I just picked up Routley's Exploring Meinong's Jungle and Beyond, and it is a weighty tome. I picked up Meinong's book on Hume as well; Meinong is a philospher who of course is referred to all the time, but he's mostly known for the fact that Russell and Quine made fun of him. Though he has defenders who claim the criticisms of Russell and Quine were shallow, and the rumor is often circulated that they misrepresented his views anyway, even his defenders rarely seem to have gone so far as to read his work. Thus, I thought I should check it out. It looks like I have a busy summer ahead of me, so I don't know how quickly I'll get through it, but I may post more about either Routley or Meinong at some point.
Routley's jungle metaphor caught my attention, though, along with the vivid illustration on the cover. I don't remember where the jungle metaphor came from, but I do recall Quine once referring to the realm of possibilities as an ontological slum, which he went on to characterize as a breeding ground for disorderly elements. Quine was fairly infamous for his conservative views ("dinosaur" is how I heard him described by someone not particularly radical in his own politics), so the metaphor is not surprising coming from him. I wonder if it's important. Of course, Quine didn't write about politics. Certainly he never drew any connections in print between his philosophical views and his political views. There must have been some interaction, though; I don't see how there could fail to be for anyone with the slightest concern with either politics or philosophy.
Of course, Quine is also famous for being an early follower of and later rebel against Carnap, whose politics were quite left-wing; like Quine, Carnap avoided politics almost completely in his writing, but for him we do still have a tiny bit of print evidence, from his intellectual autobiography in his Schilpp volume. Also, when Robert Cohen was doing work on the development of Logical Positivism and apparently asked Carnap about his politics, Carnap told him that his political views of the 20s and 30s were pretty much the same as those to be found in Neurath's essays and articles of the time (in other words, very big on socialism and democracy, and the need to connect the two, the need for economic equality and political equality to go together if either are to exist meaningfully).
So how did Carnap's politics affect his philosophy? And did the political differences between Quine and Carnap have anything to do with their break? I've read a bit of Dear Carnap, Dear Van, but it seems that some of what would probably have been the most interesting letters have been destroyed.
Very interesting!
Two not massively helpful comments:
1. I have a very left-wing friend who was friends with Quine, so evidently Quine had no trouble being friends with left-wing people.
2. I wouldn't say that Russell exactly made fun of Meinong. He certainly did misrepresent Meinong, but I think that was only when he mentioned him in passing. When he discussed Meinong more carefully, he was very respectful and careful and I think he got his views right (although I'm one of those people who's never read Meinong in the original; but I have read a whole bunch of secondary literature). Unfortunatly, it was Russell's passing comments about Meinong, the incorrect ones, which became famous. See e.g. Nicholas Griffin ``Russell's `horrible travesty' of Meinong'', Russell: The Journal of the Bertrand Russell Archives; 1978: 25-28: 39-51
Posted by: Jason Grossman | April 07, 2008 at 09:12 AM