"Schuringa convincingly argues that analytic philosophy did not emerge as a “single, unified movement” until after World War II. This development came especially once the analytic creed had effectively taken over US philosophy departments. Analytic philosophy, while hardly mainstream, was a useful ideological tool in cementing postwar liberalism as a “bulwark against totalitarianism.” At the same time, he suggests, postwar ideological conflicts proved helpful in weeding out the “most radical agendas in philosophy,” particularly Marxism, most notably in the McCarthyite intellectual purges of the 1950s in the United States.

The dominant academic philosophy in anglophone universities since World War II has thus increasingly stepped back from any direct involvement in political and social issues. But it has done so in such a way that it implicitly constructs postwar liberal ideology as the common sense. Schuringa’s book is an important contribution in this sense, because it shows how analytic philosophy’s appeal to empiricism and logical analysis, which appear to stand above the political fray, is precisely the kind of philosophical practice that does not get in the way of the status quo. Why bother discussing politics or society when it is self-evident how politics and society should function?"

https://jacobin.com/2025/09/analytic-continental-philosophy-russell-wittgenstein/

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