Ernest Gellner explores here the links between anthropology and politics, and shows just how central these are. The recent postmodernist turn in anthropology has been linked to the expiation of colonial guilt. Traditional, functionalist anthropology is characteristically regarded as an accessory to the crime, and anyone critical of the relativistic claims of interpretative anthropology (as Erne…
For E. Gellner, `critical' monism (the attempt to restore intellectual order by lucid principles) is necessary in our search for the truth, for validity of our knowledge about the world. Cognitive legitimacy can be moored on different anchors, of which two selector theories are the most important: empiricism and materialism. For the empiricists, man is not more than the totality of his experie…