1. The Continental / Analytic Divide

2. The Analytic / Continental Divide
What is the distinction between ‘Analytic’ and ‘Continental’ philosophy?
Two approaches to the question:
1. Historical
2. Systematic

3. The Analytic / Continental Divide
Warning: Category conflation
‘Continental’ Geography
‘Analytic’ - Method
However: ‘Analytic’ & ‘Continental’ are used

4. The Analytic / Continental Divide
OVERVIEW:
Part 1: History of Distinction
Part 2: Systematic Analysis of Distinction
CONCLUSIONS:

5. The Analytic / Continental Divide
Part 1: History of the distinction
“Kant final great figure common to both analytic and Continental traditions” (CCCP, p. 1)

6. The Analytic / Continental Divide

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

8. 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)

9. 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)

10. 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?

11. 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)

12. The Analytic / Continental Divide
Origins of Analytic Philosophy:
From Frege  through Russell & Wittgenstein  to Vienna & Berlin

13. 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)

14. 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

15. The Analytic / Continental Divide
Examples: material objects  sense-data
2. mental states  behavioral dispositions

16. 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’

17. 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”

18. 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)

19. The Analytic / Continental Divide
philosophy of logical analysis   philosophy of language

20. The Analytic / Continental Divide
Ordinary Language Philosophy or Linguistic Philosophy ( , 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)

21. 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)

22. 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

23. 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?

24. The Analytic / Continental Divide
Analytic philosophy is philosophical method
II.a) What is Analysis?
Analysis = decomposition

25. The Analytic / Continental Divide
Two experimental methods in chemistry: Chemical Analysis Chemical Synthesis

26. 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

27. The Analytic / Continental Divide
Multiple forms of philosophical analysis
Examples: analysis = explication explication = inexact concept  exact concept by informal explanation & illustrative example
Many forms of explication (e.g. Carnap, Kant, Husserl)

28. The Analytic / Continental Divide
Multiple forms of philosophical analysis
Examples:
2. analysis = definition
definition = necessary and sufficient conditions for term’s correct application
logical, conceptual, reductive, constructive

29. The Analytic / Continental Divide
Two kinds of ‘analytic Philosophy‘
1. Philosophy of Language Moore 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

30. The Analytic / Continental Divide
Conclusion of II.a) What does ‘analytic’ mean?
‘analytic philosophy’ = family resemblance concept

31. 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 . . .

32. 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 . . .

33. The Analytic / Continental Divide
Conclusions II.b) What does ‘Continental’ mean?
Not even family resemblance term Means everything not analytic.

34. The Analytic / Continental Divide
III.c) What distinguishes them?
Two distinguishing factors: Relations to natural science
2. Relations to history

35. The Analytic / Continental Divide
III.c) What distinguishes them?
Relations to history Evolutionary biology vs Chemistry

36. The Analytic / Continental Divide
CONCLUSIONS
The question: “What is the distinction between ‘Analytic’ and ‘Continental’ philosophy?” is an awful question.

37. The Analytic / Continental Divide