Polemic (magazine)

Polemic was a British "Magazine of Philosophy, Psychology, and Aesthetics" published between 1945 and 1947, which aimed to be a general or non-specialist intellectual periodical.^[1]

Edited by the ex-Communist Humphrey Slater,^[2] it was "sympathetic to science, hostile to the intellectual manifestations of romanticism, and markedly anti-Communist. Eight issues were published.^[1] The first, published as a book to get round the prohibition of new journals imposed by war-time paper rationing, included contributions by Henry Miller, Bertrand Russell, A. J. Ayer, Stephen Spender, Stephen Glover, George Orwell, C. E. M. Joad and Rupert Crawshay-Williams.^[1]

Orwell contributed five essays over the life of the magazine and Russell and Ayer contributed four each. Other contributors included Philip Toynbee, Hugh Trevor-Roper, Dylan Thomas, Diana Witherby, Stuart Hampshire, Geoffrey Grigson, Ben Nicholson, Adrian Stokes, J. D. Bernal^[3] C. H. Waddington^[4] and John Wisdom.

Orwell's essays

"Notes on Nationalism" (Polemic, No 1 - October 1945 - written in May 1945)^[5]
"The Prevention of Literature" (Polemic, No 2 - January 1946)^[4]
"Second Thoughts on James Burnham" (Polemic, No 3 - May 1946)^[4]
"Politics vs. Literature: An Examination of Gulliver's Travels" (Polemic, No 5 - September–October 1946)^[4]
"Lear, Tolstoy and the Fool" (Polemic, No 7)^[4]
Orwell also contributed an (unsigned) editorial to (Polemic, No 3 - May 1946)^[4]

Ayer's essays

'Deistic Fallacies', Polemic, no. 1. (1945)^[6]^[7]
'Secret Session' (on J.-P. Sartre), Polemic, no. 2, pp. 60~3. (1945)^[8]
'Freedom and Necessity', Polemic, no. 5, pp. 36~44. (1946) (repr. in Philosophical Essays, 1954]^[6]
"The Claims of Philosophy", in Polemic, no. 7, pp. 18~33 (1947) [repr. in Reflections on Our Age, 1949)^[6]

References

^ ^a ^b ^c [1] Absent Minds: Intellectuals in Britain by Stefan Collini Oxford University Press, 2006 ISBN 0-19-929105-5, ISBN 978-0-19-929105-2
^ [2] Art-Historical Notes: "Where are the Hirsts of the 1930s now?" The Independent, Nov 13, 1998 by David Buckman
^ The Guardian
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f Orwell, Sonia and Angus, Ian (eds.). The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell Volume 4: In Front of Your Nose (1945-1950) (Penguin)
^ Orwell, Sonia and Angus, Ian (eds.). The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell Volume 3: As I Please (1943-1945) (Penguin)
^ ^a ^b ^c "The Philosophical Works of A. J. Ayer" (PDF). Perception and identity : essays presented to A.J. Ayer, with his replies to them. Graham Macdonald, A. J. Ayer. London. 1979. ISBN 0-333-27182-3. OCLC 6012043.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) CS1 maint: others (link)
^ Rogers, Ben (1999). A.J. Ayer. Grove Press. p. 199. ISBN 978-0-8021-1673-4. Ayer [...] began writing for Polemic, an elegant new quarterly edited by an ex-communist, Humphrey Slater. The first edition [...] featured an essay on 'Deistic Fallacies', and later numbers included an article on free will, 'Freedom and Necessity' - one of Ayer's most frequently cited and reprinted papers - and another on 'The Claims of Philosophy', first delivered as a lecture late in 1946 to an inaugural Unesco conference. Diverse as they are in subject, all these articles revolve around the big moral questions - the purposes of philosophy, the nature of freedom, the meaning of life - and in their audience and approach are quite different from anything Ayer had written before the war. Like French existentialism, they represented a response to a thirst among the war's survivors for an articulation of the most basic principles of the new world order.
^ O'Donahoe, Benedict (2001). "Dramatically Different: The Reception of Sartre's Theatre in London and New York". Sartre Studies International. 7 (1): 2. doi:10.3167/135715501782368440. ISSN 1357-1559. JSTOR 23511112 – via JSTOR. Meanwhile, back 'overseas', the doyen of logical positivism, A.J. Ayer, had published a not unfriendly critique of the text. He took the play to be an illustration of the theory expounded in L'être et le néant that 'death makes me a prey to others', and felt this was inevitably flawed in dramatic representation, since Garcin is shown as conscious in death, therefore as an object for himself as well as for others, hence as 'not really dead'. Ayer concedes that this paradox is dramatically necessary, but, predictably, is concerned about its illogicality, concluding with a quotation from Wittgenstein: 'Death is not an event of life. Death is not lived through.' Sartre, of course, would have agreed, though this is doubtless a truth which he (like many lesser folk) had perceived without first consulting Wittgenstein. So Huis clos initially had a mixed reception...

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[Absent_Minds-1] [1] Absent Minds: Intellectuals in Britain by Stefan Collini Oxford University Press, 2006 ISBN 0-19-929105-5, ISBN 978-0-19-929105-2

[2] [2] Art-Historical Notes: "Where are the Hirsts of the 1930s now?" The Independent, Nov 13, 1998 by David Buckman

[3] The Guardian

[In_Front_of_Your_Nose-4] ^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f Orwell, Sonia and Angus, Ian (eds.). The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell Volume 4: In Front of Your Nose (1945-1950) (Penguin)

[As_I_Please-5] Orwell, Sonia and Angus, Ian (eds.). The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell Volume 3: As I Please (1943-1945) (Penguin)

[:0-6] "The Philosophical Works of A. J. Ayer" (PDF). Perception and identity : essays presented to A.J. Ayer, with his replies to them. Graham Macdonald, A. J. Ayer. London. 1979. ISBN 0-333-27182-3. OCLC 6012043.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) CS1 maint: others (link)

[:1-7] Rogers, Ben (1999). A.J. Ayer. Grove Press. p. 199. ISBN 978-0-8021-1673-4. Ayer [...] began writing for Polemic, an elegant new quarterly edited by an ex-communist, Humphrey Slater. The first edition [...] featured an essay on 'Deistic Fallacies', and later numbers included an article on free will, 'Freedom and Necessity' - one of Ayer's most frequently cited and reprinted papers - and another on 'The Claims of Philosophy', first delivered as a lecture late in 1946 to an inaugural Unesco conference. Diverse as they are in subject, all these articles revolve around the big moral questions - the purposes of philosophy, the nature of freedom, the meaning of life - and in their audience and approach are quite different from anything Ayer had written before the war. Like French existentialism, they represented a response to a thirst among the war's survivors for an articulation of the most basic principles of the new world order.

[8] O'Donahoe, Benedict (2001). "Dramatically Different: The Reception of Sartre's Theatre in London and New York". Sartre Studies International. 7 (1): 2. doi:10.3167/135715501782368440. ISSN 1357-1559. JSTOR 23511112 – via JSTOR. Meanwhile, back 'overseas', the doyen of logical positivism, A.J. Ayer, had published a not unfriendly critique of the text. He took the play to be an illustration of the theory expounded in L'être et le néant that 'death makes me a prey to others', and felt this was inevitably flawed in dramatic representation, since Garcin is shown as conscious in death, therefore as an object for himself as well as for others, hence as 'not really dead'. Ayer concedes that this paradox is dramatically necessary, but, predictably, is concerned about its illogicality, concluding with a quotation from Wittgenstein: 'Death is not an event of life. Death is not lived through.' Sartre, of course, would have agreed, though this is doubtless a truth which he (like many lesser folk) had perceived without first consulting Wittgenstein. So Huis clos initially had a mixed reception...

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Orwell's essays

Ayer's essays

See also

References