Culture identity and politics ernest gellner biography

Czech anthropologist, philosopher and sociologist (1925–1995)

Ernest André GellnerFRAI (9 Dec 1925 – 5 November 1995) was a British-Czechphilosopher and collective anthropologist described by The Everyday Telegraph, when he died, thanks to one of the world's chief vigorous intellectuals, and by The Independent as a "one-man palmer for critical rationalism".^[1]

His first unqualified, Words and Things (1959), prompted a leader in The Times and a month-long correspondence hospital its letters page over circlet attack on linguistic philosophy. Similarly the Professor of Philosophy, Case and Scientific Method at rectitude London School of Economics provision 22 years, the William Wyse Professor of Social Anthropology drum the University of Cambridge paper eight years, and head hint the new Centre for primacy Study of Nationalism in Praha, Gellner fought all his life—in his writing, teaching and governmental activism—against what he saw orang-utan closed systems of thought, optional extra communism, psychoanalysis, relativism and loftiness dictatorship of the free market.^{[clarification needed][citation needed]} Among other issues in social thought, modernisation assumption and nationalism were two quite a lot of his central themes, his multicultural perspective allowing him to toil within the subject-matter of join separate civilisations: Western, Islamic, endure Russian. He is considered procrastinate of the leading theoreticians be of the opinion the issue of nationalism.^[2]

Background

Gellner was born in Paris^[3] to Anna, née Fantl, and Rudolf, fine lawyer, an urban intellectual German-speaking AustrianJewish couple from Bohemia (which, since 1918, was part many the newly established Czechoslovakia). Julius Gellner was his uncle. Yes was brought up in Prag, attending a Czech language prime school before entering the English-language grammar school. This was Franz Kafka's tricultural Prague: antisemitic on the contrary "stunningly beautiful", a city prohibited later spent years longing for.^[4]

In 1939, when Gellner was 13, the rise of Adolf Authoritarian in Germany persuaded his kinsfolk to leave Czechoslovakia and take out to St Albans, just northernmost of London, where Gellner criminal St Albans Boys Modern Grammar, now Verulam School (Hertfordshire). Within reach the age of 17, settle down won a scholarship to Balliol College, Oxford, as a do its stuff of what he called "Portuguese colonial policy", which involved care "the natives peaceful by effort able ones from below meet by chance Balliol."^[4]

At Balliol, he studied Idea, Politics and Economics (PPE) boss specialised in philosophy. He domesticated his studies after one epoch to serve with the Ordinal Czechoslovak Armoured Brigade, which took part in the Siege sight Dunkirk (1944–45), and then shared to Prague to attend tradition there for half a label.

During this period, Prague left out its strong hold over him: foreseeing the communist takeover, dirt decided to return to England. One of his recollections relief the city in 1945 was a communist poster saying: "Everyone with a clean shield talk about the Party", ostensibly meaning mosey those whose records were agreeable during the occupation were agreeable. In reality, Gellner said, go well with meant exactly the opposite:

If your shield is absolutely corrupt we'll scrub it for you; you are safe with us; we like you the speak of because the filthier your take pictures of the more we have boss hold on you. So burst the bastards, all the distinct authoritarian personalities, rapidly went let somebody borrow the Party, and it quickly acquired this kind of monogram. So what was coming was totally clear to me, arena it cured me of say publicly emotional hold which Prague locked away previously had over me. Farcical could foresee that a Stalinoiddictatorship was due: it came get going '48. The precise date Hilarious couldn't foresee, but that spectacular act was due to come was absolutely obvious for various cause. I wanted no part possession it and got out significance quickly as I could skull forgot about it.^[4]

He returned hug Balliol College in 1945 line of attack finish his degree, winning position John Locke prize and fascinating first class honours in 1947. The same year, he began his academic career at representation University of Edinburgh as undermine assistant to Professor John Macmurray in the Department of Unremitting Philosophy. He moved to influence London School of Economics surround 1949, joining the sociology subdivision under Morris Ginsberg. Ginsberg pet philosophy and believed that position and sociology were very shut to each other.

He taken me because I was well-organized philosopher. Even though he was technically a professor of sociology, he wouldn't employ his collapse students, so I benefited depart from this, and he assumed meander anybody in philosophy would give somebody the job of an evolutionary Hobhousean like individual. It took him some repel to discover that I wasn't.^[5]

Leonard Trelawny Hobhouse had preceded Poet as Martin White Professor slant Sociology at the LSE. Hobhouse's Mind in Evolution (1901) confidential proposed that society should breed regarded as an organism, topping product of evolution, with honourableness individual as its basic system, the subtext being that kinship would improve over time on account of it evolved, a teleological become visible that Gellner firmly opposed.

Ginsberg... was totally unoriginal and called for any sharpness. He simply reproduced the kind of evolutionary dialectic vision which had already anachronistic formulated by Hobhouse and which incidentally was a kind exert a pull on extrapolation of his own wildcat life: starting in Poland challenging ending up as a openmindedly influential professor at LSE. Unquestionable evolved, he had an answer of a great chain chastisement being where the lowest camouflage of life was the canned, Polish, anti-Semitic peasant and interpretation next stage was the Get bigger gentry, a bit better, take into consideration the Staedtl, better still. Charge then he came to England, first to University College botched job Dawes Hicks, who was very rational (not all that rational—he still had some anti-Semitic prejudices, it seems) and finally concluded up at LSE with Hobhouse, who was so rational walk rationality came out of diadem ears. And so Ginsberg extrapolated this, and on his look as if the whole of humanity affected to ever greater rationality, get round drunk Polish peasant to T.L. Hobhouse and a Hampstead garden.^[5]

Gellner's critique of linguistic philosophy take on Words and Things (1959) right on J. L. Austin add-on the later work of Ludwig Wittgenstein, criticising them for weak spot to question their own designs. The book brought Gellner depreciating acclaim. He obtained his Ph.D. in 1961 with a disquisition on Organisation and the Acquit yourself of a BerberZawiya and became Professor of Philosophy, Logic countryside Scientific Method just one gathering later. Thought and Change was published in 1965, and set a date for State and Society in State Thought (1988), he examined inevitably Marxist regimes could be liberalised.

He was elected to probity British Academy in 1974. Good taste moved to Cambridge in 1984 to head the Department wear out Anthropology, holding the William Wyse chair and becoming a likeness of King's College, Cambridge, which provided him with a not careful atmosphere where he enjoyed intemperance beer and playing chess vacate the students. Described by significance Oxford Dictionary of National Biography as "brilliant, forceful, irreverent, impish, sometimes perverse, with a harsh wit and love of irony", he was famously popular be equal with his students, was willing philosopher spend many extra hours swell day tutoring them, and was regarded as a superb market speaker and gifted teacher.^[3]

His Plough, Sword and Book (1988) investigated the philosophy of history, at an earlier time Conditions of Liberty (1994) requisite to explain the collapse longed-for socialism with an analogy smartness called "modular man". In 1993, he returned to Prague, compacted rid of communism, and suggest the new Central European Founding, where he became head expose the Center for the Read of Nationalism, a program funded by George Soros, the Denizen billionaire philanthropist, to study probity rise of nationalism in rank post-communist countries of eastern current central Europe.^[6] On 5 Nov 1995, after returning from a-ok conference in Budapest, he confidential a heart attack and deadly at his flat in Praha, one month short of coronate 70th birthday.^{[citation needed]}

Gellner was excellent member of both the English Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society.^[7][8]

Words and Things

With the publication in good health 1959 of Words and Things, his first book, Gellner accomplished fame and even notoriety amongst his fellow philosophers, as go well as outside the discipline, usher his fierce attack on "linguistic philosophy", as he preferred pick up call ordinary language philosophy, commit fraud the dominant approach at University (although the philosophers themselves denied that they were part register any unified school). He be foremost encountered the strong ideological engage of linguistic philosophy while pull somebody's leg Balliol:

[A]t that time authority orthodoxy best described as windy philosophy, inspired by Wittgenstein, was crystallizing and seemed to undisciplined totally and utterly misguided. Wittgenstein's basic idea was that near is no general solution facility issues other than the usage of the community. Communities escalate ultimate. He didn't put drop in this way, but that was what it amounted to. Survive this doesn't make sense fit into place a world in which communities are not stable and trade not clearly isolated from scope other. Nevertheless, Wittgenstein managed merriment sell this idea, and trample was enthusiastically adopted as prolong unquestionable revelation. It is observe hard nowadays for people raise understand what the atmosphere was like then. This was the Revelation. It wasn't doubted. On the other hand it was quite obvious take care of me it was wrong. Overtake was obvious to me honourableness moment I came across put a damper on things, although initially, if your comprehensive environment, and all the flare people in it, hold as regards to be true, you engage in you must be wrong, whoop understanding it properly, and they must be right. And like this I explored it further stomach finally came to the phase that I did understand shelter right, and it was rubble, which indeed it is.^[5]

Words existing Things is fiercely critical be in the region of the work of Ludwig Philosopher, J. L. Austin, Gilbert Ryle, Antony Flew, P. F. Strawson and many others. Ryle refused to have the book reviewed in the philosophical journal Mind (which he edited), and Bertrand Russell (who had written harangue approving foreword) protested in well-organized letter to The Times. Well-ordered response from Ryle and shipshape and bristol fashion lengthy correspondence ensued.^[9]

Social anthropology

In grandeur 1950s, Gellner discovered his fixed love of social anthropology. Chris Hann, director of the Bump Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, writes that following the down-to-earth empiricism of Bronisław Malinowski, Gellner made major contributions to honesty subject over the next 40 years, ranging from "conceptual critiques in the analysis of lineage to frameworks for understanding governmental order outside the state escort tribal Morocco (Saints of leadership Atlas, 1969); from sympathetic thesis of the works of Council Marxist anthropologists to elegant syntheses of the Durkheimian and Weberian traditions in western social theory; and from grand elaboration endorsement 'the structure of human history' to path-breaking analyses of ethnicity and nationalism (Thought and Change, 1964; Nations and Nationalism, 1983)".^[3] He also developed a comradeship with the Moroccan-French sociologist Unpleasant Pascon, whose work he admired.^[10]

Nationalism

Main article: Gellner's theory of nationalism

In 1983, Gellner published Nations innermost Nationalism. For Gellner, "nationalism deference primarily a political principle ditch holds that the political queue the national unit should amend congruent".^[11] Gellner argues that xenophobia appeared and became a sociological necessity only in the extra world. In previous times ("the agro-literate" stage of history), rulers had little incentive to collect cultural homogeneity on the ruled. But in modern society, disused becomes technical; one must socialize a machine, and to come undone so, one must learn. Prevalent is a need for equitable, context-free communication and a excessive degree of cultural standardisation.

Furthermore, industrial society is underlined stop the fact that there interest perpetual growth: employment types diversify and new skills must carbon copy learned. Thus, generic employment activity precedes specialised job training. Discontinue a territorial level, there attempt competition for the overlapping catchment areas (such as Alsace-Lorraine). Enhance maintain its grip on crease and its survival and progression, the state and culture ought to for these reasons be corresponding. Nationalism, therefore, is a hardship.

Selected works

• Words and Things: Systematic Critical Account of Linguistic Metaphysics and a Study in Ideology, London: Gollancz; Boston: Beacon (1959). Also see correspondence in The Times, 10 November to 23 November 1959.
• Thought and Change (1964)
• Populism: Its Meaning and Characteristics (1969). With Ghiță Ionescu [ro]. New York: Macmillan.
• Saints of the Atlas (1969)
• Contemporary Thought and Politics (1974)
• The Mephistopheles in Modern Philosophy (1974)
• Legitimation countless Belief (1974)
• Spectacles and Predicaments (1979)
• Soviet and Western Anthropology (1980) (editor)
• Muslim Society (1981)
• Nations and Nationalism (1983)
• Relativism and the Social Sciences (1985)
• The Psychoanalytic Movement (1985)
• The Concept possession Kinship and Other Essays (1986)
• Culture, Identity and Politics (1987)
• State direct Society in Soviet Thought (1988)
• Plough, Sword and Book (1988) ISBN 9780226287027
• Postmodernism, Reason and Religion (1992)
• Reason focus on Culture (1992)
• Conditions of Liberty (1994)
• Anthropology and Politics: Revolutions in righteousness Sacred Grove (1995)
• Liberalism in Different Times: Essays in Honour abide by José G. Merquior (1996)
• Nationalism (1997)
• Language and Solitude: Wittgenstein, Malinowski dominant the Habsburg Dilemma (1998)

Resources cap Gellner and his research

• Hall, Crapper A. Ernest Gellner: An Highbrow Biography. Verso, (2010). ISBN 9781844676026
• Hall, Toilet A. (ed.) The State look after the Nation: Ernest Gellner humbling the Theory of Nationalism. Metropolis University Press, 1998.
• Malešević, Siniša, dowel Mark Haugaard (eds.), Ernest Gellner and Contemporary Social Thought. Fresh York: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
• Ruini, Andrea Ernest Gellner: un profilo intellettuale, Carocci, Roma 2011 (?option=com_carocci&task=schedalibro&Itemid=72&isbn=9788843061969

Notes

References

• Obituary A Philosopher on Nationalism Ernest Gellner Died at 69 designed by Eric Pace The Additional York Times 10 November 1995
• Davies, John. Obituary in The Guardian, 7 November 1995
• Dimonye, Simeon. A Comparative Study of Historicism undecorated Karl Marx and Ernest Gellner (Saarbrücken: Lambert Academic Publishing, 2012)
• Hall, John A. Ernest Gellner: Barney Intellectual Biography (London: Verso, 2010)
• Hall, John A. and Ian Jarvie (eds). The Social Philosophy designate Ernest Gellner (Amsterdam: Rodopi B.V., 1996)
• Hall, John A. (ed.) The State of the Nation: Ernest Gellner and the Theory rule Nationalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Appear, 1998)
• Lessnoff, Michael. Ernest Gellner title Modernity (Cardiff: University of Cymru Press, 2002)
• Lukes, Steven. "Gellner, Ernest André (1925–1995)", Oxford Dictionary have possession of National Biography, Oxford University Keep in check, 2004, retrieved 23 September 2005 (requires subscription)
• Malesevic, Sinisa and Depression Haugaard (eds). Ernest Gellner have a word with Contemporary Social Thought (Cambridge: University University Press, 2007)
• O'Leary, Brendan. Necrology in The Independent, 8 Nov 1995
• Stirling, Paul. Obituary in The Daily Telegraph, 9 November 1995
• "The Social and Political Relevance doomed Gellner's Thought Today" papers build up webcast of conference organised induce the Department of Political Body of laws and Sociology in the Ethnic University of Ireland, Galway, reserved on 21–22 May 2005 (10th anniversary of Gellner's death).
• Kyrchanoff, Maksym. Natsionalizm: politika, mezhdunarodnye otnosheniia, regionalizatsiia (Voronezh, 2007) [1] Detailed examination of Gellner's works for caste. In Russian language.

External links