The Continental / Analytic

Divide

The Analytic / Continental Divide

What is the distinction between ‘Analytic’ and ‘Continental’ philosophy?

Two approaches to the question:

1. Historical

2. Systematic

The Analytic / Continental Divide

Warning: Category conflation

‘Continental’ - Geography

‘Analytic’ - Method

However: ‘Analytic’ & ‘Continental’ are used

The Analytic / Continental Divide

OVERVIEW:

Part 1: History of Distinction

Part 2: Systematic Analysis of Distinction

CONCLUSIONS:

The Analytic / Continental Divide

Part 1: History of the distinction

“Kant . . . final great figure common to both analytic and Continental traditions”

(CCCP, p. 1)

The Analytic / Continental Divide

The Analytic / Continental Divide

The ‘Analytic’/’Continental’ distinction is a product of analytic, not Continental philosophy!

The Analytic / Continental Divide

Two part characterization:

“What distinguishes analytical philosophy, in its diverse manifestations, from other schools is the belief, first, that a philosophical account of thought can be attained through a philosophical account of language, and, secondly, that a comprehensive account can only be so attained”

(Dummett, 1993)

The Analytic / Continental Divide

"Frege was the grandfather of analytical philosophy, Husserl the founder of the phenomenological school, two radically different philosophical movements . . . remarkably close in orientation . . . They may be compared with the Rhine and the Danube, which rise quite close to one another and for a time pursue roughly parallel courses, only to diverge in utterly different directions and flow into different seas„

(Dummett, 1993)

The Analytic / Continental Divide

Analytic philosophers make notoriously bad historians . . .

NOT Frege/Husserl (ca. 1905)

BUT Bentham/Coledridge (ca. 1780)

Opposition in philosophical task: – Bentham: ask, is it true?

– Coleridge: ask, what’s its significance?

The Analytic / Continental Divide

History of Analytic movement:

Frege, Russel, Moore, Wittgenstein,

Carnap, Putnam, Quine, and Olaf Müller

“Analytic philosophy began with the arrival of Wittgenstein in Cambridge in 1912”

(OCP, 1995)

The Analytic / Continental Divide

Origins of Analytic Philosophy:

From Frege

through Russell & Wittgenstein

to Vienna & Berlin

The Analytic / Continental Divide

Two related difficulties:

1) technical nature

2) historical context

“”Continuity” had been, a vague word convenient for philosophers like Hegel, who wished to introduce metaphysical muddles into mathematics. . . . .

. . . . a great deal of mysticism, such as that of Bergson, was renderd antiquated”

(Russell. 1945)

The Analytic / Continental Divide

From analysis of arithmetic to the philosophy of logical analysis:

all significant thought and discourse can be analyzed into elementary propositions that

directly picture states of affairs

The Analytic / Continental Divide

Examples:

1. material objects sense-data

2. mental states behavioral dispositions

The Analytic / Continental Divide

Historical context of the movement

Relativity Theory

‘space’ and ‘time’ ‘space-time’ ‘matter’ ‘events’

Psychology

mind as ‘mental’ mind as ‘physical’

The Analytic / Continental Divide

Philosophical problem-solving: e.g. ‘existence’ since Plato’s Theaetetus

“The golden mountain does not exist’ =

“There is no entity c such that ‘x is golden and mountainous’ is true when x is c, but not otherwise”

The Analytic / Continental Divide

Philosophical Methods and Results

like Science!

“Since science in principle can say all that can be said there is no unanswerable question left.”

(Schlick, 1918)

The Analytic / Continental Divide

philosophy of logical analysis

philosophy of language

The Analytic / Continental Divide

Ordinary Language Philosophy or

Linguistic Philosophy(1945-1960, Austin, Ryle)

“Philosophy is not one of the natural sciences . . . The result of philosophy is not a number of ‘philosophical propositions’, but to make propositions clear.” (Wittgenstein)

The Analytic / Continental Divide

Carnap Quine

(Late Wittgenstein)

Contemporary Analytic philosophers:“think and write in the analytic spirit,

respectful of science, both as a paradigm of reasonable belief and in conformity with its argumentative rigor, its clarity, and its determination to be objective” (OCP, 1995)

The Analytic / Continental Divide

Who? When? What? Why? & Who cares?

Anglo-American philosophers (ca. 1970)

Analytic / Continental distinction is a professional self-description

Distinguish philosophy from nonsense

Study Abroad / Ridicule

The Analytic / Continental Divide

Part II: Systematic Approach

What is the distinction between ‘analytic’ and ‘Continental philosophy?

What does this distinction

between analytic and Continental philosophy mean?

II.a) What does ‘analytic’ mean?

II.b) What does ‘Continental’ mean?

II.c) What distinguishes them?

The Analytic / Continental Divide

Analytic philosophy is philosophical method

II.a) What is Analysis?

Analysis = decomposition

The Analytic / Continental Divide

Two experimental methods in chemistry:

Chemical Analysis

Chemical Synthesis

The Analytic / Continental Divide

Example of philosophical analysis:

What is knowledge?

A person P knows that K if and only if

1. P believes that K

2. P is justified in believing that K

3. It is true that K.

Knowledge decomposed into belief , justification & truth

The Analytic / Continental Divide

Multiple forms of philosophical analysis

Examples:

1. analysis = explication

explication = inexact concept

exact concept by informal explanation & illustrative

example

Many forms of explication (e.g. Carnap, Kant,

Husserl)

The Analytic / Continental DivideMultiple forms of philosophical analysis

Examples:

2. analysis = definition

definition = necessary and sufficient conditions for term’s correct

application

logical, conceptual, reductive, constructive

The Analytic / Continental Divide

Two kinds of ‘analytic Philosophy‘

1. Philosophy of LanguageMoore Austin & Ryle

- philosophy uncovers nonscientific truths

2. Naturalism“the complete

science is a true description of reality: there is no

other Truth and no other Reality” (Churchland, 1986)

Differ in aims and methods

The Analytic / Continental Divide

Conclusion of II.a) What does ‘analytic’

mean?

‘analytic philosophy’ = family resemblance concept

The Analytic / Continental Divide

II.b) What does ‘Continental’ mean?

Examples: Kant, Fichte, Schleiermacher,

Hegel, Schelling, Schopenhaur, Feuerbach, Kierkegaard, Marx, Dilthey, Nietzsche, Brentano, Freud, Saussure, Bergson, Husserl, Cassirer, Jaspers, Bloch, Heidegger, Horkheimer, Gadamer, Lacan, Adorno, Sartre, Arendt, Camus, Fouclaut, Habermas, Derrida . . .

The Analytic / Continental Divide

II.b) What does ‘Continental’ mean?

Continental movements:

Kantianism, German Idealism, Hermeneutics, Philosophy of Life, Young Hegelians, Philosophy of Existence, Phenomenology, Marxism, Neo-Kantianism, Freudianism, Structuralism, Critical Theory, Lacanianism, Post-structuralism, French Feminism . . .

The Analytic / Continental Divide

Conclusions II.b) What does ‘Continental’

mean?

Not even family resemblance term Means everything not analytic.

The Analytic / Continental Divide

III.c) What distinguishes them?

Two distinguishing factors:

1. Relations to natural science

2. Relations to history

The Analytic / Continental Divide

III.c) What distinguishes them?

Relations to history

Evolutionary biology vs.

Chemistry

The Analytic / Continental Divide

CONCLUSIONS

The question:

“What is the distinction between ‘Analytic’ and ‘Continental’ philosophy?”

is an awful question.

The Analytic / Continental

Divide