ERNEST GELLNER: THE LAST OF THE CENTRAL EUROPEANS

摘要

I once described Ernest Gellner as a social anthropologist of the school of Malinowski, and a philosopher in the tradition of Popper. He sent me a note to say that was just about right, but I am tempted now to reverse the formula. He was a Malinowskian philosopher, who was concerned above all with the uses to which ideas were put. And as an anthropologist he was a Popperian, exuberantly inventing models late into the night, but beady-eyed the morning after, a relentless critic, unmoved by reputation.