To what extent can institutional control explain the dominance of analytic philosophy?

Abstract

Katzav and Vaesen have argued that control by analytic philosophers of key journals, philosophy departments and at least one funding body plays a substantial role in explaining the emergence of analytic philosophy into dominance in the Anglophone world and the corresponding decline of speculative philosophy. They also argued that this use of control suggests a characterisation of analytic philosophy as, at the institutional level, a sectarian form of critical philosophy. I test these hypotheses against data about philosophy job hires at key philosophy departments in the USA during the period 1930–1979 and against data about PhD completions during the period 1956–1965. I argue, further, that Katzav and Vaesen’s hypotheses can fully explain the data and are more fully able to do so than some other key accounts of the emergence of analytic philosophy in the USA.