644
PARTISAN REVIEW
ega lita rian fashion. Thi s casua ll y ahistori cal a ttitude toward their
hi story inescapabl y extends to themselves, as though philosoph y were
engaged in outside of time by pure di sinteres ted intelli gences; and to a
degree the assumed timelessness of their subj ect influences the
In- der–
Welt-sein
of philosophers themselves, who have evo lved a fo rm o f life
appro pria te to those with no pertinent biographies. Now it is true that
philosoph y in th e twenti eth century has undergone a sequence of
purifica tions and reducti on s, and has ea rned, o r a t leas t wo n , a kind of
autonomy, enabling philosoph ers as philosoph ers to igno re mere
science on the on e side, and mere life on the o ther. Wh en thi s internal
purga tion is conn ected, as it appea rs to be, with th e instituti onal life of
philosoph y, th e suspicion may dawn tha t there is a deeper hi stori cal
causa lity to be found. Fo r we live in our hi sto ri es much as we do in our
bodi es, and the current mood of exi stentia l detachment may express
but an histo rical moment: purity is content of sorts.
Something like thi s is th e implicit thesis of P rofesso r Kukli ck's
boo k. Gibbonian in scale and spirit, explaining th e decline and fa ll of
a certain kind of philosophi cal hero through th e triumph o f phil oso–
phical profession a lism. At the end o f th e peri od (1860 to 1930) he
su rveys, the phil osopher, who in th e nineteenth century h ad been an
intell ectua l fo rce in Ameri can life, had shrunk in to an academi c
p ersonality, empl oy ing his energies, like academi cs everywhere, " in
admini stra ti on , in committee wo rk , in placing g radu a te students, in
o rganizing conferences, and in running th e journ als." And , one may
add , using the profess iona l ca tchphrase, "do ing philosoph y," i. e.,
filling those journal s with competent, techni ca l, res pon sibl e and
predi ctabl e papers, addressed to a pretty standa rd set of issues domi–
n a ted by philosophi ca l logic and lin gui sti c analys is, o f interes t onl y to
o th er specia lists: the literary correla ti ve o f No rma l Phil osophy. T here
a re no philosophi cal amateurs in either sense o f the term, whereas at
the beginning o f th e peri od there would have been no thing else, for
everyone in culti va ted society, especia ll y in New Eng land , had some
beli ef in the impo rtance o f philosophy, and those who thought of
themselves as philosophers addressed just those issues of beli ef and
va lue whi ch arose at th e center of life. Profess iona li sm, by contrast,
consists in each philosopher's a iming to be a phil osoph er's philoso–
pher, with the onl y meaningful reward the es teem o f peers. Emerson,
who was everyon e's phil osopher, g ives way to Cl a rence Irvin g Lewi s,
an austere and colo rl ess man , who became the philosopher's exempl ar
o f wh at philosophers sho uld be.
The R ise of American Ph ilosophy
is a di ach roni c po rt ra it of the
philosoph y depa rtment-"The Department" - a t Harva rd , ap-
