Cosmological Counterinduction:

Feyerabendian Explorations in Anthropology

Abstract

This paper is an attempt to reckon with Feyerabend’s engagements with socio-cultural anthropology, an area which has so far remained unexplored. After tracking some of his recurring anthropological reference points, I argue that anthropology was important to Feyerabend’s philosophy in two related ways: first, as a model for a flexible and situational form of theorizing; second, as a critical method for the relativization of different modes of understanding. Ultimately, I argue that anthropology was central to Feyerabend’s conception of cosmological criticism, his radically comparativist means of critiquing established modes of being and thinking.