Ideals and Illusions, Susan Stebbing's (1941) moving wartime work, published while she and the Kingsley Lodge school for girls (of which she remained the principal in addition to being the first female British philosophy professor) had moved to the far end of Cornwall, aims to rectify the absence of an ideal that speaks to what one may call democratic and spiritual yearning in British public life.* In fact,
“ But in so far as political philosophy aspires to educate the thoughtful citizenry in the reasons for its commitments (it should hold), Stebbing's book is, warts and all (and I have not developed my criticisms here), without parallel in early analytic philosophy. (No, I am not ignoring Popper or Russell's political essays!)” There’s one omission here that was, among the players familiar with Austria and Vienna (cough cough: circle), very well known and deeply republican while at the same time realist of sorts as well: Kelsey’s “Essence and Value of Democracy” (which also is unjustly forgotten and counted falsely as positivist —despite being precisely presented as an elaboration of the *ideals* of democracy (freedom and equality).
“ But in so far as political philosophy aspires to educate the thoughtful citizenry in the reasons for its commitments (it should hold), Stebbing's book is, warts and all (and I have not developed my criticisms here), without parallel in early analytic philosophy. (No, I am not ignoring Popper or Russell's political essays!)” There’s one omission here that was, among the players familiar with Austria and Vienna (cough cough: circle), very well known and deeply republican while at the same time realist of sorts as well: Kelsey’s “Essence and Value of Democracy” (which also is unjustly forgotten and counted falsely as positivist —despite being precisely presented as an elaboration of the *ideals* of democracy (freedom and equality).
Thank you for the suggestion!
"the narrative that there 'was no political philosophy within analytic philosophy' before Rawls is a lie that keeps us in a self-imposed tutelage."
This seems to me to distort what people say about the important of Rawls's work in a pretty important way!