## 1. Life and Work



John Anderson was born in 1893 in the weaving and coal-mining village
of Stonehouse, Lanarkshire (about 20km from Glasgow). His father was
schoolmaster in the village and politically active in the Independent
Labour Party. In 1911 Anderson began his university studies at the
University of Glasgow, enrolling in two successive honours degrees:
mathematics/natural philosophy (including laboratory training) and
logic/moral philosophy (including political economy). His
undergraduate studies extended throughout the years of the World War,
culminating in 1917 with his Masters thesis on the philosophy of
William James. Declared medically unfit for service, his experience of
the war was dominated by the Red Clydeside industrial and rental
disputes, characterised by workers' resistance to state and
industry attempts to re-organise work practices and personnel in the
interests of a supposed common national interest. The disputes
ultimately led to state suppression at the conclusion of the war when
British troops and artillery were deployed to Glasgow.



Anderson's philosophical direction was powerfully influenced by
the Australian-born philosopher, Samuel Alexander, who delivered the
Gifford Lectures at Glasgow in 1918. In the previous year Anderson had
been awarded for an essay supporting Henry Jones' practical
idealist view of the state as a moral agent. Following
Alexander's lectures (later published as *Space, Time and
Deity*) Anderson accepted the case for the complete rejection of
this form of idealism in favour of a new and systematic realist
programme.



In 1919 Anderson married fellow philosophy student Jenny Baillie, was
appointed assistant lecturer at University College of South Wales
(where he also provided Workers' Education Classes) and was
subsequently appointed assistant lecturer in logic at the University
of Glasgow. In 1920 he was appointed lecturer at the University of
Edinburgh and so became the main exponent of realism in Norman Kemp
Smith's Department of Logic and Metaphysics. In the same year,
his brother William accepted the Chair of Mental and Moral Philosophy
at Auckland University College, New Zealand.



By 1926 Anderson had become dispirited by the rejection for
publication of a textbook on logic that he had been working on since
1922. He had also become politically isolated in the department
because of his support for the General Strike in Britain. Such factors
may have moved him to accept the Challis Chair of Philosophy at the
University of Sydney, although as with his brother, the movement of
Scottish philosophers to Commonwealth universities was not unusual. In
1927 he moved with Jennie and their young son Alexander
("Sandy") to Sydney.



Anderson's first serious professional engagement was in a
critical discussion of F. C. S. Schiller's logic,
"Propositions and Judgments" and "The Truth of
Propositions" (1926). The first outlines of a distinctive
realist position were made in "Empiricism" and "The
Knower and the Known" (1927). After his arrival at Sydney,
Anderson was intent upon developing this position and was dismissive
of the fragmentary nature of most international philosophy in the wake
of the "linguistic turn". The important philosophical work
in Anderson's view was to establish and preserve a school of
realist philosophy as the repository of a tradition of critical
inquiry that would remain alert to the dangers of corrupting external
forces and expectations. 



Shortly after his arrival at Sydney, Anderson became a
"theoretical advisor" to the Australian Communist Party
and so began a long history of antagonising conservative political and
cultural representatives in the city. He was repeatedly accused of
disloyalty and communist sympathies by returned servicemen
organisations, the churches and the conservative political parties.
The University Senate ultimately debated censure although a motion to
declare him unfit to occupy the Chair of Philosophy was defeated. 



In 1930 James Joyce's *Ulysses* was banned in Australia
and the Freethought Society was formed with Anderson as President.
Anderson's political influence at Sydney primarily took the form
of a libertarian pluralism, particularly concerned with issues of
state and religious censorship and interference in education. By the
1940s and 1950s his political position was strongly anti-communist.
Yet he remained unpopular with conservative politicians and clerics
and was criticised for "corrupting the city's youth"
as late as 1961.



In 1935 Anderson became the editor of *The Australasian Journal of
Psychology and Philosophy*. He had previously contributed
significantly to the journal with his articles "Determinism and
Ethics" (1928), "The Non-Existence of
Consciousness", "'Universals' and
Occurrences" (1929), "The Place of Hegel in the History of
Philosophy", "Utilitarianism" (1932), "Realism
and Some of its Critics" (1933), and "Mind as
Feeling" (1934). He retained editorial responsibility for the
journal until 1947 when it passed to John Passmore with the new name
*The Australasian Journal of Philosophy*.



In 1958 Anderson retired and in 1962 died at his home in
Sydney's northern suburbs. The Challis Chair of Philosophy was
occupied for the next 30 years by Anderson's students, J. L.
Mackie (1959-1963) and D. M. Armstrong (1964-1991). Both
philosophers were critical of Anderson's philosophy and were
more engaged with contemporary philosophical debates, but both also
acknowledged Anderson's formative influence on their work.



In 1972 members of the Department of Philosophy at the University of
Sydney were caught in a bitter dispute concerning subject matter,
educational practices and the nature of philosophical study itself,
and by the start of 1974 the department had split into two separate
units. D. M. Armstrong led the minority Department of Traditional and
Modern Philosophy away from what he perceived to be the politically
radical but philosophically barren Department of General Philosophy.
Political disruptions throughout the academic world in the early 1970s
were not uncommon, but the particular intransigence and secessionist
tendencies which characterised both sides of the conflict at Sydney
may well have been at least in part a legacy of Anderson's
teaching and practice. The department eventually reunited some thirty
years later.


## 2. Outline of Anderson's Philosophy



The emphasis of Anderson's realism is upon
*independence*, directed particularly at the notion of
constitutive relations (which he takes to be the central error of
idealism), but also employed in qualifying reductivist and
instrumentalist forms of scientific explanation. His position is that
although whatever exists has relations and is conditioned, it is
nonetheless a specific existing thing with qualities of its own. It is
the aim of critical inquiry in any given field to identify relevant
qualities and characteristics and to state the issue in the form of
objective and communicable truth. Whatever our interests draw our
attention to, the truth of the matter is independent of our
consideration. Whatever innovative and imaginative uses we make of
particular things, those uses are available to us because of existing
properties in the things themselves. For Anderson, two aspects of
philosophical speculation have been linked throughout the history of
the subject, and his own thought can be considered as a single system
with these complementary aspects: the logical and the ethical.



First, there is a single way of being, that of ordinary things
behaving in ordinary ways in space and time. All theories of higher
and lower realities can only be stated in terms of the common reality
we all know and share. Anderson applied this thesis across the board:
there are not different kinds or degrees of truth, only
something's being the case or not; universals and values do not
exist above the world of space and time in a transcendent sphere of
operation; powers are not entities distinct from the processes they
explain; the mental realm cannot be conceived as operating in a sphere
separate from or other than space and time. There is no absolute or
logical distinction between universals and particulars -
universals exist within the ordinary world, but never apart from the
particulars they describe; that is, there is no ontological level
above or below that of the state of affairs or the fact of a
predicated subject. As the study of the formal features of facts,
logic provides an account of what is objectively real: logic entails a
general ontology.



Second, Anderson emphasised both the objective and subjective
difficulties inherent in the endeavour to see things as they are, and
the necessary discipline acquired in ongoing traditions of critical
inquiry. Confronting the reality of our existence entails recognising
and not turning away from the ubiquity of conflict, tension and strife
in all spheres. For Anderson ethical goods exist in the world in such
activities as intellectual inquiry, artistic production and scientific
investigation. Ethical investigation is primarily concerned with
identifying those human activities which are driven by internal
standards of correctness and value and not by concern for external
rewards or utilities. But these activities exist perilously in a world
seriously inclined towards stasis and corruption. There is an almost
theological depth to Anderson's pessimism in this regard. 



Anderson's views in normative philosophy are outlined in
writings in ethical inquiry, narrowly construed, aesthetics, political
thought and educational philosophy. *Ethics* is the study of
the real qualities of human activities, not of what is right or
obligatory, these latter questions being relegated to the study of
customary norms and expectations arising from particular practices and
ways of life. Similarly, *aesthetics* is the study of the
qualities of beautiful things, and is neither a study of feelings,
expressions or judgments, nor a source of directives for artists. A
work of art succeeds to the extent that it objectively portrays its
theme, accounts for what is the case (for example, *anger*
considered as the "theme" of *The Iliad*). Literary
criticism consists in assessing whether the artist has succeeded,
objectively, in capturing or portraying the chosen theme. In his
*social and political thought*, Anderson holds that society is
a complex of competing and cooperating movements neither united by
inclusive social purpose, nor reducible to its individual members.



Underlying both logical and ethical aspects of Anderson's
thought is the identification of systematic confusions and errors in
philosophical thought. One persistent confusion is the
misidentification of relations as qualities. Most commonly, being in
some relation is thought to constitute the "nature" of
some special status entity. But whereas a term together with a quality
is a complete unit just as it stands, a term and a relation is simply
incomplete without a second term. Anderson applied this thesis widely:
there are no such things whose nature it is to be known or perceived
("ideas"); there is no such thing whose nature it is to
know ("consciousness"); there are no such things whose
nature it is to be pursued or whose nature it is to direct action
("values" conceived as standing over and above the goods
and values of this life). Relations are often more evident to us than
the underlying qualities of the things related and so relational
explanations suggest themselves to us quite naturally. On the other
hand, significant intellectual effort is required in any given field
to understand the illusory nature of such explanations and the manner
in which they obstruct the identification and assertion of real
issues.



According to Anderson, one central confusion infecting modern
philosophy since Descartes has been its obsession with epistemological
questions, the attempt to provide unshakeable foundations for our
knowledge of the external world. There is no gap between mind and
world that needs to be bridged because mentality belongs to the
spatio-temporal world along with everything else. This is not to say
that misunderstanding is impossible, just that understanding is
possible. It is possible to know various conditions and characters of
things in the first place only because things *have* these
characters independently of our inquiries. And since as knowers we
occupy the single world of space and time we come under the same
conditions and so come into relations with those things that we are
investigating. All knowledge depends upon empirical investigation and
so is fallible: it is not built upon any more immediate or reliable
entities such as sense data or self-evident ideas. Epistemological and
ontological bedrock is the complex situation of being *there and
so*, a particular's being of a certain kind. Knowing minds
are themselves complex spatio-temporal things, societies of emotions
and feelings without a unifying consciousness to which these might
belong nor some ultimate self which could conceivably take a stand
somehow outside and beyond the world of space and time. Modern
philosophy's epistemological obsession can be regarded as an
illogical attempt to look behind the proposition, to gain a sideways
view of how our propositions hook up to the real world.


## 3. Difficulties in Understanding Anderson's Work



Gilbert Ryle listed Anderson among the "seniors" who had
preceded his own generation: philosophers such as Russell, Moore,
Wittgenstein, Bradley, Stout, McTaggart, Alexander, Laird, and Kemp
Smith. For Ryle, Anderson's generation represented "the
old gang", many the products of "those dominating Scots
teachers" who had established philosophy as an academic
discipline in English-speaking universities around the world. Anderson
was an exact contemporary of Wittgenstein and Heidegger, yet only
seven years older than Ryle himself. But Ryle seems to have a point in
suggesting a generational gap that separated him from that earlier
generation's "pieties, lores, sagacities, equipments
- yes, and fetishes too" (Ryle 1976: 383). Ryle was
describing the generation of philosophers who were adult prior to or
during the Great War. He only became acquainted with Anderson in the
1950s and was struck by the manner in which Anderson had continued a
form of philosophy into modern times that had given way elsewhere to
philosophies more concerned with linguistic usage. Despite this
recognition of interpretive challenges, for many of Anderson's
followers Ryle at that time radically misunderstood Anderson's
work (Ryle 1950), reading it from the perspective of the
"linguistic turn".



For current readers there are indeed several obstacles to approaching
Anderson's work. His published works, primarily articles for the
*Australasian Journal of Philosophy and Psychology* and in
local journals and newspapers, are difficult without the context of
Anderson's broader teaching. They are generally regarded as
subsidiary to the lectures and syllabus of an Andersonian
apprenticeship. It seems that they were written for the benefit of the
students who already had the value of his personal contact. Without
this contact, we must rely on the publication of several series of
lecture notes from Anderson's papers by Sydney University Press
(see Bibliography). Anderson's isolation from his intellectual
peers and his seeming reluctance to engage in international debate
also deprives contemporary students of the opportunity to locate his
work within more familiar territory.



One point of access to Anderson's work for contemporary
students, of course, lies in the work of his students such as D. M.
Armstrong, John Passmore, and J. L. Mackie. But there is a danger even
here that their specialisations may distort our view of
Anderson's work as a whole. Anderson, as Passmore noted, was a
generalist (Passmore, Introduction to Anderson's posthumous
work, *Studies in Empirical Philosophy*, hereafter
*EMP*). Unlike the next generation, he expected all
spheres of philosophical inquiry to open up to his investigation and
his philosophy extended to all spheres: logic, metaphysics, ethics,
political thought, aesthetics, education.



Anderson describes his position variously as empiricist, realist,
naturalist, physicalist, positivist and pluralist, conceiving each of
these as different aspects of the one truly empirical philosophy. But
his use of these terms is problematic for the uninitiated.
Anderson's *empiricism* has no time for representational
views of truth, nor for the traditional empiricist entities of sense
data or ideas. Empiricism for Anderson is an ontological doctrine
asserting a single way of being to which we as investigators belong.
While undoubtedly committed to empirical investigation and the
fallible nature of all propositional claims, Anderson's
empiricism is only secondarily an epistemological viewpoint relating
to how we come to know things within this spatio-temporal world.
Anderson's *realism* rejects the traditional
realist-nominalist options concerning the existence of universals.
Universals are brought down to (spatio-temporal) earth, but there are
no such things as pure universals nor pure particulars outside their
roles within complex states of affairs. *Mentality* is a
product of physico-chemical processes in the brain but this does not
preclude our inquiry into the nature of mind as a field of conflicted
tendencies, feelings and emotions. Whatever the special sciences tell
us about their particular subject matters, philosophy retains its
authority in questions of logic, that is to say, concerning the
conditions of possibility of discourse. Indeed, modern science is
badly infected by instrumentalist and technological views of its
investigations and needs to become more truly philosophical and
critical, more concerned with establishing what is the case within
specific fields, and less with being practical and useful in relation
to perceived societal needs (*EMP*, 290).
*Positivism* then is for Anderson a commitment to what is
objectively and positively the case, and not a program of instrumental
or operational truth, nor a means of distinguishing meaningful from
meaningless utterances. Anderson's call for a "science of
ethics" is not an assimilation of ethical inquiry to the
standards of the special sciences. It is a plea for an objective
investigation of the ethical, focussed on the existing ethical
qualities of human activities, rather than on the pieties of
traditional moral philosophy: the questions of right, obligation, duty
and so forth. 



Ryle was only the first of many to be accused of misreading Anderson.
Criticisms of Anderson's position from within mainstream
English-language philosophy have always seemed to his followers to
miss their mark. They have generally failed to recognise the
ontological, non-representational, non-semantic basis for his
empiricism. Robert Brandom's recent criticism and rejection of
the "theoretical, explanatory and strategic commitments"
motivating Anglo-American philosophy in the 20th century lists these
as: empiricism, naturalism, representationalism, semantic atomism,
formalism about logic, instrumentalism about practical norms (Brandom
2000). Anderson would reject all of these criticisms of his own work
as they stand. Brandom regards the notion of "facts" and
"states of affairs" as emblematic of atomistic,
representationalist thought. Anderson would have replied imperiously
as he did to Gilbert Ryle's "representationist"
criticisms: "That is nothing to me". 



Many of the problems contemporary readers encounter in
Anderson's work result from his relative international
isolation. But for many of his students it was precisely
Anderson's secessionist traditional stance that was the key to
the great value of an Andersonian education. He may have failed in his
project, but he kept alive at Sydney enduring values of traditional
philosophical inquiry at a time when mainstream philosophy was either
obsessed with linguistic usage on the one hand or in deference to the
natural sciences on the other. Many of Anderson's students
expected his philosophy to re-emerge stronger following the inevitable
decline of linguistic philosophy and the renewed interest in
metaphysical questions which followed this decline. But if his work
played any role in this renewal it was only indirectly through the
work of his student D. M. Armstrong. Contemporary philosophers
interested in metaphysical questions do not refer to Anderson's
work and are frankly baffled by Armstrong's enthusiasm for his
teacher's work. Anderson exists today almost exclusively in the
footnotes of his more engaged and accomplished students.


## 4. A Systematic Realism



In Anderson's view the realist movement initiated by Russell and
Moore had ended in failure because it had attempted to overcome
Hegelian philosophy by a return to pre-idealist certainties
(*EMP*, 89). As a result, realism had been left without
a school from which to challenge the newly emerging schools of
idealism and pragmatism (*STP*, 161). Hegel's
all-encompassing system of thought was an example for a new and
systematic realism to emulate.



In brief, Hegel's attempt to formulate his sequence of outlooks
relies upon a realist view of the proposition which is incompatible
with his whole theory of outlooks or categories and their varying
adequacy to reality as a whole. Hegel "unwittingly is proceeding
in terms of the proposition" but is caught up with the illusory
attempt to establish an overarching truth ("that whereby a true
proposition can be true"), instead of the task of establishing
*true propositions* (*JAA*, Lectures on William
James, 1935). The same criticism of Hegel seems to be made by Brandom
in the service of his very different expressionist project (Brandom
2000). But for Anderson, Hegel's doctrine of outlooks
"rests on an inability to grasp the *independence* of
truths" (*EMP*, 81). On the other hand, we need
only reject Hegel's doctrine of expressions to find that we are
left with actual *states of affairs* rather than abstract
being.



Neither Cartesian rationalism nor English empiricism could replace
Hegel's philosophy with any philosophical position of comparable
range. Hegel was right to emphasise system, but not as totality (a
pretended solution to real problems), but in the form of a single
logic. He was also right to see this logic as historical, but wrong to
attempt to replace a "logic of things developing" with the
notion of a "developing logic" (*EMP*, 80).
Anderson summarises the position as follows. The only way to answer
Hegel would be to drop the modern fixation with epistemological
questions altogether and return to a Greek consideration of things. In
addition to Greek directness, a true replacement for Hegelian idealism
would incorporate three major components: a positive theory of the
mind as feeling and as non-unitary, as much a part of spatial and
temporal reality as any non-mental things and events; a true
empiricism which recognised relations and generals as being as real
(and as knowable) as the particulars related; and a conception of
space and time as conditions of existence rather than of human
knowledge as in Kant's transcendental idealism. Anderson
proposed to replace Hegel's totality by developing a systematic
realism which would incorporate the work of John Burnet on Greek
philosophy, of Sigmund Freud on mind, of William James' radical
empiricism and of Samuel Alexander's reworking of Kant's
transcendental aesthetic (*EMP*, 80). Anderson does not
mention here another possible source for his direct realism, namely,
Scottish common sense philosophy, but he does consider this in his
Lectures on Thomas Reid of 1935 (*LMP*).



Richard Rorty has suggested that English language philosophy in the
early 20th century emerged from the dominance of Hegelian idealism by
deferring to the natural sciences, partly because the alternative
association with modernist literature seemed to threaten "a kind
of privatised aestheticism which contained disturbing strains of
irrationalism" (Rorty 1985, p. 748). Superficially,
Anderson's work suggests an attempt of some kind to assimilate
philosophy to the sciences. But he was a true modernist in relation to
literary culture: his articles and addresses include critical works on
such figures as, in particular, James Joyce, but also Lawrence, Shaw,
Wells, Grahame, Belloc, Wilde, Hardy, Ibsen, Meredith, Dostoevsky and
Melville, as well as on the genre of detective fiction. Literature for
Anderson had a special character as the embodiment or repository of
culture (*JAA*, Lectures on the Educational Theories of
Spencer and Dewey, 1949). At Sydney in the 1930s he championed both
the works of James Joyce (recently banned) and the importance of
Freudian psychoanalysis to our understanding of mentality as
conflicted and passionate, and to cultural inquiry more generally
(cf., Damousi 2005). He thought the pre-modernist "literary
philosophers" of romanticism and idealism had shown
"greater tenacity" than those philosophers who professed
scientific exactitude (*EMP*, 80). But they had also
tended to promote forms of moralising and theologising which were
opposed to precision and independence of thought and which were
"detrimental to culture in general" (*EMP*,
87). Anderson thought his interpretation of traditional Aristotelian
logic had an important role to play in the new world of literary
culture as much as in the natural sciences.



One major achievement of Hegel for Anderson was the encouragement he
gave to the study of Greek philosophers. Anderson's lectures
explored the historical background to his propositional view of
reality in the issues raised by the pre-Socratics and later in
Plato's Dialogues. Like other modernist philosophers and
novelists (and Hegel himself), Anderson found in Heraclitus an
inspirational alternative to what he came to regard as the sentimental
and intellectually stifling idealism of his teachers.



> 
> This world, which is the same for all, no one of gods or man has made;
> but it was ever, is now, and ever shall be an ever-living Fire, with
> measures of it kindling and measures going out. (Heraclitus Fragment
> 20. trans. John Burnet, *Early Greek Philosophy* 4th Ed., 1930,
> p.134.)
> 



Anderson acknowledged that Heraclitus' emphasis on the element
Fire might be read as a typically Ionian response to the question
"what is the world made of", but the more important theme
is his treatment of fire purely as process, as transaction and
exchange, as the paradigm element of strife and harmony. In embryo
Anderson found in Heraclitus so many of his own principles: the close
link between logic and ethics (ethics as the field in which conflict
comes primarily to the fore); the single way of being, of "what
is common" (the search for a general logic, a theory of the
commensurability of things in terms of a theory of process); the
recognition of complexity, conflict and strife underlying existing
things; the anti-sentimentality and pessimism which refuses to find
solace in unity; the hidden harmony of forces in balance preferable to
the open harmony of illusory unity; the unremitting attack on
subjectivist illusions of desiring or imagining things as we would
like them to be (unchanging and secure) rather than seeing them for
what they are.



For Anderson's Heraclitus, "seeing things as they
are" is seeing them as complex, active and changing; a
perspective opposed to the optimistic, rationalist illusion of the
simple, fixed and static. It is to see things as moving, historical,
in process, and yet as in balance. Heraclitean "strife" is
harmony: the things of everyday experience are positive and concrete
because they are contingent and historical. Anderson described this
"fundamental strain" in all fields of inquiry as that
"between objectivism and subjectivism", between
"critical thinking" recognising complexity and tension
everywhere, and "rationalist illusion" seeking the fixed
and simple (*JAA*, Lectures on Criticism 1955, number 11.).
Rationalism here shared with more primitive mythological thinking the
quest for stability, security and moral uplift. Both have looked for
solutions at a higher level than the problems being addressed.



Anderson's teaching and writings constantly refer to the history
of philosophy, but Anderson was not a scholarly historian. He thought
that persistent philosophical issues and positions were evident
throughout history (eleaticism, for example, was a highly instructive
and critical stage recurring throughout the history of the subject
- for example in Green's criticisms of Hume's
particulars). The history of philosophy helped to emphasise the value
of his own position. On the other hand, his lectures and writings are
laden with references to philosophers, scientists, novelists,
psychoanalysts and revolutionaries. Nothing seems alien to even the
most abstruse topic of discussion in his work. And his lectures were
"great starters of hares" (Partridge's reflections
on Anderson's teaching, in *EAI*). John Passmore
acknowledges the inspiration of Anderson's lectures in his own
works on Hume, philosophical reasoning, Ralph Cudworth, perfectibility
and his history of one hundred years of philosophy.


## 5. Specific Fields


### 5.1 Logic



Anderson wrote a Textbook on Logic in the early 1920s
(*JAA*, Textbook on Logic, released 2010) and its fate
tells us much about his philosophical ambitions. According to his
biographer, Anderson submitted the manuscript not to narrowly academic
publishers but to A. R. Orage, the editor of *The New Age*
(Kennedy 1995 p. 64), described by the historian of Scottish
philosophy, George Davie, as serving a readership "of
libertarian and often leftist autodidacts" (Davie 1977 p. 57).
Under Orage the journal was nonetheless a highly influential avant
garde modernist vehicle for literary and political criticism. Anderson
conceived his logic to have wider cultural aims than merely codifying
forms of reasoning and when Orage rejected the work due to its
supposed eccentricity Anderson was deeply disappointed.



Logic for Anderson is concerned with statements, and not with
questions, commands, prescriptions, exhortations or other forms of
expression. Logic is concerned fundamentally with statements that
raise an "objective issue" and these other forms of speech
do so only indirectly (*JAA*, Lectures on Scientific
Method, c.1950). Discourse implies a common logic of assertion,
implication and definition (*EMP*, 6). Apparent
differences in logical form are due simply to different modes of
expression. Any statement, if it is saying anything at all, can be
shown by transformation into logical form to be asserting some matter
of fact: a description of a certain thing as being of a certain kind,
a claim that something is the case. Anderson's students were set
a range of statements to be transformed into one of the four
Aristotelian propositional forms, traditionally designated as the A,
E, I and O forms. In any field, until questions or issues are posed in
one of these four propositional forms they will inevitably be confused
and potentially misleading bases for inquiry.




|  |  |  |
| --- | --- | --- |
| **A** | *All* *A*s are *B* | (AaB) |
| **E** | *No* *A*s are *B* | (AeB) |
| **I** | *Some* *A*s are *B* | (AiB) |
| **O** | *Some* *A*s are *not*
*B* | (AoB) |



So, from typical examination papers in Andersonian logic:


1. "Many hands make light work"
  

  - A - *All* shared activities are
lightened
2. "You can't make an omelette without breaking
eggs"
  

  - E - *No* omelettes are things
made without breaking eggs
3. "It is by no means unusual to find adulteration in
manufactured products"
  

  - I - *Some* manufactured products
are adultered
4. "His valour is greater than his discretion"
  

  - O - *Some* valourous activities
of his are *not* discreet



In Anderson's view of traditional logic, the universal
proposition "All *A*s are *B*" asserts the
simple fact that all *A*s are *B*; a thing's being of
a certain sort is the irreducible minimum of a fact or state of
affairs; there is no assertion of some "general
connection" over and above that fact. Nor does the universal
proposition assert that some class relation holds between *A* and
*B* - the assertion of a class relation is just a way of
saying that certain propositions are true. Nor is it about some
totality *A*: it asserts simply of each and every *A* that
it is *B*. And although it does not directly assert the existence
of *A*, it certainly presupposes it. It is indeed the great
virtue for Anderson of his version of traditional logic that it fully
brings out the existential presuppositions of the proposition. In
addition, Anderson thinks that what are often taken to be supreme
logical truths (for example, identity statements) are not truths at
all, for they say nothing. There is no analytic truth: if a
proposition says anything at all, it can be false. Anderson rejects
the view that mathematical truths are so only within a calculus, that
is, derivable from a given set of chosen postulates.



Anderson rejects Mill's view that universal statements are
generalisations from experience. Universal propositions cannot be
derived by generalisation from particular experiences, because there
simply are no such immediate experiences. Such truths are derived from
other universal propositions and tested in experience. In discussing
the functions of subjects, predicates and the copula in propositions
and the logical relations between propositions, logic is already
discussing universals, individuals, identity, space-time and
causality. And, contra Mill's inductivism, because we have
direct experience of generality and of relations, a single instance is
sufficient to establish the universal proposition (say, that all glass
is brittle). Further investigation may challenge such assertions since
all our beliefs are fallible but wholesale doubt is simply not an
option. The logical gap between particulars and universals that
inductive reasoning proposes is a gap that no amount of human
reasoning could hope to span. Hume was right in this, but instead of
embracing skepticism he should have concluded as did William James
that generality and relations are as much a part of our experience as
are particulars.



The validity of the syllogism is fundamental and Anderson rejects the
absolute independence from syllogistic reasoning of other forms of
reasoning such as the relational, hypothetical and disjunctive. The
syllogism demonstrates clearly that the subject in one proposition can
function as the predicate in another. The difference between subject
and predicate is purely one of function: the function of the subject
term is to locate, that of the predicate to describe. There are not
two classes of entities involved here; that is, there are no pure
locations/particulars/substances, just as there are no pure
descriptions/universals. There is no logical gap that needs to be
spanned between subject and predicate terms: any term can play the
role of particular or general, subject or predicate. 



For Anderson logic is the science of the most general features of
reality. Logic is not simply a useful calculus following on from an
initial choice of primitives, and Anderson's logic is not simply
one version of predicate calculus among others. His view is that logic
describes the general structure of facts and the relations between
them. It provides the conditions of possibility for all discourse, but
it is not about forms of language nor about special status entities
such as universals. It is about the most general features of facts.
Underlying this propositional view of reality is the thesis that
things within space and time are irreducibly complex. Every situation
has both particular and general aspects represented by the subject and
predicate functions within the proposition. Every predicate can be the
subject of a further proposition. The simplest unit is a being there
and so, a state of affairs in which a particular is characterised in
some specific way, but neither the particular nor the universal could
exist independently. We never arrive at absolutely simple elements in
any field. The quest for such simples urged by Russell, Moore and the
early Wittgenstein indicated a residual rationalist element in their
thinking. On the other hand, against the idealist opponents of these
early realists, Anderson of course insisted that no entities could be
constituted, wholly or in part, by their relations
(*EMP*, 43). 



Mackie described Anderson as the last of the Aristotelian logicians
and observed some awkward consequences for his conception of logic:
the problem of *false* propositions; the absence of a way of
dealing with singular propositions; an inability to deal with multiple
quantification; the difficulty in expressing relational propositions
in subject-predicate and syllogistic form. For Mackie, any logic
dealing with false propositions, relations of contradiction and
contrariety, entertained arguments, falsifications and reductions
*ad absurdum* must be something more than an account of
propositions as *what is there* (Mackie 1985).



Anderson distinguished idealism's substance-attribute logic that
had been condemned by Russell from his own subject-predicate logic.
Nonetheless, his Aristotelian logic of everyday experience did seem to
sit uneasily with the broader search for logics that could more
adequately capture forms of reasoning across a wide variety of
domains. Ontological logics like Anderson's came to seem
"naively realistic and Aristotelian", and "hard to
hang on to" in the history of twentieth century philosophy
(Rorty 1986). It is not just that 20th century philosophy's
"counter-intuitive redescription and relativisation to choice of
primitives" (Rorty 1986) ignored Anderson's insistence
that logic is not a calculus. Technical developments in the logic of
modal, tense and relational terms proceeded without reference to
Anderson's form of onto-logic.


### 5.2 Metaphysics



Nonetheless, a traditional form of metaphysics did make a resurgence
in the last quarter of the century in the work of Anderson's
student, D. M. Armstrong. Armstrong accepts against Anderson that the
nature of space and time is a matter for scientific investigation, as
is the identification of real properties - Anderson's view
of three-dimensional space and one-dimensional time as
"ontological bed-rock", for example, simply cannot be
sustained (Armstrong, introduction to *STC*). But he
finds real interest in Anderson's conception of the categories,
as elaborated in the lectures on Samuel Alexander, recently published
as *Space, Time and the Categories: Lectures on Metaphysics*
(*STC* - published from typescript lectures in
Armstrong's possession and originally presented in
1949-50). In his introduction to these lectures, Armstrong
writes:



> 
> The categories of being dive so deep that though quantum physics and
> other physics may have interesting things to say to philosophy -
> in particular whether causation is in fact deterministic - the
> issues are not susceptible of being resolved at the level of
> experimental science, yet seem to be real issues. Science may be able
> to cast light on whether causation is irreducibly statistical or not,
> but how can it decide what causation is in itself? Is it just a
> universal or statistical regularity? Or is it something deeper in the
> nature of things? What of the properties and quantities in which
> science inevitably traffics? Are they just concepts in our minds, or
> somethings in the objects that our concepts merely reflect?
> (*STC*, x)
> 



In these lectures Anderson systematically derived the number of
categories and their ordering from the nature of the proposition and
its subject-predicate structure. The result was a scheme of 13
categories, laid out in Hegel-like "succession" organized
in three groups with the categories of Universality and Quantity
acting as "link categories" in the two transitions between
the groups.



![A table with 3 columns, titled 'The Table of Categories', column 1, labeled 'Categories of Logic or Quality' lists Identity, Difference, Existence, Relation, Universality; column 2, labeled 'Categories of Mathematics or Quantity', lists Universality (linked from previous column), Particularity, Number, Order, Quantity; column 3, labeled 'Categories of Physics', lists Quantity (linked from previous column), Intensity, Substance, Causality, Individuality.](ja_categories.jpg)
(Reproduced from *Space, Time and the Categories*, with the
permission of Sydney University Press.)




Armstrong concludes:



> 
> [W]ith this scheme, John Anderson joins a very distinguished line of
> philosophers who have presented us with a set of categories. We have
> first Plato (the doctrine of Highest Kinds in his dialogue The
> Sophist), then Aristotle, Kant, Hegel, and Samuel Alexander.
> (*STC*, xiii)
> 



Despite his appreciation of Hegel, Anderson thought that Kant had laid
"the foundations for a logic of things as historical" and
here "Hegel can be regarded only as reactionary"
(*EMP*, 83). Kant had shown that the objects of science
are just the objects of observation, that "matter" is
something we perceive and not something lying behind our perceptions.
Kant's answer to Hume was that things perceived are connected
with one another; they pass through and affect one another in various
ways because they are related in space and time. We are aware of such
relations in being aware of anything at all. But Anderson insists
against Kant that relations are known on the same level as the
related. Kant was still subject to the assumptions of
representationalism, and thought of the objects of science as mere
phenomena. Kant viewed space and time as forms of intuition under
which we must experience the world. He viewed the categories such as
causality and substance as forms of understanding under which we must
understand the world. Things-in-themselves are not given to us in
experience, and so remain beyond our cognitive grasp. In this way Kant
set up an untenable division in reality between phenomena and
things-in-themselves, and along with this division the idea that our
thoughts, practices and forms of inquiry in some way create or
constitute the reality we inhabit, act upon and investigate. Anderson,
following Samuel Alexander, proposed a realist alternative such that
space and time would be considered not as forms of intuition, but as
forms of being, the categories not as forms of understanding but as
categories of being, categories under which all being must fall. On
such a proposal we can recognise the objects of science as
things-in-themselves.



Anderson claimed to have avoided the pitfalls of traditional
metaphysical questions concerning the reality of universals through
his account of the proposition (cf., "'Universals'
and Occurrences", *EMP*). H. O. Mounce has
suggested that Anderson's realism may not be able to avoid the
issue. In particular, his account of universals is in danger of
collapsing into nominalism on the question of whether the directly
perceived relation (say, of causality) is on separate occasions
*one and the same* (for Mounce, anything less than complete
identity would be a retreat to nominalism - Mounce 1989). Mounce
suggests that Anderson may not be able to hold off a Humean challenge
here. He would be drawn back to a familiar realist-nominalist debate
on the nature of universals, which may explain why Armstrong's
philosophy takes seriously Plato's question of the one and the
many as the starting point for metaphysical reflection (Armstrong
1997). From a Quinean perspective, however, Armstrong's
metaphysics, despite its improved scientific credentials, remains
attentive to old school pseudo-questions (Quine 1953). (Michael Devitt
explicitly associates Armstrong with Quine's parody of the
traditional Scottish metaphysician "McX" in Devitt
2010.)



For his more empirically-minded students, Anderson's logic
seemed to rely upon an unwelcome element of *a priorism*. Any
weakening of our confidence in Anderson's identification of
logic and ontology, for example, would critically undermine
significant components of the position. First, it would no longer be
clear that things spoken of together must exist in the same way
- the notion of a single level of being would become a matter
for investigation (what kinds of differences exist) rather than
determined by general principle (Mackie 1985). Regarding his social
thought, the importance of individuals' behaviour in explaining
the nature and operation of social movements and institutions would
require investigation, rather than a pronouncement based purely on
general grounds. Again, Anderson's rejection of the rationalist
view that there *must be* simple or ultimate units upon which
complex things can be built would not lead without further argument to
the view that there *cannot be* such simple parts or totalities
(Mackie 1985).



According to Anderson, David Hume's skepticism was a direct
result of his inability to work out a logic, to create a coherent
account of existence. But his mentor at Edinburgh, Norman Kemp Smith,
had long argued that Hume's importance was in demonstrating the
factual limits of all logic. If Hume had failed to work out a logic to
Anderson's satisfaction this was because in his view
philosophers should resist the temptation of this kind of
"systematic working out" altogether (Davie 1977).
Hume's reservations about a "systematic working out"
have emerged in another form with the "linguistic
*re*turn" proposed by Huw Price, who became the first
appointment to the Challis Chair of Philosophy within a united
department at Sydney since the split of 1974. Price describes the
project as a "linguistic retooling of metaphysics" (Price
2011, p. 18) and the attempt specifically to avoid Mackie's
"placement" issue which arises from an obsession with the
representational aspect of language (although Mackie himself regarded
this with Anderson as an ontological issue - see section 5.4
below). On Price's view plurality exists in the world of an
entirely familiar kind: a plurality of ways of talking and ways of
behaviour which don't need to be mirrored in an ontology of any
kind.



It has been observed that Anderson's most prominent students
accepted in fact very little of his system. It is still the case that
their most fundamental philosophical commitments can be traced to the
boldness of Anderson's position. And Armstrong suggests that the
philosopher at some point can only outline his or her most basic
commitments. Stephen Mumford summarises Armstrong's own position as
follows: no God, no non-spatial minds, no abstract
entities beyond space-time, no Platonic forms or realm of universals;
an austere ontology without transcendent universals, realm of numbers,
transcendent standards of value, timeless propositions, non-existent
objects, possibilia, possible worlds, abstract classes (Mumford 2007
p. 5). Armstrong diverges from Anderson in his emphasis upon
scientific naturalism, in the position that the world is to be
completely described in terms of a completed physics. What properties
exist will ultimately be determined solely by science, and the results
will inevitably seem counter-intuitive within the perspective of
Aristotelian common sense. But for Armstrong this scientific view can
be reconciled with a form of metaphysical realism derived from
Anderson's teaching which takes universals to exist immanently
rather than in a transcendent realm; which takes the world to contain
nothing but particulars having properties and being related to each
other; which takes the world to be nothing but a single
spatio-temporal system; which regards reality as a world of states of
affairs conceived as particulars bearing properties; which insists
that states of affairs are the smallest units of existence since
neither particulars nor universals are capable of independent
existence. 


### 5.3 Epistemology



The Greeks, according to Anderson,



> 
> are far clearer on many questions than modern philosophers ...
> they avoid many modern errors, and especially ... they are not,
> like the moderns, obsessed with 'the problem of knowledge'
> - they do not set out to discover (i.e., to know!) how, or how
> much, we can know, before they are prepared to know anything. This
> 'criticism of the instrument' amounts to scientific
> defeatism, and the instrumental view of mind has both prevented a
> knowledge of minds themselves, and hampered the direct inquiry into
> logical and other scientific problems. (*EMP*, 82)
> 



Anderson's Hegelian diagnoses of the obsessions of modern
philosophy and Cartesianism with epistemology are likely to elicit
recognition and appreciation from many contemporary readers.
Cartesianism in modern philosophy represented for Anderson an
anti-classicist movement: an antipathy towards history and tradition.
Modern philosophy searched within abstract rationality as the ground
of human knowledge, rather than in concrete and many-sided culture.
The whole modern era was characterised by this lack of concreteness
(*EMP*, 195). 



Hegel in this regard stands out as a lonely classical figure within
the history of modern philosophy (*EMP*, 201).
Philosophy since Descartes has become infected by practicalism and
progressivism and logic has been reduced to the status of an
instrument, a generalised method for acquiring new knowledge. Along
with this instrumental view of logic came contempt for the syllogism,
replaced by Bacon with "inductive reasoning" and by
Descartes with rational intuition. 



Empiricism for Anderson is primarily the denial of any higher form of
being, any other reality by which experienced reality can be found
wanting, or dependent, or in a position of striving to emulate, and so
forth. So also, the importance of modern realism lies not in its
account of knowledge, but its development of a theory of independence,
the rejection of any conception of relative existence and the
development of a logic of situations (*JAA*, Philosophy
II Distinction Lectures, 1937).



There is no criterion of "truth", "nothing by
believing which we believe something else"
(*EMP*, 55). Truth is simply what is conveyed by the
copula, the "is" of the proposition. It cannot reside in
correspondence between a believed proposition and something else we
call reality, nor in relations between propositions in terms of
coherence. Propositions are not forms of words: we convey our beliefs
by words, but what we are putting forward for acceptance is not the
form of words but the state of affairs itself. Representionalist and
correspondence theories of truth are "attempts to get behind the
proposition - to maintain (in words!) that we mean more than we
can say." (*EMP*, 5). We must abandon the notion
of "thought" as something contrasted with or identified
with things. Our thoughts are just our dealings with things -
Anderson shared with Norman Kemp Smith a quasi-Calvinist conception of
knowledge as a striving and grappling with problems rather than
mirroring an external reality. Anderson dismisses most contemporary
philosophies as "varieties of representationalism"
(*EMP*, 87). The proposition is not "about"
anything in the sense of representing an external reality. 



One of Anderson's most audacious articles was the 1934
"Mind as Feeling" which attempts to work out exactly how
mentality should be conceived as belonging to the spatio-temporal
realm. Anderson believed that once we admit the spatial nature of mind
or of anything mental, "Cartesianism goes"
(*JAA*, Lectures on Reid, 1935.) The mental realm
consists as much of situations as the natural and social world, so our
knowledge of mind is on the same footing as the non-mental. He
repudiates the Cartesian subject-object model which sees
philosophy's task as the study of the medium for knowledge
understood as the relation whereby one entity reproduces within itself
the essence or intrinsic characteristics of some other entity. There
is no such medium for there are not different entities within space
and time requiring such mediation. There is no "knower"
conceived as a point of consciousness that has stepped outside
history, outside of space and time. In our striving and grappling with
illusions so as to come to terms with ourselves and the things around
us we never step outside the movement of things, nor see behind the
proposition; never reach outside the realm of propositional claim and
counter-claim.



What is this thing that strives? Anderson adopts a Nietzschean,
pre-Socratic view of mentality as a social structure of instincts and
passions competing and cooperating. It is the emotions or feelings
themselves that strive. The passion of curiosity, for example, is the
actual agent of inquiry. There is no entity of conscious willing that
directs our attention on the world. "Part of the deception, of
course, part of the 'analytic' myth, is of an egoistic
character ('what do *I* find when I set my analysis
machine rumbling?'), and this is opposed to the fact that
language and inquiry are inherent in social life, are at all stages
part of communication." (*EMP*, 181.)



That critical inquiry itself rests on the existence of specific ways
of carrying on and proceeds from within some definite way of life,
provides one important link with the ethical aspect of
Anderson's thought. Such ways of life which lift individuals out
of their humdrum existence and base material concerns are what
Anderson regards as the embodiment of ethical goodness. For Anderson
if the good exists we must find it as a natural quality in this world,
just as we come to know and identify other natural qualities. However,
the good is not merely something we discover, but "that by which
we discover things" (*EMP*, 266). Anderson was
aware that his view of the good as a natural quality would not
convince everyone, and that he could do little to convert the
doubters. But he claimed that there will be those who recognise the
truth of his position, seeing this view of the good as
"something with which they have long been in a certain way
acquainted" (*EMP*, 267).


### 5.4 Ethics



"We do not, in fact, step out of the movement of things, ask
'What am I to do?' and, having obtained an answer, step in
again. All our actions, all our questionings and answerings, are part
of the movement of things." (*EMP*, 241). 



Positive ethical inquiry for Anderson is concerned with the
identification of good as a natural quality and he finds that this
most naturally pertains to certain actually existing practices and
ways of living in the world of common experience. Traditionally the
good has been identified abstractly as an end to be achieved or aimed
for, either as a transcendent reality to which we can only aspire (but
which in some unexplained way is supposed to guide our moral actions)
or as an end external to our actions in the real world and by which
those actions may be evaluated; for example, some optimal quantum of
happiness or welfare for the greatest number of people involved. In
either case, a relational explanation is mistakenly offered in place
of identifying a real quality. This has been the problem with
virtually all moral thought since the Greeks, although Anderson
thought that G. E. Moore had made important advances in our thinking
on these matters. Anderson proposes that the good exists in forms of
enterprise, productive activities capable of developing in a special
way by means of "communication" - individuals are
caught up in these goods and in the process transcend their more
immediate and mundane goals and demands. Any theory of social life
must take account of activities with no formulated end: customs,
regular forms of behaviour, and practices which precede the
formulation of ends (*JAA*, Philosophical Implications
of Marxism, 1945).



Values have objective reality, but not in a transcendent realm
divorced from this world of facts or states of affairs. Anderson
agrees that "the way things are" includes moral facts:
"it is impossible to discuss social processes except in terms of
ways of living or forms of enterprise, and that is moral
characterisation" (*EMP*, 330). But he cannot
accept that moral characterisation entails moral prescription because
this would commit us to a morality of commands, and to programmes for
action and reform designed to achieve a merely external good. The
importance of ethical inquiry is in giving an account of
*productive* activities which entail the operation of a certain
mentality or spirit. Within such activities there is no question of
external ends or rewards to be achieved. Goodness exists in free,
spontaneous participation in such movements and activities (although
not of course in the metaphysical sense of undetermined free will
- such practices, social movements and ways of life are not
things we as individuals "opt into" at will; they in a
sense *adopt us*). Acting because we feel *obliged* so
to act is on this view an indication of the *absence* of
goodness. Although the notion of "virtue" does not much
appeal to him, Anderson's emphasis upon the transformative role
of practices and ways of life upon the ethical outlook of the
individual does seem to accord with many of the major preoccupations
of virtue ethicists. Alasdair Macintyre recognises the value to
contemporary Aristotelian virtue ethics of Anderson's
Heraclitean appreciation of conflict and the importance he attributes
to critical traditions (Macintyre 1981).



Ethics is especially concerned to bring out the facts of conflict, the
opposition of different strains in things in general, but in human and
mental life most particularly. The category of causality is central to
the ethical sphere - false views of causality represent the
attempt to escape conflict, to gain a standpoint above that of strife
and interlocking tensions (*JAA*, Lectures on
Criticism, 1954). Positive ethics exhibits the good life as constantly
struggling with difficulties and other types of life driven by
external or instrumental considerations (*JAA*,
Lectures on Greek Theories of Education, 1954). The good exists in
struggle and so cannot be made secure (*JAA*,
Philosophy I Lectures, 1943). In all spheres of life the good can only
make its stand. Attempts at reconciliation and compromise often
obscure the issues and may well prove detrimental to the good. The
resulting Heraclitean harmony is best served by this stance of
independence and intransigence.



Sociological inquiry is appropriate for the bulk of traditional moral
terms. Forms of social organisation develop regular habits of action
which come to be seen as obligatory: rights, duties and so forth are
easily understood by those involved in the same way of life. Bourgeois
society is based on commodification and contractual relations. The
market destroys folk life and with it one important source by which
culture can be refreshed (*JAA*, Lectures on Marx,
1950). Marxism has made important advances in this area but Anderson
notes the "simple-mindedness" of most Marxists on moral
questions - altruism seems to be the peak of their thinking
about morality (Cf., remarks on Kautsky, *EMP*, 321)
and little consideration is given to the importance of a plurality of
ways of living.



Participation in disinterested activities represents the ethical value
of "devotion to a cause". Anderson even offers a
sociological interpretation of sin as a person's sense of
inadequacy to social movements, one's inability to keep the flag
flying, to devote oneself thoroughly to these kinds of activity. Sin
appears then as a kind of backsliding and subjectivism: the individual
setting him or herself up as the standard. Anderson was opposed to all
forms of religious instruction and interference in educational
practice, but he occasionally shocked his students with a
quasi-theological appreciation of the existence of evil in the world.
Passmore commented that forms of religion that emphasise that our life
is not of our making and that it goes on independently of our plans,
are far more preferable in Anderson's view to any form of
secular sentimental humanism (Passmore, Introduction to
*EMP*).



J. L. Mackie regarded Anderson's positive conception of goods as
being "hopeless as an account of moral talk and reasoning"
(Mackie 1985). However, despite being one of the current standard
bearers for anti-realism in ethics the manner in which Mackie posed
the question of the subjectivity of values owes much to
Anderson's ontological standpoint. Mackie seemed at pains to
explain that his subjectivist view of ethical terms complied with
Anderson's main concern. Subjectivism in ethics is for Mackie
the doctrine that objective facts in this field do not include any
descriptive assignment of goodness or rightness of actions. It is
"precisely because we want to distinguish what is simply and
absolutely the case that we say values/obligations are
relative." (Mackie 1985). Mackie suggested that linguistic
philosophy had made the realist-antirealist opposition a philosophical
pseudo-question, and that with renewed interest in ontological issues
this opposition returned in a pressing form in the
"placement" issue regarding various "queer"
entities in the world.



Rush Rhees was a student of Anderson's at Edinburgh and, of
course, later of Ludwig Wittgenstein's. Like Mackie, he was
critical of Anderson's ethical theory, but from the other pole
in that he was more inclined towards Anderson's positive view of
ethics. He regarded Anderson's notion of a "way of
life" as at some level the same as Wittgenstein's (Rhees
1969). But he came to think that Anderson paid too little attention to
the ways in which moral questions are posed for individuals, that
Anderson too readily portrayed individual concerns as base,
egocentric, low concerns in contrast with the uplifting concerns
resulting from participation in social movements. Anderson, Rhees
concluded, had no appreciation for the urgency with which moral
questions presented themselves to individuals (Rhees 1999, p. xiii),
nor their distinctive character compared to more practical questions
of how to go on. However, Rhees always emphasised the Andersonian
lesson that values are rooted in different traditions and movements.
We have to resist the temptation to locate values in a realm which
transcends these contexts. It is futile to argue that the moral
individual is located in a realm outside history, outside the
particularities of space and time. Only in these contexts do the
individual's convictions, problems, struggles and difficulties
have their sense. Resources for criticism of moral codes exist within
movements, and criticism develops only within ways of living. Notions
of the "common good" generally conceal special interests
(Rhees 1989, p. 53).


### 5.5 Social and Political Thought



Anderson's moral and political thought was strongly influenced
by the writings of the French socialist Georges Sorel (and before him
the libertarian socialist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon). Although Anderson
abandoned communism and socialism as movements whose time had passed,
the influence of these thinkers for whom socialism was a moral
movement remained with him (Cole 2009). In all fields of human
activity, there is a conflict between what Sorel described as the
"ethic of the producer", characterised by spontaneous and
cooperative endeavour, and the ethic of the consumer, characterised by
an instrumental morality of reward and punishment, obligation and
expectation, an ethic most perfectly suited in sociological terms to
the marketplace (and in purely psychological terms to the compulsive
obligations of the neurotic personality). More accurately, for
Anderson, the ethic of the consumer is an ethic without a
*theme*. In history there are classical periods of cultural
achievement in contrast with periods in which we struggle to find a
theme at all; that is, periods in which nothing really happens,
nothing develops from within. Anderson also admired Vico's
cyclical view of history and by the 1940s had not only resigned
himself to the collapse of heroic 19th century socialism, but
discerned in the era of post-war optimism and state planning the early
stages of one of Vico's periods of barbarism
(*EMP*, 290). More positively, for Anderson the
rejection of all totalising views, the thesis that "no formula
covers all things", has the practical consequence of supporting
and encouraging "a life of responsibility and adventure"
for those prepared to face the situation (*EMP*,
86).



Anderson intended to combat the influence of idealism in our thinking
on political issues evident since Plato's Republic. The
modernist, realist project he meant to develop in opposition to the
political outlook of British Idealism would draw upon the major
theorists of conflict, struggle and cyclic historical movement:
Heraclitus, Vico and Sorel. In place of a simple contrast between
individual and state Anderson insisted upon the complex interplay of
movements, institutions and traditions. In place of an unargued
tendency towards ever greater social harmony he insisted on the
inevitability of conflict and constant adjustment, the persistent
danger of regress, and the consequent need for clear lines of critical
engagement. Order is a Heraclitean state of balance between complex
interacting forces rather than a normative standard by which to
measure existing social and political formations. Conflict is not an
indication of social dysfunction which needs to be overcome or
rationalised away, but a necessary feature of any social institution.
Any notion of an ideal state without such features can have no bearing
on our present real life situation.



Anderson's political thought is distinctive for his rejection of
the state as the fundamental object of political investigation and
reflection. This aspect of his thought aligns rather strongly with
modern Nietzschean and anti-humanist political thought. For Anderson
the social is not reducible to agreements among atomic individuals. In
his anti-individualist statements, however, he seems to echo an
idealist view of social movements portrayed, for example, by Bernard
Bosanquet who similarly decried the "repellent isolation"
of atomist individualism. Culture and human achievement depend upon
the capacity of human beings to engage in activities that take them
outside themselves. Apart from these struggles with nature or within
broad social movements, a person collapses into non-entity (Bosanquet
1899, pp. xxxiii ff.). 



Anderson's rejection of good as an end to be achieved applied to
his ultimate rejection of socialism as a progressive movement and of
Marxism in particular. "The doctrine of history as struggle is
at once the liberal and the scientific part of Marxism; the doctrine
of socialism as something to be established ('classless
society') is its servile part" (*EMP*,
339). Socialism for Anderson was not a goal to be achieved but a
movement to be joined. The amelioration of social conditions of the
workers would be achieved by the workers themselves in the process of
asserting the value and validity of their way of life within the wider
socio-political sphere. But once alleviation became the primary goal
of the workers' movement and representatives, that movement was
finished as a progressive and liberating force. It could be bought off
by employers and the state. Socialism understood as a force lobbying
for state action and funding to redress market inequities had become
mired in "servility" as a matter of historical fact.


### 5.6 Education



In the 1950s, Anderson retreated from broad political theory which had
been a feature of his lectures and writings of the 1940s, and attended
more to local and institutional questions. This new emphasis emerged
in his lectures on education and on criticism. Central to
Anderson's view of education is the rejection of any utilitarian
or instrumental view of education, the view of education as a means to
some other purpose. Education needs to be understood as an activity
with positive characteristics of its own. Education is critical,
devoted to developing and discarding hypotheses, to seeing through
pretensions of all kinds. It means for the individual "finding a
way of life" and it affects the whole life of the educated
individual. Critical intellectual life survives as a social tradition,
a "movement" to which individuals are attracted and in
which they are caught up.



Anderson's classicism promotes the history of European culture
from the early Greeks as a tradition of critical thought that can
refresh and fortify contemporary education against the predations of
practicalism and servility in the modern world. Education is concerned
with training in taste and judgement. The educated individual is not
shackled by the assumptions of his society or group
(*JAA*, Lectures on the Educational Theories of Spencer
and Dewey, 1949). But to play its part, education must resist outside
standards (such as those set by the attitudes and capacities of
commercial society, or by the vocational needs of business) as to what
is to be allowed and valued in institutions of education. Rhees
suggested that Anderson was primarily concerned with a "grammar
school education", one not suited to the "masses"
(Rhees 1969 p. 168). In particular, for Anderson, vocational and
moralistic standards have to be resisted. True learning is not easy
and cannot be made easy - it advances only through overcoming
resistances. The inquiring life has to stand up for itself. It is just
as real, just as practical, just as positive a part of society as
other activities (J. L. Mackie, in *EAI*).



Any activity or institution of learning can proceed only along the
lines of certain traditions with custodians and in terms of common
activities (*JAA*, Lectures on Greek Theories of
Education, 1954). For education is simply one struggling tendency in
society itself among others - even within institutions
supposedly devoted to educational aims, true educational values have
to be fought for. 



Anderson's lectures on education are of interest because they
include the most extensive account of his appreciation for the
classicism of Matthew Arnold, but more particularly of his attitude
towards the philosophy of John Dewey. Besides his early
acknowledgement of the importance of William James (at least the more
metaphysical writings on radical empiricism) and his critical articles
on F. C. S. Schiller, the consideration of Dewey's educational
theory is the most important reflection on American pragmatism in
Anderson's work. The question of the relation of theory to
practice was one that exercised Anderson repeatedly. His position was
that the connection was a close one, but not in the direction that he
assumed pragmatism urged. Theory was not dependent upon practice for
the validity of its findings. Rather inquiry proceeded from particular
kinds of practice. Certain forms of life made possible an objective
view of things. Moreover, theory was not subsidiary to practice in an
instrumental sense because it was itself a distinct form of practice
with its own requirements and standards. Anderson reflected upon this
question both in the lectures on education but also in his lectures on
Marxism and most particularly on Marx's *Theses on
Feuerbach* where he was concerned to dispute Sidney Hook's
pragmatist reading of the theses (*JAA*, Philosophical
Implications of Marxism). Both the fact of his consideration of the
enigmatic *Theses* and his substantial conclusions on the
relation of theory to practice would have resonated with the
Althusserian Marxists in the Department of General Philosophy in the
1970s. 


### 6. Influence Beyond the University: the Sydney Push



Anderson's influence extended beyond the confines of the
academy. One of Anderson's students, a young man from the
Pacific island of Tonga, Futa Helu, later claimed that John
Anderson's realism had revolutionised his thinking, particularly
with reference to the notion of "tapu" or the sacred, as
the cover-up for the special demands of the ruling class in Tonga.
Returning to Tonga in the early 1960s, he founded the Atenisi (Athens)
Institute as an independent high school based on the ideals of Greek
philosophy. He added "Atenisi University" in 1975, where
the philosophical thought of Heraclitus as interpreted by Anderson
became the backbone of philosophy courses. Following Anderson's
example of public engagement, Helu is credited as one of the
intellectual architects of the democracy movement in Tonga (Keith
Campbell, personal communication).



Anderson's influence on the self-styled "Sydney
Push" is more widely known. The latter was a diffuse sub-culture
of anarchist libertarians who met around Sydney's inner city in
the 1950s and 1960s. Members were imbued with a spirit of
anti-careerism, and a major influence in their meetings, talks and
drinking sessions was the philosophy of John Anderson who had lectured
many of them on the value of risk, endeavour, withdrawal from
consumerist society and the overriding value of criticism to the
health of a society. Through his influence on many of these figures,
Anderson affected the tone of intellectual debate and discussion in
Sydney and beyond. If the key figures of the movement are relatively
unknown, there were more famous figures who moved through this
environment and were on their own accounts deeply affected by its
intellectual stimulus: such figures as Germaine Greer, Robert Hughes
and Clive James.



More centrally involved with the life of the Push over an extended
period and more particularly with the direct teachings of John
Anderson was the anarchist activist and philosopher George Molnar. He
attended Anderson's lectures in the 1950s and was active in
debates on metaphysical questions in the 1960s associated with
Armstrong and C. B. Martin. Students recall Armstrong and Molnar in
the university quadrangle around 1970 arguing about dispositions and
powers with an intensity no doubt propelled by their political
disagreements at the time. Molnar conducted courses on anarchism and
education theory in the early 1970s but in 1976 resigned his position
at the university, a move consistent with the anti-careerist ethos of
the Push and of the radical politics of the time. Perhaps he also
found his philosophical interests on the wrong side of an
irreconcilable split within the department. Some thirty years later,
he returned to academic life to take up a part-time position as John
Anderson Research Fellow at the University of Sydney, but died
unexpectedly in 2002. His book *Powers: a study in metaphysics*
was published posthumously in 2007 by Oxford University Press at the
urging of his old adversary D. M. Armstrong.


### 7. Conclusion



While sharing some of the deflationary ambitions of linguistic,
scientific and pragmatist philosophies with respect to traditional
metaphysics and rationalism, Anderson's philosophy was a
singular expression of twentieth century philosophy emerging from the
world of 19th century idealism. Not only are the terms Anderson
employs systematically misleading to contemporary readers; his work
belongs to a world of higher philosophical ambition, a world in which
philosophy could aspire to a central role in cultural affairs, unlike
the "rickety philosophical apparatus" and the whole
"intellectual mess" that he saw in mid-century philosophy
(*EMP*, 187-88).



The current lack of philosophical interest in Anderson seems to derive
as much from external factors related to his place in Australian
intellectual life as from the intrinsic qualities of his work. This is
due in part to his posthumous role in the culture wars prompted by his
strongly anti-communist stance in the 1950s. Any consideration of his
work soon becomes entangled in unwelcome and extraneous debates.
Moreover, compounding "a certain Presbyterian
intransigence" in his personality (*EAI*, 22),
Anderson's conception of philosophy as something of a master
discipline legislating legitimate forms of inquiry in the sciences,
psychology, social studies, literature, linguistics, and the
humanities made him an unpopular figure in the academy (cf.
Partridge's and Kamenka's accounts of their studies with
Anderson in *EAI*).



David Armstrong describes Anderson as "a failed great
philosopher - he played for higher stakes than the rest of
us" (personal communication). A certain ambivalence creeps into
such assessments of his importance. On the other hand, while there are
those who regard Anderson as almost heroically holding out against
false philosophical fashions, there are many who regard his dominance
at Sydney as wholly negative: his indifference to developments in
technical logic since the 19th century, to developments in theoretical
physics and to philosophical interest in linguistic usage and the
nature of scientific inquiry. Did Anderson sustain traditional
philosophical values and standards of inquiry in the face of
fragmentary and unsound philosophical trends, or did he cut Sydney
students off from the life blood of international philosophical and
scientific exposure? The philosophical prominence of many of his
students strongly suggests the former, but even his most loyal
followers recognise in his educational practice a tendency to promote
uncritical conformity.



In the end the issue concerns the value and depth of a tradition of
philosophical inquiry and apprenticeship, weighed against the
opportunity costs of pursuing such a tradition to the exclusion of all
others. This question was posed rather urgently a decade after
Anderson's death when the department of philosophy at Sydney
split into two distinct units, immediately on political grounds, but
inevitably also over the nature of philosophical inquiry and study
itself. Although the department was eventually re-united as a single
professional and productive unit, its members have very little
interest in revisiting a troubled history. And this applies most
particularly to the highly distinctive work and legacy of Professor
John Anderson, the dominant force in philosophy at Sydney for much of
the twentieth century.