For many today, the philosophical school known as “positivism” is non grata. Its name evokes a kind of giddy intellectual inebriation experienced by nineteenth- and twentieth-century thinkers who were overly impressed by the feats of the natural sciences—a view which the sobered-up twenty-first century can no longer indulge. Indeed, in many places, positivism is so stigmatized that even the legions of those who continue to bear positivist influences disavow the name. No one—not even positivists—seems to want to be called a positivist anymore.

Into this environment, Evaldas Nekrašas has published a history and reappraisal of the positivist movement, The Positive Mind. Perhaps the fundamental virtue of Nekrašas's work is his clear realization that positivism is far more influential than all these disavowals would make it seem. Indeed, as Nekrašas rightly argues, positivism silently continues to color research programs and theories across the social sciences and humanities. What Nekrašas dubs the “positive mind” (or the philosophical attitude of positivism) is still far more relevant and influential than many would like to admit.

Generally speaking, Nekrašas's book can be split into two parts embodying two distinct aims. The first part, comprising the larger half of the book, is a history of positivism that will be useful to political theorists, historians of ideas, philosophers, and others wishing to gain a deeper perspective on positivism as a historical movement. Nekrašas begins by briefly defining positivism as comprising seven core features, including the belief that science “is the only genuine and reliable knowledge” (2). Nekrašas traces the emergence of positivist doctrine to various forms of Enlightenment empiricism giving the title (somewhat anachronistically) of positivism's “founder” to David Hume (20). He also narrates in detail how positivism became more militantly socially progressive during the nineteenth century with Auguste Comte, took on a milder reformist tone with J. S. Mill, and went through various lesser-known transformations in the early twentieth century, before achieving a kind of technical apotheosis in the work of Vienna school “logical” positivists such as Rudolf Carnap.

This first part of the book is easily the strongest. Here Nekrašas is at his best, lucidly reconstructing numerous philosophies within the larger stream of the positivist tradition and drawing interesting distinctions between the many varieties of positivism (including socially progressive nineteenth-century forms versus more logically technical forms in the twentieth). He also is admirably aware of the fact that positivism has always been a deeply political movement, with strong ambitions to either radically change or substantively reform major features of human social and ethical life by enthroning the sciences as authoritative. Nekrašas is careful to note that this does not mean there has ever been a single positivist political theory, but there have been persistent ambitions to remake the political order.

The second part of the book is ostensibly about the impact of positivism on rival schools of thought and its influence on different research programs across university disciplines. However, this part often reads more like a series of apologetics for positivism in the face of assorted critics. Unfortunately, this second half of the book does not meet the standard of the first.

To begin with, the second half suffers a number of organizational problems, lacking a clear conceptual scheme for presenting its material. It begins with a treatment of two antipositivists—Nietzsche and Heidegger—but fails to make clear why these two thinkers are being treated in tandem. Is it simply because they are canonical Germans or because the latter was influenced by the former? The brief set of pages devoted to their thought does not sufficiently clarify why they are hanging together in a kind of dehistoricized space. Nekrašas's analysis then suddenly jumps backwards in time to Marxism and organizes itself around traditions more than individuals (Marxism, pragmatism, and analytic philosophy). Even here the organization is not consistent. For example, Karl Popper inexplicably receives his own separate section dubbed “critical realism” instead of being classified under the neighboring “analytic philosophy” subsection. The overall impression is of a kind of ad hoc set of critical voices gathered together somewhat arbitrarily as sparring partners.

All this would be mere pedantic quibbling if the organization did not have a negative impact on the content. But a deeper problem with the second half of the book is that major traditions and voices critical of positivism are either neglected or omitted. For example, there is no sustained discussion of the ongoing tradition of Romanticism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, very little philosophical elaboration on Hegel's antipositivism, and no engagement at all of the antipositivist arguments of neo-Hegelians like T. H. Green and R. G. Collingwood. Hermeneutics are strangely not given their own systematic treatment. Charles Taylor—arguably the most important antipositivist in the English-speaking world today—receives zero mention. Major interpretive thinkers like Clifford Geertz, Hans-Georg Gadamer, and Michel Foucault are never treated systematically. Peter Winch receives only passing mention, with no deep consideration of his Wittgensteinian case against the unity of the sciences. Although the examination of Marxism is generally stronger, even here there are serious gaps. In particular, there is no analysis of the first British New Left and cultural studies advocates like E. P. Thompson. Thus many of the major voices of antipositivism of the last two hundred years are neglected or omitted in a section whose stated goal is to deal with “rivals.” All this leads to an overwhelming question: Perhaps a lack of reflection on how the second part was organized led to flawed coverage?

When Nekrašas does enter into debate with antipositivists, his tone is often overly dismissive. For example, he suggests that the fact that Kuhn has proved to be of greater influence than Carnap is due to the former's being easier to read (272–73). And he claims that because he “did not find any books by Lyotard, Baudrillard, Michel Foucault, or Derrida on the philosophy shelves of the Harvard Book Store,” perhaps these thinkers should not be classified as philosophers after all (278). During his discussion of constructivism, he stages a polemical argument with an opponent whom he refers to at one point as an “arrogant radical postmodernist” (319).

Sadly, what is harmed by all this is ultimately Nekrašas's own book. The first half remains a helpful and often lucid contribution for those interested in learning the history of positivism. But the second part fails to grasp the arguments of antipositivists in their strongest versions. Nekrašas's ultimate failure to convince is thus more a product of his inability to grasp the position of positivism's rivals than any shortcoming in his ability to articulate positivism's own case.