Analytic philosophy is the leading form of philosophy in the English-speaking world. In this event, Christoph Schuringa will argue that its enduring power can only be understood by examining its social history. While analytic philosophy tends to think of itself as apolitical, concerned with eternal questions and transcending the changing scenes of history, Schuringa will show that it is actually shaped by highly specific sets of political and social forces that joined together after the Second World War. In the climate of McCarthyism, analytic philosophy was robbed of political force.

To this day, analytic philosophy is the ideology of the status quo. It may seem arcane and largely removed from the real world, but it is a crucial component in upholding liberalism, through its central role in elite educational institutions. In fact, the apparently increasing friendliness of analytic philosophers to rival approaches in philosophy should be understood as a form of colonization; thanks to its hegemonic status, it reformats all it touches in service of its own imperatives, going so far as to colonize decolonial efforts in the discipline.

Christoph Schuringa is Professor of Philosophy at Northeastern University London, and Editor of the Hegel Bulletin. His book A Social History of Analytic Philosophy will be published on June 10 by Verso.

Tzuchien Tho is a lecturer in History of Philosophy of Science at the University of Bristol. His current work surrounds the mathematical, methodological and metaphysical problems surrounding physical causality in the 17th and 18th centuries.