Continental philosophy

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Continental philosophy is a term that originated among English-speaking philosophers to describe various philosophical traditions strongly influenced by certain 19th and 20th century philosophers from mainland Europe.^[1] It is typically distinguished from analytic philosophy. The traditions comprising continental philosophy usually include phenomenology, existentialism, hermeneutics, structuralism, post-structuralism, post-modernism, post-humanism, deconstruction, French feminism, the critical theory of the Frankfurt School, German idealism, Hegelianism, some branches of Marxism, and the works of Søren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche.

It is difficult to identify non-trivial claims that would be common to all the schools and thinkers on the preceding list. The term "continental philosophy", like "analytic philosophy", resists clear definition and may mark merely a family resemblance across disparate philosophical views. Nonetheless, some scholars have ventured to identify common themes that typically characterize continental philosophy.^[2]

First, continental philosophers generally reject scientism, the view that the natural sciences are the best or most accurate way of understanding all phenomena. Continental philosophers often claim that science is parasitic upon the "pre-theoretical substrate of experience", a form of the Kantian conditions of possible experience, and that scientific methods are inadequate to understand such conditions of intelligibility.^[3]

Second, continental philosophy usually considers these conditions of possible experience as variable, partly determined by factors such as context, space and time, language, culture, or history. Thus continental philosophy tends toward historicism. Where analytic philosophy tends to treat philosophy in terms of discrete problems, capable of being analyzed apart from their historical origins (much as scientists consider the history of science inessential to scientific inquiry), continental philosophy typically suggests that "philosophical argument cannot be divorced from the textual and contextual conditions of its historical emergence".^[4]

Third, "if human experience is a contingent creation, then it can be recreated in other ways".^[5] Thus continental philosophers tend to take a strong interest in the unity of theory and practice, and tend to see their philosophical inquiries as closely related to personal, moral, or political transformation. This tendency is very clear in the Marxist tradition ("philosophers have only analyzed the world: the point, however, is to change it"), but is also central in existentialism and post-structuralism.

Finally, continental philosophy typically concerns itself with questions of the method and nature of philosophy. In the wake of the development and success of the natural sciences, continental philosophers have often sought to redefine philosophy as an independent field of inquiry. In some cases (such as German idealism or phenomenology), this takes the form of the traditional view that philosophy is the first, foundational, a priori science. In other cases (such as hermeneutics, critical theory, or structuralism), it is held that philosophy investigates a domain of knowledge that is irreducibly cultural or practical. Ultimately, all these distinctive traits derive from a broadly Kantian thesis that the nature of knowledge and experience is bound by conditions that are not directly accessible to empirical inquiry.

Contents 1 History 2 20th century 3 Continental philosophy in English-speaking countries 4 References 5 Further reading

[edit] History

The term "continental philosophy" was first widely used to describe university courses in the 1970s, emerging as a collective name for the philosophies then widespread in France and Germany, such as phenomenology, existentialism, structuralism, and post-structuralism.^[6] It thus came to be adopted by English-speaking philosophers influenced by such schools.

However, there is considerable evidence that the distinction existed well before the 1970s. Some scholars trace the distinction to the late 19th century, when Brentano, Husserl, and Reinach proposed a new philosophical method of phenomenology, a development roughly contemporaneous with work by Gottlob Frege and Bertrand Russell inaugurating a new philosophical method based on the analysis of language via modern logic (thus the term "analytic philosophy").^[7] Other scholars,^[8] however, date the break a century earlier, in the reception of the work of Immanuel Kant, the most recent philosopher considered canonical in both traditions. This dating of the split—to the start of the 19th century—is supported by the dismissive attitude adopted by Russell and Moore toward post-Kantian idealist philosophers such as Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel.^[9]

[edit] 20th century

As the institutional roots of "continental philosophy" in many cases directly descend from those of phenomenology,^[10] Edmund Husserl has always been a canonical figure in continental philosophy. Nonetheless, Husserl is also a respected subject of study in the analytic tradition.^[11] Husserl's notion of a noema (a non-psychological content of thought), his correspondence with Gottlob Frege, and his investigations into the nature of logic continue to generate interest among analytic philosophers.

A particularly polemical illustration of some differences between "analytic" and "continental" styles of philosophy can be found in Rudolf Carnap's "Elimination of Metaphysics through Logical Analysis of Language", which argues that Heidegger's lecture "What Is Metaphysics?" violates logical syntax to create nonsensical pseudo-statements.^[12] With the rise of Hitler, many of Germany's philosophers, especially those of Jewish descent or leftist political sympathies (such as many in the Vienna Circle and the Frankfurt School), fled to England, America or the USSR. Those philosophers who remained—if they remained in academia at all—had to reconcile themselves to Nazi control of the universities. Others, such as Heidegger, among the most prominent German philosophers to stay in Germany, enthusiastically embraced Nazism when it came to power.

Both before and after World War II there was a growth of interest in German philosophy in France. The role of the French Communist Party in liberating France meant that it became, for a brief period, the largest political movement in the country. The attendant interest in communism translated into an interest in Marx and Hegel, who were both now studied extensively for the first time in the conservative French university system. Additionally, there was a major trend towards the ideas of the phenomenologist Edmund Husserl, and toward his former assistant Martin Heidegger. Most important in this popularization of phenomenology was the author and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, who called his philosophy existentialism. (See Twentieth-Century French Philosophy)

[edit] Continental philosophy in English-speaking countries

While it derives from the philosophical traditions of non-Anglophone Europe, much "continental" philosophy at least since the 1980s has been taught and written in the United States and the United Kingdom. Continental philosophy has a central place in university philosophy departments in Germany and France. In the English-speaking world, analytic philosophy -- and German Idealism, when it is taught at all -- are generally taught in philosophy departments, while some movements in continental philosophy are taught in various other departments within the humanities and social sciences. Movements most commonly taught include post-structuralism, feminism, more recent Marxism, and relevant parts of phenomenology and psychoanalysis. In the humanities, the continental influence is often referred to as literary theory or critical theory; departments taking particular interest in continental approaches include literature, film, architecture, and art history. In the social sciences (where it is sometimes known as social theory or critical social theory), those departments or subfields include sociology, social anthropology, and social psychology, as well as certain perspectives within qualitative research methodology.

There has been significant interaction between the continental and analytic traditions. The impact of 19th century continental philosophy on 20th century ethicists who are often labelled "analytic" has been particularly important. To name only two examples, Bernard Williams, perhaps the greatest British moral philosopher of the 20th century, was decisively influenced by Nietzsche, while John Rawls was seriously engaged with the study of Hegel's moral philosophy. Moreover, several continental figures, namely Jacques Derrida and Jürgen Habermas have engaged with analytical philosophy of language, particularly the work of John Searle and J. L. Austin.

[edit] References

1. ^ Simon Critchley and William Schroder (eds.), A Companion to Continental Philosophy (Blackwell Publishing, 1998), p. 4.
2. ^ The following list of four traits is adapted from Michael Rosen, "Continental Philosophy from Hegel", in A.C. Grayling (ed.), Philosophy 2: Further through the Subject, p. 665.
3. ^ Simon Critchley, Continental Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 115.
4. ^ Ibid., p. 57
5. ^ Ibid., p. 64.
6. ^ Critchley, Continental Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction, p. 38.
7. ^ See, e.g., Michael Dummett, The Origins of Analytical Philosophy (Harvard University Press, 1994), or C. Prado, A House Divided: Comparing Analytic and Continental Philosophy (Prometheus/Humanity Books, 2003).
8. ^ Critchley 2001, op. cit.
9. ^ E.g., Russell's comments in My Philosophical Development (Allen & Unwin, 1959), p. 62: "Hegelians had all kinds of arguments to prove this or that was not 'real'. Number, space, time, matter, were all professedly convicted of being self-contradictory. Nothing was real, so we were assured, except the Absolute, which could think only of itself since there was nothing else for it to think of and which thought eternally the sort of things that idealist philosophers thought in their books."
10. ^ E.g., the largest academic organization devoted to furthering the study of continental philosophy is the Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy.
11. ^ Kenny, Anthony (ed). The Oxford Illustrated History of Western Philosophy. ISBN 0-19-285440-2
12. ^ Gregory, Wanda T. Heidegger, Carnap and Quine at the Crossroads of Language, and Abraham D. Stone. Heidegger and Carnap on the Overcoming of Metaphysics

[edit] Further reading

• Simon Critchley, Continental Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press (2001) ISBN 0-19-285359-7
• A. Cutrofello, Continental Philosophy: A Contemporary Introduction. Routledge (2005)