Intellectual frauds, I: Famous and profound

03 Oct 1994 12:01

---

Hegel, Heidegger, Teilhard de Chardin, Foucault, Spengler, Fichte, Lacan...

This entry is a symptom of my positivistic temperament. Probably none of them (except Heidegger and Fichte) were conscious frauds; but they were all also fit for nothing. So why in the names of Minerva and all the Muses did people take these metaphysical wind-bags seriously? Why do they still take most of them seriously? And is there anything to be done about it, other than wait for them to meet the fate of Herbert Spencer or the Sibylline Books?

See:
• Gross and Levitts, Higher Superstition
• Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, esp. vol. II
• Leonard Woolf, Quack, Quack