It is a curious but indisputable fact that every philosophical baby born alive is either a little positivist or a little Hegelian. […]Professor J. O. Wisdom of York University, Toronto, once observed that he knew people who thought there was no philosophy after Hegel, and others who thought there was none before Wittgenstein, and that he was prepared to contemplate the possibility that both were right.
Ernest Gellner (1987) “Positivism against Hegelianism” in Relativism and the Social Sciences, Cambridge University Press. Quote on p. 4.
Wisdom was qualified to comment, as someone who studied both, even if his conclusion is cursing both houses! Wisdom was born 110 years ago, on this day.
