Related to our earlier discussions on the divide between Analytic and Continental Philosophy (here and here) is this paper from Babette Babich. "On the 'Analytic-Continental' Divide in Philosophy: Nietzsche and Heidegger on Truth, Lies and Language." Be prepared to have your eyes hurt. The text is displayed with white on grey text. (Why, oh, why do people insist on making people read text that is inverted? It makes it very difficult to read and gives me a headache after a few minutes.) Babich follows Dummett on Analytic Philosophy, saying that it is a "matter of clarifying one's thinking and as thought is defined by language, analytic philosophy thus reduces to the analysis of language." What she feels Dummett leaves out is the role of science in Analytic Philosophy. The role of science isn't quite what some have suggested though, rather it is that "the question of cognitive referent is not to be decided by logical analysis but contemporary Western science." The implication is that Continental Philosophy "does not aspire to take its rational warrant from science itself."
My personal opinion, whether you agree with Babich's analysis or not, is that the difference between Continental Philosophy and most (not all) Analytic Philosophy reduces to whether the elements of philosophical analysis are "in the mind" or "outside the mind." Of course not all Continental philosophers would put it that way either. But if you think back to my discussion of Husserl and Russell the other day, you'll note that both end up having the similarity in that point. The post-Husserlian styled phenomenologists largely reject Husserl's hope of transcendental ideas as being immanent "in the mind" the way he suggests. And of course the psychologism that Husserl attempted to avoid, definitely put such phenomena within the mind. (One can also debate whether Husserl really was successful in avoiding the psychologism - but I think we can say that psychologism remains a significant current in Analytic Philosophy).
In either case, I don't want to dwell on the paper too much. But it is an excellent discussion of the divide. Although I would perhaps suggest copying the text into a text editor for easier reading.
My usual solution to the inverted text problem is to view the page source and read it that way, but with this one the footnotes add too much html code to the body of the text and make it hard to track.
I finally finished reading this. (I copied and pasted it into Word) It wasn't quite as good as it started out. I'm not sure I agree with all her points regarding Analytic philosophy, and I find that the paper loses focus in the middle. However the section after that is quite good. I especially like this quote by Heidegger.
. . .granted that we cannot do anything with philosophy, might not philosophy, if we concern ourselves with it, do someting with us? (Introduction to Metaphysics)
I tend to agree with that assessment of philosophy. Further I tend to see philosophy as the love of wisdom and not necessarily the love of truth. By that I don't mean in the least the philosophy is opposed to truth. Merely that philosophy is about thinking about grounds and connections. In that light I'm definitely not opposed to Analytic philosophy so long as that isn't all there is. I think clarifying our intuitions and how they affect our questioning is extremely important. I just think that thinking about problems as our own is very important. I think Analytic Philosophy can keep us from doing that. (Although clearly it need not, and I think many Analytic philosophers such as Quine or Davidson, among others, avoid this) Where I think Continental Philosophy is important is in keeping us questioning reality itself. To use Heidegger's terminology, to keep taking up the question of Being. Put an other way, philosophy is less about solving problems than of taking up problems.
The danger of Analytic philosophy, as sometimes done, is that we treat our intuitions as given, fixed, ways of considering the problem. Often this "ground" of our analysis is itself never taken up, never engaged with, never questioned. Yet it seems to me that if we are to take up philosophy as intended, we can never simply take it up as received. Intuitions can never be taken for granted.
Huh? Someone here must be color-blind - the text of the original paper is NOT white it is black.
Note Bill that the above post was written two years ago. Presumably someone fixed the css on the page.
I've closed comments in order to avoid spam since I don't check this older blog as much anymore.
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