Maurice Cornforth (1909-1980) Study Guide

Compiled by Ralph Dumain

• "Logical Empiricism" by Maurice Cornforth
• Science versus Idealism by Maurice Cornforth
• Maurice Cornforth on William Blake vs. the Fetishism of Language
• Maurice Cornforth on William Blake on imagination vs. the fetish of facts
• Materialism and the Dialectical Method by Maurice Cornforth
• Marxism and the Linguistic Philosophy by Maurice Cornforth
• Science and Evaluation by Maurice Cornforth
• The Open Philosophy and the Open Society: A Reply to Dr. Karl Popper's Refutations of Marxism by Maurice Cornforth
• Partisanship and Objectivity in Theoretical Work by Maurice Cornforth
• Communism and Philosophy: Contemporary Dogmas and Revisions of Marxism by Maurice Cornforth
  • Table of Contents
  • Preface
  • Roots of Dogmatic Marxism
  • The revision of Marxist philosophy 
• Rebels and Their Causes: Essays in Honour of A. L. Morton, edited by Maurice Cornforth
  • A. L. Morton—Portrait of a Marxist Historian by Maurice Cornforth
  • Ebenezer Jones, 1820-1860 — An English Symbolist by Jack Lindsay
  • Bernard Shaw and the New Spirit by Arnold Kettle

Bibliographical notes

Cornforth, Maurice [Campbell]. Science versus Idealism: In Defence of Philosophy against Positivism and Pragmatism. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, Publishers, 1975. Reprint of the 1962 ed. published by International Publishers, New York. 463 pp. Original edition 1955. Based on Science versus Idealism (1946) and In Defence of Philosophy (1950).

Cornforth, Maurice. Communism and Human Values. New York: International Publishers, 1972. Reproduces with slight changes three chapters from Marxism and the Linguistic Philosophy. See Chapter 8, Science and Evaluation, pp. 41-47.

About Maurice Cornforth

• Maurice Cornforth on Partisanship and Objectivity by Ralph Dumain

Bibliographies & Study Guides

• British Marxism in Philosophy, Science, and Culture Before the New Left: Essential Historical Surveys
• Wittgenstein, Marxism, Sociology: An Annotated Bibliography
• Vienna Circle, Karl Popper, Frankfurt School, Marxism, McCarthyism & American Philosophy: Selected Bibliography
• Christopher Caudwell: Selected Bibliography
• A Checklist of Jack Lindsay's Books by John Arnold
• Bertrand Russell vs William James & the Will to Believe
• John Dewey’s Logic: A Select Bibliography
• Pragmatism and Its Discontents: Annotated Selected Bibliography
• Marx and Marxism Web Guide

Offsite

By Maurice Cornforth

From BANNEDTHOUGHT.NET: British Publications:

• Science and Idealism: An Examination of ‘Pure Empiricism’ and Modern Logic (NY: International, 1946), 274 pages. [Originally published in London by Lawrence & Wishart.] Searchable PDF format [18,498 KB]
• Dialectical Materialism and Science (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1949), 68 pages. Searchable PDF format [3,977 KB]
• Historical Materialism, 2nd ed. (1962), (NY: International, 1971), 152 pages. (Has a few marginal notes.) Searchable PDF format [8,986 KB]
• Marxism and the Linguistic Philosophy. 2nd ed. London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1967 (orig. 1965)., 389 pages. Searchable PDF format [8,004 KB]
• The Open Philosophy and the Open Society: A Reply to Dr. Karl Popper’s Refutations of Marxism, (NY: International, 1968), 806 pages. Searchable PDF format [28,899 KB]
• Readers’ Guide to the Marxist Classics, prepared and edited by Maurice Cornforth, (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1952 [reprinted 1953]), 132 pages. PDF format [16,119 KB]

From Marxists Internet Archive: Maurice Cornforth Archive:

• Dialectical Materialism: An Introduction:
• Materialism and Dialectical Method, 1953
• Historical Materialism, 1954
• The Theory of Knowledge, 1955
• On the Theory of the Socialist Revolution, Marxist Quarterly, July 1956

Rumanian Summer: A View of the Rumanian People's Republic (1953) with Jack Lindsay

The Open Philosophy and the Open Society: A Reply to Dr. Karl Popper’s Refutations of Marxism (1968)

Partisanship and Objectivity in Theoretical Work (1973) by Maurice Cornforth

Johnstone, Henry W., Jr. What is Philosophy? New York: Macmillan, 1965. 118 pp. (Sources in Philosophy)

PENEY W. JOHNSTONE, jR./ Introduction 1
JACQUES MARITAIN/ The Nature of Philosophy and of Theology 29
BERTRAND RUSSELL/ On Scientific Method in Philosophy 37
RUDOLF CARNAP/ Philosophy and Logical Syntax 46
MAX BLACK/ Linguistic Method in Philosophy 57
MAURICE CORNFORTH/ The Task of Philosophy 68
JOHN DEWEY/ Changing Conceptions of Philosophy 74
EDMUND HUSSERL/ Philosophy as a Strict Science 85
RICHARD MC KEON/ Philosophy and Method 93
R. G. COLLINGWOOD/ Question and Answer 98
MARTIN HEIDEGGER/ What Is Philosophy? 107
Bibliography 117

Cornforth's contribution was extracted from his Science Versus Idealism (New York: International Publishers Co., Inc., 1962), pp. 219-223, 242-244.

Journal Articles

Horowitz, Irving Louis. Review: Pragmatism: Philosophy of Imperialism by Harry K. Wells, Science & Society, vol. 18, no. 4, Fall, 1954, pp. 362-365.

Cornforth, Maurice; Horowitz, Irving Louis. “On Pragmatism,” Science & Society, vol. 19, no. 3, Summer, 1955, pp. 257-262.

About Maurice Cornforth

• Maurice Cornforth - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
• Dialectical Materialism: READ THIS BOOK!!!! (YouTube video link)
• “Maurice Cornforth’s Contribution to Marxist Metaethics” by Renzo Llorente, in Nature, Society, and Thought, vol. 16, no. 3, 2003, pp. 261-275.
• “On Reappraising Maurice Cornforth,” by Edwin A. Roberts, in Nature, Society, and Thought, vol. 18, no. 4, October 2005, pp. 461-499.
• Origins of the Private Language Argument by Jan Dejnozka, Diálogos, 66 (1995), pp. 59-78.

Note: Cornforth's work took a turn for the better in the 1960s as he shed the philosophical as well as political baggage of Stalinism. Science versus Idealism is still worth reading. His most significant works in my view are Marxism and the Linguistic Philosophy and The Open Philosophy and the Open Society. In his last book Communism and Philosophy: Contemporary Dogmas and Revisions of Marxism Cornforth settles accounts with dogmatic elements of the Marxist-Leninist philosophy he inherited.

CONTACT Ralph Dumain

Uploaded 4 February 2021
Last update 4 June 2024
Previous update 9 November 2021

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