Sophistry, Politics and Philosophy

Social disintegration and immiseration continue apace with a corresponding intellectual disarray. Reasons to abolish capitalism multiply daily, while Reason is treated as if it were a devious plot. How did we arrive at this juncture and what tools do we have to both apprehend reality and organize collectively to change it? Since the late 1970s, as the last waves of revolution receded, poststructuralism, postmodernism, and identity-based radicalism positioned themselves not only as the best means by which to challenge authority and bring about change, but more specifically, to criticize Marx and Engels and the presumed failures of the revolutions of the last century. It is no accident that philosophy, science and rational thought have also been targeted since they were the very means these revolutions employed to achieve their ends. Meanwhile, the capitalist juggernaut advances unimpeded by such critical theory, indeed capitalism appears to thrive on it. The resulting confusion nonetheless provides an opportunity to re-examine fundamental premises and definitions. I asked Helena Sheehan for this interview because her formal training in philosophy combines with her years of active political engagement to offer a perspective from which to assess our current dilemmas. Mat Callahan: Often, today, I hear philosophy used as if it was the same as “opinion”. Everyone has their own philosophy and can mean by that whatever they wish. At the same time, science is often said to have made philosophy obsolete or has taken over its function as a method for apprehending reality. What then is the philosophy of science? Helena Sheehan: Different people, including different philosophers, define philosophy in different ways. I use it to mean world view, a set of underlying beliefs about the world centred on the core questions of the centuries, such as: the question of whether phenomena can be explained in terms of natural forces alone or whether appeal to supernatural forces can be justified (typically the question of belief in the existence of God) or the question of whether phenomena are interconnected in a web of causality or events are disconnected and Socialism and Democracy, 2021 Vol. 35, Nos. 2–3, 38–48, https://doi.org/10.1080/08854300.2021.2110522