The book’s principal limitations emerge at the macro level, where Schuringa’s overarching Marxist narrative at times feels imposed rather than earned. His portrayal of analytic philosophy as primarily a vehicle for bourgeois liberal ideology—“the passive reception of inert facts”, as he puts it (p. 4)—can serve as a valuable critical lens for diagnosing certain methodological pathologies. The practice of “intuition pumping”, for example, in which intuitions are treated as quasi-experimental data (p. 231), has undeniably fostered otherworldly metaphysics and absolutist ethics. Such tendencies fully warrant the sharp critique Schuringa directs at them, and they align convincingly with his analysis of a liberal ideology that transforms illusions into unquestionable facts.
Yet a history of analytic philosophy should, at precisely this juncture, distinguish these developments as pathologies rather than as constitutive of the tradition itself. They stand in clear tension with its methodological foundations, especially as articulated by the logical empiricists. Schuringa unfortunately overlooks the fact that more sophisticated methodological frameworks—such as Carnap’s method of explication and his framework-relativism—have recently enjoyed renewed attention for precisely this reason: they underwrite contemporary forms of conceptual engineering (e.g., Sally Haslanger) and formal ontology (e.g., Amie Thomasson) that are not only compatible with politically engaged philosophical projects (including potentially Marxist ones) but also decisively undermine the forms of foundationalism that Schuringa treats as analytic philosophy’s original sin and its supposed bourgeois core.
… One wishes he had taken the final step and traced a genuinely Marxist genealogy within analytic philosophy, rather than positioning Marxism solely in opposition to it. Doing so would not only have enhanced historical accuracy but also clarified the stakes of his argument. For if the left Vienna Circle and the Austro-Marxists were right, then orthodox Marxism-Leninism stands fundamentally at odds with both science and democracy. A political philosophy that aspires to be genuinely scientific and democratic cannot be Marxist in Lenin’s sense. Instead, it must approximate the Vienna Circle’s vision—one that unites objective scientific inquiry with the evaluative and practical attitudes of individuals—whereas Leninism sacrifices both scientific objectivity and individual freedom.
The real tension, therefore, lies within the Marxist tradition itself: between a dialectical-metaphysical understanding and a non-foundationalist, empiri cist conception of socialism. These perspectives are largely incompatible, rep resenting a decisive parting of ways that leads to two distinct lineages—one stemming from Lenin, the other from Mach. A history of analytic philosophy that implicitly sides with Lenin from the outset can scarcely account for the movement’s political dimensions and will almost inevitably deny the existence of a genuinely Marxist current within analytic philosophy. …
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Christian Damböck, “A Great Introduction to Analytic Philosophy and a Missed Opportunity”
