Metaphysics wears the trousers

What must be done, philosophically speaking.

Tu ne cede malis, sed contra audentior ito

Virgil

Ecce ego mitto vos sicut oves in medio luporum. Estote ergo prudentes sicut serpentes, et simplices sicut columbæ.

Mt 10, 16

Metaphysics wears the trousers

Edward Feser

To explain the age he was living in, Immanuel Kant gave the image of a civil war, a war at home, between empiricists and rationalists. As common sense sees and the economic science demonstrates, war brings poverty, prolonged war, starvation. After the long war for the soul of philosophy, the history of modern philosophy, we are all, now, starving. While war may bring about heroic deeds, it is a rather inefficient way of doing so, and, even if it war was good at bringing out the best of humanity, when Mars is hungry, there is no man, hero or worshiper of heroes, left standing. Modern philosophy was a war between empiricists and rationalists which Kant, with his critical philosophy, wanted to end. Sadly, Kant did not end this war; no. He did not end it because the Kantian philosophy is the philosophy of perpetual peace and, as all political realists know, that means that it is the philosophy of perpetual war against war itself, it is not a philosophy about forgetting being, it is the philosophy of perpetual war, of killing Mars. Therefore, what philosophy inherited from Kant, be the inheritor Hegel, Comte or Schopenhauer, rather than peace in their times, was the perpetual and schizoid fear of war, a fear that lead philosophers, practically all of them, to try out the effort of finding a agreement between them all; the result of this process? The “philosophy of dialogue” of someone like Jürgen Habermas or Roland Barthes. That is, the philosophy that solemnly proclaims that everything is relative, there is no absolute, no certainty (and only this is absolute and certain); such a philosophy as that of someone like Richard Rorty ( whose wisdom is that we are alone in this world, our only company is the one we give each other, and the only thing we can do is to keep on talking, as if there was still something worth chatting about) is not the philosophy of people who tried and failed at philosophy, rather, it is barely attempted philosophy at all. This tale, the tale of the failure of perpetual peace among the philosophers, brings us to the point of this writ: Saint Thomas Aquinas.

Cajetan, the great renaissance scholastic, said about Saint Thomas that he always spoke formally, and this is the truth. Thomism is a formal philosophy, which entails being a philosophy of clarity and rigor, being an impeccable rational discourse of successive syllogisms and articles. But the essentials are not enough: Philosophers need to take into account their circumstances when they do philosophy, an American thomist talks analytical the same way he talks English; nowadays, any thomist of any dialect and, speaking to a broader catholic audience, any philosopher committed to Neanderthal or Ur-Platonism (the common metaphysical tradition started by Plato and refined by the Scholastics, the same one that Nietzsche called out), to the naïve view that Aristotle and Plato, Augustin and Saint Thomas are right and were successful in making a Metaphysical Science; and Locke, Descartes, Kant and Hegel were wrong in moving away from it, such a Ur-Platonist needs to be something more than clear philosopher: He needs boldness. That is right: Scholasticism, in the XXI century, will either be bold or it will not be. Scholasticism will not speak as a respectable, nice and amiable professor, like Jacques Maritain or Friedrich Hayek¹ (who both took radicalism to be paramount, while both failed at being radicals themselves), rather, Scholasticism will speak Like Saint Pius X and Vladimir Lenin, it will be a trip of megalomania, of utter madness, of madness born from sheer devotion to the Metaphysical Theology that 800 years, or more, of medieval reflection has given us (after Greeks, Romans, Hebrews and Muslims worked on it from Plato to Peter Lombard); it will be to cooperate with truth, as the pesky laborers of truth Nietzsche ironized about. Saint Thomas called his Summa dust when compared to Heaven, be it so that the great tradition of Thomas Aquinas is dust next to eternity, but what then are Immanuel Kant’s III Critiques? It is not that Kant is mediocre, Kant is one of the five greatest philosophers in the history of humanity, he has made the world we inhabit, because the Demiurge might have made the earth, but Kant has made our culture. If the Demiurge of Culture Immanuel Kant is nothing next to nothingness, the point makes itself: The point is that philosophers of the XXI must be thomists or, at least, truly committed to metaphysics understood as the queen of the sciences and understood in a catholically platonic way, they must be thomists so that Kant, someday, might seem as small and feeble to any student of philosophy as Latin monophysites are now to any student of theology.

Edward Feser with one sentence uttered what XX century philosophers feared to utter, even Heidegger: Metaphysics wears the trousers. Political realism is great, not only at explaining politics, but also at explaining the history of contemporary philosophy. The same way that under a democracy power grows feeble and trembles, inertly, at being itself powerful, it trembles at the idea of exerting itself, and it ends up becoming managerial; that same way both continental philosophy and analytical philosophy, and even revolutionary philosophy of the likes of Marxist-Leninism and Wokstery all commit one mistake: They avoid taking command of the ship, they surrender to the failed god of democracy. The captain never leaves the boat: That is all that a terrestrial such as Yours Truly knows about the art of navigation; the captain never leaves the ship, and metaphysics might be the servant of Theology, but it is certain sovereign when compared to all other human endeavours.

Metaphysics wears the trousers, if First Philosophy has a mission in the XXI century, it is to take command of the ship that Plato put on the sea. Plato, as is known, started the second navigation of philosophy, the movement that occurs at Socrates’s deathbed when one abandons all commitment to monism, opting for realism, and one also understands that man is the concern of the philosopher (which does not imply that the object of philosophy is man, that is being of course). Some people in the XX century, like Ortega y Gasset², talked about starting the true second navigation of philosophy, the “Secunda Secunda” navigation. Heidegger, at least for a short while, tried to purify German sprache from Latin dirt, the likes of Nietzsche and Comte considered Platonism in general and Christianity in particular to be a momentary revolution between the historical landmasses of paganism, that existed before the Presocratics and the Biblical Logos (the logos of Saint John that is) and will come again after God has died, his shadow has been banished and Humanity (or SuperHumanity) becomes the ascendant constellation. Comte and Nietzsche consider a calendar beyond the Reign of Augustus and the birth of Christ necessary, inevitable, determined by fate. Despite their prophecies, Saint Thomas Aquinas, not Lenin nor Galileo, was the true revolutionary in the history of philosophy, and we are proud of it, his secret he stole from the gods of old: That man was born free.

Continental philosophy, analytical philosophy and Marxism³ are not philosophical schools, there is no common denominator, no common principle that defines them and makes them distinct. What they are is philosophical traditions with a small “t”, more alike mores and customs than Sacred Tradition. They are, however, also, the philosophical departments of the Western public universities (excluding Marxism, orthodoxically understood), that are financed by Yours Truly and the readers, they are the philosophies of the western social-liberal democracies, they are therefore not innocent institutions, but part of a regime. That they do not wear the metaphysical trousers follows from them being part of a democratic regime (and, sadly, not the other way around), a regime that (like Plato demonstrated) requires relativism to be the philosophical policy. Because there is, always, a philosophical policy, even in John Lennon’s Dream. Analytical and continental traditions have great use, they show us politeness, but state philosophy must be boldly desecrated and demystified, because, at the end of the day, the philosophy (and philosophers) of the state live of taxes that Yourself and Yours Truly pay.

Metaphysics wears the trousers, first and foremost, contra the analytical tradition; and not conceptual analysis. Metaphysics is not the philosophy of science or language, it is Science itself, and the rebellious provinces of Darwinian philosophy (not biology), positivistic philosophy of history (not sociology) are, at best, failed efforts at remaking artificially such a Science. What is analytical philosophy? Analytical philosophy is a tradition, it is the philosophy of people whose culture is scientific, who are educated in formal logic and the (natural) sciences, starting all from the realization that words are no secondary matter, and they are more like human activities than formal systems. But, rather than free the sciences from metaphysical speculation, rather than being therapeutic and show that philosophy happens because of speech, analytical philosophers are, they end up as, the policemen of the sciences. Philosophers of sciences do not help the scientists, rather, they are vultures: They make sure that biologist, physicist, neurologists and cosmologists don’t think outside the box, the box made by a strict naturalistic interpretation of non naturalistic scientific discoveries. They make sure that any, any and all reservations about the Darwinian reading of natural history is considered Creationism. The same way, they make sure that all (natural) scientist envy the physicists, and that the physicists, in turn, envy mathematicians. The purpose of analytical philosophy, sociologically speaking, is not to analyse the scientific discoveries and revolutions, but rather, to make sure that naturalism, a retrograde and dated philosophy that some scientists and all those that divulgate Science adhere to, is kept alive and pumping. But truly, has not naturalism, has not eliminativism received enough blows? Did not Mendel, did not Schrodinger exist? Have naturalists actually read Aristotle before giving into mockery? One thing might be Dawkins the biologist, Dawkins the preacher, however, is not to be criticized, rather, he is to be told that, when he steps beyond the realm of molecules, his only right is silence.

The great contribution, and it truly is, of the analytical tradition is the often called Linguistic turn. Sadly, for most analytical philosophies, this means that there is b.l.t. and a.l.t.⁴, it is used to mess with the history of philosophy, to make up a new beginning and have a pretext so as to put the philosophical tradition to the side, or subordinate it to contemporary problems in analytical philosophy. What the linguistic turn is, at its best, is the rediscovery of the analogy of being⁵, there is much talk of the second Wittgenstein, but sadly, the second Wittgenstein is the Wittgenstein who realized that there is also Interpretation of words, not just analysis of them. The second Wittgenstein, in short, is the Wittgenstein who, unbeknownst, demonstrated why reading Aristotle is important before pondering words, to realize that the Philosopher was, as usual, right. For those who read Wittgenstein, coming from Aristotle, it is funny to see that the Wittgenstein that focuses on the use of words rather than on some formal structure of them, is a Wittgenstein who admits how right Aristotle’s On Interpretation always was; an admittance, it must be said, of an autistic sort, not grasped by Wittgenstein himself (famous among the rank of philosophers for proudly confessing that he had not read Aristotle) one uncharacteristic of the boldness of Aristotelians. At the heart of the linguistic turn, is the rediscovery, in very eccentric and autistic expression, of the doctrine of the analogy of being, that is, that “being” and its concept is used in different ways in each utterance, but all united by a common principle and main sense. This is to say, boldly put, that talk about God and talk about cows are both language, because they are language, about God and language about cows; this was the rediscovery or anamnesis Wittgenstein operated.

Sadly, whenever a thomist, filled with joy, tells to the analytic fellow that he has come to an agreement with Aristotle, the analytical philosopher (the ideal type that is, not everyone of them, think of someone great like Thomas Nagel if you wish so) immediately retreats to a soft naturalism, trying to find the perfect limbo between Aristotle and Paul Churchland, between Metaphysical realism and physical eliminativism. If one looks at philosophy of mind, the never ending divide of analytical philosophy, one will find more fence sitters than one will find materialists or defenders of the immortal and embodied soul. Another great tragedy of analytical philosophy is a stereotype which is, nonetheless true: The focus on a. or b.l.t. makes analytic philosophers oblivious to the larger philosophical tradition, even to their own tradition of naturalism and positivism, of which they often know next to nothing. It is astonishing how little attention one finds among Anglo-Saxon philosophers towards the philosophy of someone like Auguste Comte; it is, honestly, criminal. It is not that the analytical philosophers do no doxography, or that they do not read philosophers that were before Hume, rather (and all the worse) they do not consider themselves part of such a millennial tradition, a tradition where they find arguments, but not a living world.

Now, one must turn to the continental tradition. First and foremost, is there such a thing as continental philosophy? Truly, there is no one denying there to be analytical philosophy, however, it is true that many affirm that there is no divide between analytical and continental philosophy, or that it is a grey and doubtful line and division. A Common claim is that “continental philosophy” is just something made up by analytic philosophy, so as to bunch together whatever Germans and French philosophers are doing into one messy Blob.

The question must be answered in the affirmative: Yes, there is such a thing as continental philosophy, because there is such a constant use of the term “continental” and, more importantly, because there is a faculty of continental philosophy in most western universities. The case against the existence of a continental-analytical divide has two problems. First and foremost, it mistakes talk about a philosophical school for talk of a philosophical tradition. There is no such thing as a continental school but there is definitely a continental culture when it comes to philosophy, and it is easy to notice, even if such a cultural is a culture born from and built up by universities for their own chrematistic purposes. For instance, when one finds a Heideggerian (who is most definitely and distinct member of continental philosophy) angrily stating that there is no such thing as continental philosophy, he always sounds very continental. The Heideggerian, just by the fact of being the only one that finds this label and divide inconvenient, just sounds continental; to make a gentle comparison, one does not have to read all of Aquinas to see Scholastic philosophy when it is done, and call it “Scholastic philosophy”, it is a matter of the nose of uncontinental philosophers more than a matter of their taxonomy. On the other hand, there is continental philosophy because there is a department called “continental philosophy” in all departments, and You and Yours Truly pay for it; to say this is not Marxism, it is just to state the obvious and try to see what it entails⁶. It is easier to strawman continental philosophy, and it is a waste of time to try to scientifically define it by, for instance, saying that it amounts to “that strand of philosophy that unites phenomenology, existentialism and Marxism” (read through critical lenses, polishing the dialectic method inherent to such a school). What is true, however, is that continental philosophers have, by culture and tradition, a very different training to that of analytical philosophers. On an economical and sociological level, since division of labour exists, one can point out that continental philosophy, while it might not exist in principle, ends up becoming an existent and distinct tradition, because it needs to compete for students with analytical philosophy, and consequently distinguishes itself by supplying that which analytical philosophy cannot supply. Happily for this century, continental philosophy was not made by the universities, while it most definitely has been nourished and fostered by them

Therefore, there is such a thing as a continental philosophy and an analytical philosophy, understood as traditions. Here, however, the question is no longer what continental philosophy is, but rather, what is the divide between continental and analytical philosophy. Continental philosophy is more than a bundle of traditions of philosophy which relate to one another by a common background and, right now, are meagrely united by the fact that none of them are analytical. Continental philosophy is, generally speaking, more historically sensitive and of a more humanistic rather than scientific culture, so that one might say, for the sake of clarity, that an analytical philosopher of time will by habit first read Physics, while the continental will first read history of ideas, and, after he has been nourished by the most polished results of the physical sciences, will start to think about time (or about what time is according to the magisterium of physics). However, there is a trend, a constant, a continuum drawn on the ground, found on the frontier, between analytical philosophy and continental philosophy, a distinction that gives a criterion, a trend that, when made visible, you cannot truly unsee: Analytical philosophers are still doing philosophy, continental philosophers are still living its tradition.

They are both important, to love is not to say you love something, love is seen by works, they are, while part of a whole, not the same. Continental philosophy has reverence, we might say, it shows respect for the philosophers of the past, continental philosophers are careful when it comes to criticising the philosophical tradition, invariably, they never refute philosophers but rather, from their interpretation start go on to think about being as such (or rather, think about interpretation as such). Contrary to continental philosophy, it is hard to find among analyticals such a knowledge of the western cannon as that which Derrida has, or a resemblance of the historical knowledge and, most distinctly, such a strange and unexplained remanence of Plato’s authority despite deconstruction. Quine, who was great at argumentation, avoided making references to philosophers of the past beyond Hume, making mostly references about peers and, at most, about Hume, sometimes makes the formal logic comic. Quine might, and probably did in fact, know his Classics, his Medievals and his Moderns; but he seemed to live in an eternal present, more reminiscent of myths than of history. The misery of continental philosophers is to have reverence for philosophy, but have the same reverence one has when entering a museum, as tourists visiting churches of their long lost faith. They marble at the history of philosophy, but they avoid doing something about it, they are doing a requiem for it, and it is starting to get boring. There is much complaint about many students of philosophy not actually reading the likes of Derrida, but honestly, can anyone blame them? Derrida would agree that one needs to know the philosophical tradition, one cannot make the categorical imperative that we must read all of the French philosophers or Heidegger before showing our reservations. Life is too long to be an expert on Deleuze and Guattari, and also be a master of millennial philosophy that is as healthy as it ever was.

Analytical philosophers do philosophy, continentals have reverence for it. But analytical philosophy, not so much now, certainly, but definitely in its heyday, was done in a vacuum. The great Bertrand Russell is the closest philosophers have come to becoming the living image of Nietzsche’s last man. There is something ridiculous about claiming that philosophy is fixed by a treatise of logic, it is, properly speaking, insulting to say so. If saying that God is not evil, but unintelligible, is therapeutic, then therapeutic philosophy is not medicine for the soul, but drugs for schizoid patients, who speak and think as two different subjects and characters, who both know nothing about each other, as if one could feel god and not even say a intelligent word about him. Russell and Quine have probably much knowledge of the complexities of philosophical and practical problems, they were probably, like most people, men who had doubts about themselves, who believed many things, fought, loved and died; but, them being so human, a systematic relationship between their common sense and their thinking is found missing in their work. There is no philosophical relationship between “the cat is on the mat” and Russell being mad at the cat pissing on it, his common sense and his philosophy end up being two uncommunicated realms of consciousness, in a schizoid manner. Sadly, analytical philosophers give ammunition to existentialist’s critiques of them (that they alienate thinking from existence), and giving ammunition to existentialism is always a bad strategy. Turning to the other side of the English Channel, Continental philosophers might not realize how irritating they can be. There is much strawmaning of the so called “poststructuralist”, maybe there is no such thing as postsructuralism, not in the sense that the critiques of postsructuralism want it to exist. But it is undeniable that, both layman and schoolmen, finding something truly irritating about Derrida’s Magnus Opus, the Grammatology, and for the life of them not figuring out what it is relevant for are not helped by the fact that the whole point of such a philosophy is not to take too seriously the claims made by philosophers. One thing, however, they can unmistakably state, both schoolmen and laymen: That Grammatology is irritating, at least, because for some reason one needs to read, to understand it, and, at the same time, one needs to think lightly of it (=deconstruct). Derrida wants one to not take him too seriously and, at the same time, dedicate one’s life to reading him before one makes even an atomic remark about one of countless master works of millennial philosophy. Sadly, Yours Truly would dedicate much of that time to drinking a maturated wine, Yours Truly would definitely sacrifice what Derrida asks the devoted reader so as to enjoy Goethe; but for the time being, he would read lightly and meagrely Roland Barthes, reading more heavily into Plato or Kant (and Barthes would, again, agree, but, alas, his tone is so contrary to his claims). They become honestly not only unintended paradoxes, but insulting claims such assertions made by Derrida and the intelligentsia who enjoy his produce, because such (broadly speaking) a select group of people who have grasped the deep lore of postmodernism-postsructuralism-Derrida-whoever, even with their amazing awareness of the times they inhabit, of the death of God, the death of narratives and of postmetaphysics, they, even with all that wokeness of circumstances, lack any sense of irony or paradox, which they often mistake for lightness. Postmodern philosophers, then, on their own terms, are not to be taking seriously; the problem is, however, that the likes of Bruno Latour are not bold in their campaign for relativistic philosophy, they are ridiculous. They are ridiculous because one lacks irony when he makes truth relative, and takes this to be absolute.

Is this not a strawman? Are you any better than Bruno Latour raping scientific discoveries and talking lightly about everything and nothing? There is a shadow of truth in things erroneous, yes, even Bruno Latour might be right, on his best days. Here is not the place to read with sobriety the so called postmoderns like Foucault or Derrida, or Bruno Latour; Yours Truly is not one apt for such a task, nor does he need to do so. But there is a truth, a big one, found in postmodernity, philosophically and historically understood, and that truth is that man should never take himself too seriously. Aptly stated by Sych: man must allow himself to be bold, because he always weights lightly. So much citation, so much literature needed to talk about philosophy, so much careful treading kills us; that is what postmodern philosophy tries to say, with varying success. The so called postmoderns realize, at their heart, how absurd their whole endeavour is, they realize that Heidegger is not a map, he is the end of the road, and we might search for one that leads to Rome. They lack, however, ingenuity when it comes to stating this, they lack any sense of irony, leaving the student with meagre lightness. It is true, Yours Truly believes so, Kant and Hegel, Locke and Descartes, Nietzsche and Comte have failed, and it is, actually, funny that they have. Many think like the boomers, that the zoomers, that we take everything lightly and without sobriety; and there is truth to the claim, but there is also need for understanding. While there is no common soul to all those that are born at the same time, there is a common world, a set of experiences they share, what zoomers realize is that all of this absurdism is quite absurd, and it is healthy to not take everything too seriously, most of all, nihilism.

This was a manifest of boldness, not, however, of humour, both are inextricably linked, however. The reason why the postmodern “intuition” is so important is because, what the bold realist needs to realize is that he needs to be bold, and to be bold, in this age, he needs to not take things too seriously. What the postmoderns sometimes, at their best, realize, is that Saint Francis of Assisi was right, as usual: we need humour, we need a bit of absurdity, it is the only coping mechanism with life as it is. What makes comedians often so profound, at the end of the day, is that they point out that the emperor is naked; humour is to childishly point out the bare nakedness of things, it is, therefore, somewhat metaphysical. Saint Dominic and Saint Francis were designed as a pair.

Metaphysics wears the trousers, this writ is related to the project here at SyntherChronicles; in the name is the answer. The effort done here is to move away from the XX century towards the XXI. What we need in the XXI is all the boldness and the humour that the XX century lacked, a century with suffering, like ours, that did not allow itself to joke and was heavy to the point that lightness took over, and relativism camped on western hills. There is nothing more serious, more painstakingly serious, than someone like Heidegger; if one complain can be given, is that he exaggerated how serious life is. What metaphysical boldness, however, is systematically related to, is to synthetical philosophy, to the synthetical character that the philosophy needs to sprint beyond the times. We need to go truly beyond naturalism, historicism and dialectics, not just in appearance. To declare continental or analytical philosophy dead is cheap, it is insufficient. To unite what is true in the linguistic turn, the best of the analytic philosophy, with what is best in continental philosophy, which is situated cultural critique, we need a uniting, a transcendental principle, we need to do what Kant failed to do, we need to bring peace, not the perpetual peace that he proposed against human nature, rather, a different form of peace.

In the Middle Ages, a time of “military endeavour” as the likes of Saint Simon and Comte considered it, there was a peace of God, sadly, not a perfect peace, but an imperfect one, an imperfect peace not because the principle was wrong, but rather, because it was a continued conquest, interrupted and fallen back upon: The ideal failed to become a task. What was the peace of God? The peace of God were certain days of of truce proclaimed by the Church, certain immunity from violence for non-combatants and a principle put against war on holy days upon sacred estates. It was an historical act of reverence for the eternal bliss men will all one day share beyond this old earth; this peace, is the peace that comes when, in the medieval understanding, the Emperor and the Pope, the temporal and the spiritual, are wearing their trousers. In the realm of culture, of the sciences, of the arts, what brings the Peace of God, rather than the perpetual peace of Kantian wonder-nowhereland, is Metaphysics wearing the trousers. And when, finally, hopefully at some point in this century still in its infancy, Metaphysics leaves its weak skin behind, and takes the mantle it is meant to wear, alike a phoenix redivivus, when it restores the empire of Scientific Metaphysics, then the ship of Odysseus, which is truly the ship of Plato, will remember where home is, and will sail there.

1. Hayek is worth quoting here, at length, from what is considered here the best that ever came out of his pen, The Intellectuals and socialism:

The main lesson which the true liberal must learn from the success of the socialists is that it was their courage to be Utopian which gained them the support of the intellectuals and therefore an influence on public opinion which is daily making possible what only recently seemed utterly remote. Those who have concerned themselves exclusively with what seemed practicable in the existing state of opinion have constantly found that even this had rapidly become politically impossible as the result of changes in a public opinion which they have done nothing to guide. Unless we can make the philosophic foundations of a free society once more a living intellectual issue, and its implementation a task which challenges the ingenuity and imagination of our liveliest minds. But if we can regain that belief in the power of ideas which was the mark of liberalism at its best, the battle is not lost. The intellectual revival of liberalism is already underway in many parts of the world. Will it be in time?

2. Ortega y Gasset considered that neither realism in the Classical and Aristotelian tradition, nor idealism in the Kantian or Rationalistic tradition, are enough. Therefore, he considered that the second navigation starts with Yo soy yo y mi circunstancia; y si no la salvo a ella no me salvo yo (I am I and my circumstances; and if I do not save my circumstance, I don’t save myself). He thought that the self, taking from idealism, and the circumstance, were both needed. In turn, he both rejected mere rationalism and pure vitalism, considering raciovitalismo or “vital rationalism” to be the correct answer. For more on Ortega, this reflection is very good and, if the reader is interested in trying his best at Spanish (or English), ¿Qué es la filosofía is one place to start with this Spanish philosopher

3. Another Spanish philosopher, José Ferrater Mora has a short but amazing text called Las tres filosofías. In this short text this philosopher considers that Marxian (the Soviet Union was then still alive and kicking) Analytical and Continental philosophy were the three great realms of philosophy. What makes his piece unique is how it goes straight to the point and considers this groups to be cultures or subcultures rather than a particular school of thought. This approach is much more historical than different efforts to distinguish this groups by searching for some underlaying philosophical system operating at Harvard, Paris and Moscow. At some point Yours Truly will probably translate this text, for now, you might use AI because technology will fix the world, etc. The rest of this writ builds upon José Ferrater Mora’s text.

4. (before and after the linguistic turn)

5. This topic is touched upon by Edward Feser in Scholastic Metaphysics pages 262-263:

…the theory of analogy commends itself to them ( contemporary analytic metaphysicians), and promises to shed light on the rest. Indeed, it is an especially fitting object for their consideration, given both the logico-linguistic concerns that have always lain at the art of the analytic tradition, and the revival of metaphysics that it has seen in recent years.

6. A non Marxist theory of class that analyses intellectuals can be found in Murray Rothbard’s Anatomy of the state and in Hans Hermann Hoppe’s piece The role of Intellectuals and Anti-intellectuals:

…it is not sufficient that you employ just some intellectuals. You must essentially employ them all—even the ones who work in areas far removed from those that you are primarily concerned with: that is, philosophy, the social sciences and the humanities. For even intellectuals working in mathematics or the natural sciences, for instance, can obviously think for themselves and so become potentially dangerous. It is thus important that you secure also their loyalty to the state. Put differently: you must become a monopolist. And this is best achieved if all “educational” institutions, from kindergarten to universities, are brought under state control and all teaching and researching personnel is “state certified.”