Engraved in the tomb of Karl Marx is an inscription that reads, “philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point, however, is to change it.” The question I would like to ask today is whether or not an investigation into philosophical failure or error is necessary. What do I have in mind? Well, even though Marx crafted a philosophy that evaluates and exposes capitalism for the grave injustice of de-humanization; I think we can also credit Marx with the creation of a mode of discursivity that ultimately fueled one of the greatest totalitarian and dehumanizing societies in recent history – the USSR. In a very tragic sense, Marxist philosophy failed in the Eastern block, tens of thousands were killed in the gulag, and millions of lives were destroyed. It would be unfair and unjust to credit those atrocities to Karl Marx, but we can at least say that his philosophy (if we consider it as an attempt to change the world for the better – which is what Marx had hoped for) failed to some extent.
Additionally we might consider other sorts of philosophical failure, such as the epistemological problems indicative of Aristotelian physics. Aristotle for much of his genius held many views, including the notion that the earth is at the center of the heavens, that today we realize are just plain false. Frege’s symbolic logic was wrong, Wittgenstein’s atomic proposition theory failed, Descartes’ ontological proof collapses, and so on and so on. When scholars teach the history of philosophy they always focus on those arguments, views, and positions which are still tenable, as it were. But the actual history of philosophy reads like the tell tale heart: buried beneath the floorboards of “respectable philosophy” are the ghosts and apparitions of failed ideas.
So when do philosophies fail? Why do they fail? And how can social philosophies avoid error?
Perhaps the time has come for a philosophy of failure.