Susan Stebbing on the Scientific Attitude and Moral Philosophy Context and Comments
摘要
In recent years, there has been an almost exponentially growing tendency to study and evaluate the life and work of L. Susan Stebbing. She was the first female professor of philosophy in Britain, and thus could serve as a role model for many inquiries of feminist studies within the history of analytic philosophy (for example in Janssen-Lauret 2024). Stebbing was not just a recognized and respected formal logician, but represented an early, socially and politically engaged form of analytic philosophy. Her papers, books, and pamphlets were formed in and shaped by current public events; she was sensitive to debates of the time and never hesitated to take an active role in helping others, be they scholarly refugees, young children, or the (un)educated masses that confronted on a daily basis the latest and fallacious mass-communication and propaganda machineries. Her practical logic (see, for example, Stebbing 1934) was meant to serve a debunking role within public policy and everyday life. Thus, Stebbing was a many-faceted philosopher, logician, and public intellectual, whose ideas are still relevant in debates about the place and future of philosophy in demented times.