguistic analysis. Much of its 
effort was directed at debunking the classic “problems” of Continental 
philosophy in the style of A.J. Ayer, one of the leading figures who 
focused on the “verification principle”, which means that a proposition 
can only be true if it can stand up to empirical testing. As such, all 
philosophy that derives from Descartes cannot be “verified”.

Parenthetically, I must admit a certain admiration for Ayer based on a 
wiki article that reveals among other things that he put in a stint at 
Bard College in 1987, my alma mater. That year, he had a run-in with 
boxer Mike Tyson that ended well apparently:

"At a party that same year held by fashion designer Fernando Sanchez, 
Ayer, then 77, confronted Mike Tyson harassing the (then little-known) 
model Naomi Campbell. When Ayer demanded that Tyson stop, the boxer 
said: 'Do you know who the fuck I am? I’m the heavyweight champion of 
the world,' to which Ayer replied: 'And I am the former Wykeham 
Professor of Logic. We are both pre-eminent in our field. I suggest that 
we talk about this like rational men.' Ayer and Tyson then began to 
talk, while Naomi Campbell slipped out."

full: 
http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2008/08/01/studying-philosophy-at-the-new-school/