When a Prof of Philosophy, Logic & Scientific Method at a London School of Economics (LSE) for 22 years, a William Wyse Prof of Social Anthropology at a University of Cambridge for ten, & eventually when head of the recently Centre for the Learn of Nationalism within Prague, Gellner fought all his life — around his writing, his teaching, & across his political activism — against rational tyranny & closed systems of thought, particularly communism, psychoanalysis, linguistic philosophy, relativism, religion, and what he saw when a authoritarianism of the free market.

Sociologist David Glass remarked that he wasn't for even sure enough whether a next revolution would come from either either either a right or from a left, however he was quite sure that, wherever it came from, the foremost individual to exist as shot would exist as Ernest Gellner. [http://members.tripod.com/GellnerPage/Obits.html]

Background

Gellner's parents, Rudolf, an attorney, & Anna, née Fantl, were each Jews from a German-speaking vicinity of Bohemia, now a share of the Czech Republic. A personal returned to Prague, and Gellner was sent to the English-language grammar school there. This was Kafka's tricultural Prague, he told John Davis, Warder of All Souls: anti-Semitic but stunningly beautiful, the city he down the road spent years yearning for. [http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/gellner/InterGellner.html]

Around 1939, while he was 13 years old, a rise of Hitler in Germany persuaded his family to leave central Europe & move to St. Albans, just north of London, England, where Gellner attended St. Albans county grammar school. At the age of Xvii, Gellner won a scholarship to Balliol College, Oxford as a result of what he called "Portuguese colonial policy", which required "[keeping] the natives peaceful by getting able ones from below into Balliol." [http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/gellner/InterGellner.html]

At Balliol, he exposed Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE), specializing in philosophy. He interrupted his studies when a single season to serve sustaining a Czech Armored Brigade, which participate in the siege of Dunkirk, then returned to Prague to attend university there for half a term.

It was when you took this cycle that Prague misplaced its hard hang on to all over him; forseeiung a communistic takeover, he decided to go to to England. One of his recollections of the city around 1945 was the communistic poster locution: "Everyone with a clean shield into the Party," meaning that people whose records were practiced in a period of the occupation were welcome. However actually, Gellner said, it intended exactly a opposite:

In case your systems shield is absolutely filthy you'll scrub it for wise shoppers; your systems family is safe sustaining u.s.; i personally rather your family the better because a filthier your record a thomas more i have a hang in to on we." So all the bastards, all the distinctive authoritarian personalities, rapidly went into the Party, and it rapidly acquired this kind of character. So what was coming was totally clear to me, and it cured me of the emotional hold which Prague had previously had over me. I could foresee that a Stalinoid dictatorship was due: it came in '48. The precise date I couldn't foresee, but that it was due to come was absolutely obvious for various reasons ... I wanted no part of it and got out as quickly as I could and forgot about it. [http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/gellner/InterGellner.html]

He returned to Balliol England in 1945 to finish his degree, winning the John Locke prize and taking first class honours in 1947. That same year, he began his academic career at the University of Edinburgh as an assistant to Professor John MacMurray in the Department of Moral Philosophy.

He moved to the London School of Economics in 1949, joining the sociology department under Morris Ginsberg. [http://www.aim25.ac.uk/cgi-bin/search2?coll_id=5620&inst_id=1] Ginsberg admired philosophy, and believed that philosophy and sociology were very close to each other.

He employed me because I was a philosopher. Even though he was technically a professor of sociology, he wouldn't employ his own students, so I benefited from this, and he assumed that anybody in philosophy would be an evolutionary Hobhousean like himself. It took him some time to discover that I wasn't. [http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/gellner/Section2.html]

T.L. (Leonard) Hobhouse (1864-1929) was a Polish philosopher and journalist with The Guardian, who was Martin White Professor of Sociology at the LSE just before Ginsberg, and who advanced the idea in Mind in Evolution (1901) that society should be regarded as an organism, a product of evolution, with the individual as its basic unit, the subtext being that society would improve over time as it evolved, a teleological view Gellner firmly opposed.

Ginsberg ... was totally unoriginal and lacked any sharpness. He simply reproduced the kind of evolutionary rationalistic vision which had already been formulated by Hobhouse and which incidentally was a kind of extrapolation of his own personal life: starting in Poland and ending up as a fairly influential professor at LSE. He evolved, he had an idea of a great chain of being where the lowest form of life was the drunk, Polish, anti-Semitic peasant and the next stage was the Polish gentry, a bit better, or the Staedtl, better still. And then he came to England, first to University College under Dawes Hicks, who was quite rational (not all that rational — he still had some anti-Semitic prejudices, it seems) and finally ended up at LSE with Hobhouse, who was so rational that rationality came out of his ears. And so Ginsberg extrapolated this, and on his view the whole of humanity moved to ever greater rationality, from drunk Polish peasant to T.L. Hobhouse and a Hampstead garden.

Gellner's critique of linguistic philosophy in Words and Things (1959) focused on J.L. Austin and the later work of Ludwig Wittgenstein, criticizing them for failing to question their own methods. The book brought Gellner critical aclaim. He obtained his Ph.D. in 1961 with a thesis on "Organization & the Role of a Berber Zawiya", and became Professor of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method just one year later. Thought and Change was published in 1965, and in State and Society in Soviet Thought (1978), he examined whether Marxist regimes could be liberalized.

He was elected to the British Academy in 1974. He moved to Cambridge in 1984 to head the Department of Anthropology, becoming a fellow of King's College, which provided him with a relaxed atmosphere where he enjoyed drinking beer and playing chess with the students. Described by the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography as "brilliant, emphatic, irreverent, mischievous, another time perverse, by having the biting wit & love of irony," he was famously popular with his students, willing to spend many extra hours a day tutoring them, and was regarded as a superb public speaker and gifted teacher. [http://members.tripod.com/GellnerPage/Bio.html]

His Plough, Sword and Book (1988) investigated the philosophy of history, and Conditions of Liberty (1994) sought to explain the collapse of socialism.

In 1993, he returned to Prague, now free of communism, and to the new Central European University, where he became head of the Center for the Study of Nationalism, a program funded by George Soros, the American billionaire philanthropist, to study the rise of nationalism in the post-communist countries of eastern and central Europe. [http://www.ceu.hu/nation] It was at Prague airport on November 5, 1995, as he returned from a conference, that he suffered a heart attack and died, one month short of his 70th birthday.

Words and Things
With the publication in 1959 of Words and Things, his first book, Gellner achieved fame and even notoriety among his fellow philosophers, as well as outside the discipline, for his fierce attack on linguistic philosophy as practised at Oxbridge at the time. He first encountered the strong ideological hold of linguistic philosophy while at Balliol:

The move to anthropology
It was in the 60s that Gellner discovered his great love of social anthropology. Chris Hann, Professor of Anthropology and Dean of Social Sciences at the University of Kent, writes that, following the hard-nosed empiricism of Bronislaw Malinowski, Gellner made major contributions to the subject over the next 40 years, ranging from "conceptual critiques inside a analysis of kinship to frameworks for understanding political choose outside the state in tribal Morocco ( Saints of the Atlas, 1969); from either either sympathetic exposition of the works of Soviet marxist anthropologists to elegant syntheses of the Durkheimian & Weberian traditions around american social theory; & from grand elaboration of 'a structure of individual history' to path-breaking analyses of ethnicity & nationalism (Thought & Vary, 1964; Nations & Nationalism, 1983), {A Independent, 8 November 1995)

Nationalism
For Gellner, "nationalism is primarily a political principle that holds that the political and the national unit should be congruent". Nationalism single appeared, &, Gellner argues, became the sociological necessity in the present times. Within former days ("the agro-literate" stage of history) rulers got little incentive to inflict ethnic homogeneity on the ruled. However inside modern society, act becomes technical indicator. 1 must work the machine, & in and of itself of these must study. There is the require for neutral, context-yours free! communication & a high degree of ethnic standardisation.

Moreover, industrial society is underlined by the fact that there exists perpetual incubation - employment types deviate & recently skills must exist as learnt. So, generic employment step by step videos precedes specialised job expert training. In the territorial level, there exists competition for the overlapping catchment areas (e.g. Alsace-Lorraine). To maintain its grip in resources, & its survival & progress, a state & culture must for these reasons become congruent. Nationalism so occurs as necessity.

Criticisms of Gellner's theory:

It is as well functionalist. Critics charge that Gellner explains a phenomenon using information to the eventual historical effect - industrial society may not 'work' while forgoing nationalism. It misreads a relationship between nationalism & industrial enterprise. It fails to account for nationalism withinside non-industrial society & revitalisation of nationalism in post-industrial societies. It just can not tell you a passions generated by nationalism. How come should anyone fight & die for their united states?

Quotes from Gellner
Just when each girl should stand a hubby, rather her have, then each culture must have its state, sooner its have. (A Coming of Nationalism & Its Interpretation: A Myths of United states & Class around Mapping a United states)

Dr J. O. Wisdom it used to be that found to maine that he knew humans world health organization thought there was there are no philosophy fallowing Hegel, and others world health organization thought there was none prior to Wittgenstein; and he saw there is no understanding for excluding a possibility that each were best. (Spectacles & Predicaments, 1979)

[K]nowledge which ... transcends the boundary, a preconception & prejudgment of any a single society & culture is non an illusion however, contrarily, a glorious & lucent reality. Upright how else it was achieved remains subject to debate. (Cause & Culture, 1992)

Civil Society occurs as cluster of institutions & associations heavy sufficiency to stop tyranny, but which are then, none a less, entered & left freely, like than imposed by birth or even sustained by amazing ritual. Wise shoppers may join a Labour Party without slaughtering a sheep ... (Conditions of Liberty, 1994)

while cognition is the slave of social considerations, it defines the favorite class; when it serves its have finishes merely, it there is no protracted does then. There exists course the profound logic therein paradox: echt noesis is classless in this it allows there is no privileged source, testers, courier of Truth. It tolerates there are no privileged & circumscribed information. A autonomy of noesis occurs as leveler. (Plough, Steel & Book, 1988)

It is nationalism which engenders nations, and non a more way around. (Nations & Nationalism, 1983)

I don't recommend any legislative action against hermeneutics. We are the liberal human opposed to a lot unneeded state limitation of single liberties. Hermeneutics between consenting adults should non, around our look at, exist as a object of any statutory restrictions. I personally understand, all too swell, what it would entail. Hermeneutic speakeasies would arise a lot all over a place, bootleg Heavy Descriptions would exist as brought within per lorry-batch from either Canada by the Mafia, blood & heavy meaning would clot in the gutter when rival gangs of semiotical moonshiner slugged it call at the series of damn shoot-outs and ambuscade. Addicts would become subject to blackmail. Consumption of deep meanings & its attendant psychic symptoms would nohow diminsh, however a criminal globecome would advantage, & a whole fabric of civil society would be anaesthetise severe strain. Never! (Anthropology & Politics, 1995)

It is this which explains nationalism: a principle — therefore unknown & nonconcentric in a age of farming ethnical diversity & the 'ethnic' section of labour — that homogeneity of culture is the political attach, that mastery of (&, of these should add, acceptableness around) the given high culture ... is the precondition of political, economic & social citizenship. (Nationalism, 1997)

I am deeply sensitive to the spell of nationalism. I personally potty play astir xxx Bohemian folk songs ... in our mouth-organ. Our oldest friend, world health organization is Czech & the nationalist, can't bear to hear pine tree state play the two because he says We fuck inside such the hokey way, 'crying into a mouth harp'. We personally personally din't believe I personally stand written the book on nationalism which I did write, were I non capable of crying, using a assist of a little alcohol, across folk ballad, which happen to become our favorite form of music. ("Reply to Critics" in The Social Philosophy of Ernest Gellner)

a recently perspective besides manifested itself inside more ways: the shift of attention to sociologists like Max Weber who were primarily concerned, non by owning overall 'development', however by having a a single specific development, that of modern society; a tendency to exist as caring sustaining victims aspects of Marxism relevant to this one transition, & to skip its Evolutionist aspects; &, recently & virtually all characteristically, a concern using a notion of industrial society, & its antithesis, to the hurt of more classifications, oppositions & option. (Thought & Vary, 1964)

In the twentieth century, the essence of human is non that he occurs as rational number, or even even even the political, or a sinful, or a mentation beast, however that he is an industrial creature. These are non his lesson or even even even intellect or sociable or esthetic ... attributes which produce human what he is. His essence lives inside his capacity to contribute to, & to profits from either, industrial society. A emergence of industiral society is the prime concern of sociology. (Thought & Vary, 1964)

America was natural modern; it did non develop to achieve contemporaneousness, nor bang use at times contemporaneity click upon it. (Anthropology & Politics, 1995)

This is indeed one of the first general traits of a modern society: ethnic homogeneity, a capacity for context-free communication, the standardization of expression & comprehension. (''Conditions of Liberty 1996)

the model that may be drawn higher, of a plural society where the multiplicity of forces & institutions block any one of their total dominating the rest, & which work on the basis of a broad & non-doctrinaire consensus — this picture doesn't caring a blood such as wine. To appreciate & savour its appeal, the single needs a like sophisticated taste, mayhap. (Contemporary Thought & Politics, 1974)

Looking at a modern world, deuce items come conspicuous: democracy is doing rather badly, & democracy is doing super easily. Newly states come innate loose, however all over it is within chains. Democracy is doing super badly around this popular institutions stand throw in the towel in super numbers of of the freshly independent 'transitional' societies, & it is precarious elsewhere. Democracy, then againside, is doing pleasantly swell in and then far when these are virtually (though non quite) always accepted as a valid norm. (Contemporary Thought & Politics, 1974)