“According to one founding myth, philosophy begins in Ancient Greece with Socrates abstracting from concrete examples of just activity in order to determine the timeless and eternal essence of justice. To this day, few philosophy journals are dedicated to the analysis of historically contingent current affairs, let alone a specific event of historical significance.”
That’s the opening of the introduction, by Aaron James Wendland (KCL) to a special issue of Studia Philosophica Estonica on the Russia-Ukraine War.
The open-access issue contains articles by philosophers, many of which engage with details about the war and the specific governments involved in it, such as “Just War Theory and the Russia-Ukraine War” by Jeff McMahan (Oxford), “Putin’s Use and Abuse of History as a Political Weapon” by Cynthia Nielson (Dallas), “What Is this Thing Called Peace?” by Fabio Lampert (Vienna), among others.
(Some of the other pieces, such as “Against the Odds: Defending Defensive Wars” by Gerald Lang (Leeds) and “Nationalisms: Purification, Privilege, Pride, and Protection” by Jonathan Wolff (Oxford) take a more familiar approach of using the war as an example by which to explore more general principles or concepts.)
While there is plenty of public philosophy on issues of the day, Dr. Wendland’s remarks that relatively little academic philosophical work is “dedicated to the analysis of historically contingent current affairs” seems right.* But there has been some, and I encourage people to share worthwhile examples.
* putting aside a kind of historicization critique of philosophy under which all of its subject matter is contingent.
“Individualism versus totalitarianism, democracy versus dictatorship, nationalism versus internationalism, and militarism versus pacifism are antitheses which have written themselves in blood and tears across the world to-day. Has the philosopher as such anything to say about these bitter questions? Can his message be of any human significance, or must he confine himself to playing with logical subtleties while Rome burns? This is at any rate the sort of question which their conscience must set to many philosophers. Not that I mean to imply that it would follow that philosophy was of no practical use if it were found that it could not help in the solution of political problems. There are fortunately other things in life besides politics, and philosophy may have a contribution to make to individual ethics, science, education, appreciation of art and beauty, religion. Again, even if philosophy had no ulterior effects beyond itself, I should still claim that it was very well worth pursuing for its own sake. But it is reasonable to ask whether the philosopher cannot also make a contribution to the grave questions connected with the special crisis in which we are all involved; and it is even arguable that philosophers, at least in some countries, are to blame for not capturing the minds of youth with a more rational political philosophy to set against the outrageous concoction produced by the rulers of Nazi Germany.”
The Individual, the State, and World Government, by A.C. Ewing, at p. 1. Published 1947; written during World War II.
“Mr. Truman’s Degree”.
The idea that philosophers in general have had nothing much to say about contingent historical events seems completely wrong to me. . Occam made his name as a logician and theologian but spent the latter part of his life as a critic of the Papal policies of John XXII (which meant that he had to spend it in exile a the court of the Holy Roman Emperor Ludwig IV.) Hobbes wrote what is essentially the same book three times, twice to defend the royalist cause against the parliamentary opposition and the third time (as Leviathan) to justify obedience to the Cromwellian state. Leibniz’s ‘Mars Christianissimus’ is a critique the expansionist foreign policy of Louis XIV. Locke’s Two Treatises was drafted to justify a potential rebellion against (what he saw as) the increasingly absolutist government of Charles II and was published to justify the successful revolution of William III ‘our great deliverer from Popery and Slavery’. Locke’s ’Letter Concerning Toleration’ is an implicit critique of the persecuting policies of the Anglican Church from the Restoration onwards. Hume wrote a series of essays (not to mention an influential history) designed to analyse and defend the political system of 18th century Britain which, he is at pains to argue, was a ‘contingent’ and fragile affair; and one of his chief philosophical opponents, Richard Price, wrote in defence of both the American and the French Revolutions (thus earning himself a bucket of vitriolic and none-to-honest abuse from Edmund Burke in Reflections on the Revolution in France). Hegel wrote extensively about politics including a critique of the English Reform Bill. Mill too was a part-time political journalist discussing, among other things, the suppression of the Jamaican revolt by Governor Eyre. Marx did not just write big analyses of Capitalism as a system but also wrote extensively about particular episodes. Indeed the 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte and the Civil War in France in France are among his most celebrated works. John Dewey chaired an enquiry into the Moscow Show Trials with special reference to Trotsky. Bertrand Russell was actively engaged in the Suffragist campaigns in the early 1900s, wrote extensively on the issues of Free Trade and Tariff Reform, opposed World War I in numerous pamphlets and articles (running afoul of philosophers such as E.E Constance Jones who publicly supported it), wrote a remarkably prescient critique of the Bolshevik Revolution (The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism), opposed the rise of Fascism, argued for Indian independence, propounded a kind of Left-appeasement doctrine in the run-up to WWII before publicly changing his mind while in America, criticised the actions of the Soviet State on numerous occasions, as also the depredations of McCarthyism, responded to the threat of nuclear weapons with proposals for disarmament and World Government, and ended his life as an opponent of the Vietnam War. Indeed of the Thirty-plus projected volumes of Russell’s Collected Papers (some of them very fat indeed) only eleven are devoted to technical Philosophy. Then there is Glover on Humanity, Arendt on the Eichmann Trial and Peter Singer on The President of Good and Evil. And of course neither the existentialists nor the Frankfurt School were shy about commenting on current events. One could go on and on.
But perhaps the point is that these kinds of writings are (often) insufficiently ‘academic’? The texts that I have mentioned were typically addressed to a wider public, not just to professional philosophers. So the point is not that philosophers in general don’t discuss ‘historically contingent current affairs’ or ‘specific events of historical significance’. The point is that there aren’t that many philosophy journals or journal articles (nowadays) that discuss these topics. Neither Synthese nor Philosophical Studies is likely to feature articles on Putin’s War
If that’s the point then there is an easy explanation. If you want to make a comment on some contingent episode, this will probably because you think that you have something to say about it of political pith and moment. And if it is a comment of political pith and moment it won’t be good enough to confine it to the pages of the relatively unread Studia Philosophica Estonica or even Philosophy and Public Affairs. You will be hoping that your ideas will have an impact on the wider world. And that means that you will be hoping for a wider readership than the vast majority of academic papers are likely to achieve. Hence you will tend to prefer a non-academic (or at least a less academic) venue. The reason that there isn’t all that much about contingent episodes in the Philosophy journals isn’t that philosophers don’t care (or don’t have anything to say) about such things. The reason is that in so far as they do care, (and think they have something to say) they will have an incentive to be saying it somewhere else.