© 2016 by Neven Sesardić
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FIRST AMERICAN EDITION
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Names: Sesardic, Neven, 1949– author.
Title: When reason goes on holiday: philosophers in politics / by Neven Sesardic.
Description: New York: Encounter Books [2016] | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016011693 (print) | LCCN 2016023313 (ebook) | ISBN 9781594038808 (Ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Political science—Philosophy—History—20th century. | Philosophy—Political aspects—History—20th century. | Political atrocities—History—20th century. | Right and left (Political science)—History—20th century.
Classification: LCC JA83 .S455 2016 (print) | LCC JA83 (ebook) | DDC 320.01–dc23
LC record available at https://lcn.loc.gov/2016011693
Interior page design and composition: BooksByBruce.com
“It is curious that the greatest intellectual gifts sometimes carry with them the inability to perceive simple realities that would be obvious to a moron.”
—E. T. JAYNES
Contents
Acknowledgments
Preface
1 The Wisdom That Failed
We Will Teach You How to Think, They Said
Russell’s Paradox: A Genius with a Streak of Foolishness
Communist Temptations at Oxford
Bad Arguments and Bad Politics: What Causes What?
2 Otto Neurath: A Philosopher and the Commissars
3 How Philosophers of Science Promoted Leftist Pseudoscience
Tinker, Tailor, Philosopher . . . Spy
4 Rudolf Carnap: Blaming the West for the Iron Curtain
Henry Wallace, Clueless in Kolyma (and Elsewhere)
Against the Imaginary Gulag—but Not the Real One
The Rosenberg Case: Will the Real Rudolf Carnap Please Stand Up?
5 Einstein and Gödel: Great Minds Err Alike
A Soft Spot for Lenin . . .
. . . and for Stalin Too
Recruitment by Remote Control
The Nazification of America?
6 Ludwig Wittgenstein: To Russia with Love
Language Games at the Soviet Embassy
The Attractions of Stalinism
Philosophical Genius Opposes the War Against Hitler
7 Imre Lakatos: Eulogized in England, Unforgiven in Hungary
LSE: Economical with the Truth?
Murder by Suicide
Sticking with the Superego
8 Jerry Cohen: Don’t Celebrate the Collapse of Soviet Communism!
A “Fascist Rebellion” in Hungary in 1956
The Price of Dreaming about Socialism
9 Michael Dummett: A Bumbling Anti-Racist
Paid by Oxford to Do Research, Does Politics Instead
A Logician’s Strange Route to Empirical Truth
A Pimp, Criminal, and Racist Invited to Talk at All Souls College
A Sham Engagement with Philosophy
10 Hilary Putnam: A Follower of Chairman Mao
A Lover of Wisdom Joins a Cult
Inside the Chinese Utopia
11 Donald Davidson: A Dupe of the Communist Party
An Unjust War Yesterday, a Just War Today
Imagine There’s No Grades . . .
Princeton Philosophers and Czech Dissidents Unimpressed with Angela Davis
12 The American Philosophical Association: A Vehicle for Partisan Politics
Philosophers Advise: Withdraw from Vietnam with the Maximum Physical Speed!
The APA Decrees on Abortion, IQ, Nuclear Weapons, Death Penalty, Iraq War . . .
How Yugoslav Marxists Pulled a Fast One on the APA (and Other Philosophers)
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy and the Politics of Citation
13 Left-Wing Bias: An Infantile Disorder of Contemporary Philosophy
Robert Nozick Loses His Nerve
Those Dumb Conservatives
The Curious Case of Gottlob Frege
Nixon or Cleaver, That Is the Question