…in a 1919 edition of The New Republic (thanks to a lead on Leiter’s blog). Cohen was writing, under the pseudonym “Philonous”, in response to someone who had said that those not in ardent support of post-war efforts to rebuild were “slackers”:
My fellow philosophers for the most part are too ready to
assert that theoretic philosophy can justify itself
only by its practical applications. But why the
fundamental human desire to know the world is any
less entitled to satisfaction than the desire for
kodaks, automobiles, india-paper or upholstered
furniture, they do not tell us. Indeed, just exactly
what is practical, and what is the good of being
practical at all, are just the kind of theoretic studies
that they frantically refuse to undertake.[…]
The great philosophers, like the great artists, scientists and religious
teachers have all, in large measure, ignored their
contemporary social problems. Aristotle, Leonardo
da Vinci, Shakespeare, Newton, Buddha, Jesus of
Nazareth and others who have done so much to
heighten the quality of human life, have very little
to say about the actual international, economic and
political readjustments which were as pressing in
their day as in ours. The great service of Socrates
to humanity was surely not in his somewhat superficial
criticism of the Athenian electoral machinery
of his day, but rather in developing certain intellectual
methods, and suggesting to Plato certain
doctrines as to the nature of the soul and ideas,—-
doctrines which in spite of all their impracticality
have served for over two thousand years to raise
men above the grovelling, clawing existence in
which so much of our life is sunk.
What grand writing! I’m proud to admit that I came into possession of one of his spoons, now on display in my office.
Huenemanniac 
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