of small numbers; prominent movements acquired rivals, some settling in the
gaps with hybrid doctrines such as vitalism and neo-realism. Later generations
rebelled against their teachers, braiding the themes of their grandteachers into
their work in revival movements such as Neo-Kantianism, neo-Marxism, and
in our own day what amounts to neo-existentialism and neo-Idealism.
Underneath this cascade of rivalries, the space once held by the religious
philosophers has anchored the array of positions; this remains so even in the
present day, when secularizers have so fully won the battle that the old
religious-philosophical positions have become reoccupied by secular thinkers.
Religion did not retreat before the secularizers without a fight, and the sophis-
tication generated by opponents of militant rationalism and materialism set
the problems and tools of thought which have continued to shape the field
even after the religious conservatives were driven from their chairs.
Structurally, the academic revolution divided the old all-purpose intellectual
role of the philosopher into a multitude of academic specialties. The process
of specialization, not yet ended today, has affected the contents of intellectual
life in several ways. Most obvious is the crystallization of the subject matters
of the new disciplines, ranging from psychology, sociology, and the other social
sciences, to the natural sciences, humanities, and literature, now incorporated
as academic subjects. Academic specialization affects philosophical topics, both
early and late. At the moment when a field splits off to control its own academic
appointments, its separate meetings and specialized publication outlets, there
is usually an ideology which expresses on general grounds the rationale for the
split. The vehement materialism which broke out in Germany in the generation
that freed itself from the Naturphilosophie of the Idealists is an example of
such an ideology of disciplinary independence. Often such moves are accom-
panied by a claim that philosophy has been outlived and superseded by its
offspring.
Nevertheless, the general-purpose intellectual role continues to exert an
attraction, and finds new subject matters in the very topic of the disciplinary
challenge. One such reactive movement was Neo-Kantianism, playing off the
historicist methodologies laid down by the academic historians; the emergence
of pragmatism in the midst of the movement which formed experimental
psychology was another; yet others were the development of both phenome-
nology and logical positivism out of reflection on the battle over the founda-
tions of mathematics. In each such case the existence of rival disciplinary homes
has meant that individuals could migrate back and forth between bases (the
career of William James is an elaborate example), borrowing and combining
themes from each. Far from emptying out the contents of philosophy, the rise
of the disciplines created a new mode of generating intellectual innovations on
Intellectuals Take Control: The University Revolution^ •^619