Philosophy Proper
This thread in the General Philosophy sub is a follow up on two previous threads. One of them was concerned with language and why it befuddles us, and the other on why philosophy is in need of 'therapy'. Both threads are related to the philosophy of Wittgenstein.
I have also a book in mind which has helped me understand, conceptually, what happened to philosophy after Wittgenstein's Tractatus and Philosophical Investigations. The 'Linguistic Turn', which I am referencing is still with us to this day. The analytic school of philosophy is the dominant way of doing philosophy, nowadays.
Now, I would like to ask for the reader to consider whether there is a proper way of doing philosophy and whether the analytic school has gotten it right. If one were to asses the situation of philosophy nowadays, then there seems to be a lot less confusion or the sentiment of language going on holiday because of the focus on logic and how it should be utilized to quell confusions about language.
So, would you consider the proper way of doing philosophy mostly conceived as with the analytic school, as philosophy proper or are we still struggling with how philosophy should be done?
Thoughts and comments welcome.
I have also a book in mind which has helped me understand, conceptually, what happened to philosophy after Wittgenstein's Tractatus and Philosophical Investigations. The 'Linguistic Turn', which I am referencing is still with us to this day. The analytic school of philosophy is the dominant way of doing philosophy, nowadays.
Now, I would like to ask for the reader to consider whether there is a proper way of doing philosophy and whether the analytic school has gotten it right. If one were to asses the situation of philosophy nowadays, then there seems to be a lot less confusion or the sentiment of language going on holiday because of the focus on logic and how it should be utilized to quell confusions about language.
So, would you consider the proper way of doing philosophy mostly conceived as with the analytic school, as philosophy proper or are we still struggling with how philosophy should be done?
Thoughts and comments welcome.
Comments (88)
While I might agree that there can be wrong ways to do things, I can't see how philosophy can have a 'correct' way. It sounds too prescriptive and unimaginative. Zealots generally think it's their way or the highway.
Quoting AmadeusD
Indeed. :up:
Quoting Shawn
Years ago a sharp cultural divide distinguished approaches to philosophy in the English speaking world from those in Europe , dubbed the Analytic-Continental split. Philosophy isnt nearly so polarized these days. There are lots of thinkers who cross over between the two styles of philosophizing.
As a meta/discursive practice, imo, philosophy is a 'toolkit' consisting of (e.g.) rhetorical, logical, conceptual & methodological 'tools' (techniques) and schools (paradigms / fashions ... (e.g.) analytic, dialectical-critical, hermeneutical, synthetic)) of 'tool-usage', etc.
It's more a set of tools.
And there is a reason it is ubiquitous. They are useful tools.
(Just noticed beat me to it.)
Analytic philosophy is a toolkit and not a school of philosophy? Then why do analytic philosophers tend to focus on the same basic set of problems? Or else, why do we call people "analytic philosophers" at all? Is that a misnomer?
I still find the refuge of thinking philosophically as a form of therapy, still.
It would be interesting to ask the analytic school, as to what remainder of pure philosophy, as what can be called "ethics", has to offer.
[quote=Hart, David Bentley. All Things Are Full of Gods: The Mysteries of Mind and Life (pp. 18-19). Yale University Press. Kindle Edition. ]Analytic method is all too prone to mistake oversimplification for clarification, banality for exactitude, and imaginative narrowness for intellectual rigor; moreover, its typical modus operandi is as often as not an unhappy combination of speculative timidity and methodological overconfidence. I do not know whether all of this is just an accident of philosophical history, and therefore corrigible within analytic tradition itself; I know only that Anglophone philosophy has produced at once the most copious and most frequently fruitless literature on the so-called mind-body problem.[/quote]
Contrast with:
[quote=Pierre Hadot, IEP]Pierre Hadot, classical philosopher and historian of philosophy, is best known for his conception of ancient philosophy as a bios or way of life (manière de vivre). ... According to Hadot, twentieth- and twenty-first-century academic philosophy has largely lost sight of its ancient origin in a set of spiritual practices that range from forms of dialogue, via species of meditative reflection, to theoretical contemplation. These philosophical practices, as well as the philosophical discourses the different ancient schools developed in conjunction with them, aimed primarily to form, rather than only to inform, the philosophical student. The goal of the ancient philosophies, Hadot argued, was to cultivate a specific, constant attitude toward existence, by way of the rational comprehension of the nature of humanity and its place in the cosmos. This cultivation required, specifically, that students learn to combat their passions and the illusory evaluative beliefs instilled by their passions, habits, and upbringing. [/quote]
I take it as analytic philosophers recognizing that the mind-body problem is not one which philosophy should grapple with anymore, and is best left to the scientist to elucidate such matters in terms of what can be said intelligibly.
Regarding Hadot, I don't think you can disagree with him; but, how is one to practice philosophy in such a manner? We are a longs way from the days of ancient philosophy.
It's both, and nothing I've writtrn here is inconsistant with that.
that is truly, unintentionally, hilarious. As regards Hadot, I agree that it seems challenging, but I'm a subscriber to both Medium and Substack, and they're teeming with threads dedicated to revivifying ancient philosophy in the modern world. Some of them are also really good scholars as well. My interpretation is that something about modern culture is intrinsically antagonistic to what was traditionally understood as philosophy, for various deep and intertwined reasons.
Quoting Shawn
Is it? It holds a large share of English-speaking philosophy, but it is largely ignored outside that limited area.
It seems like psychologists, instead of philosophers, are the go-to for the majority of whatever you want to call it, people. I once heard a priest talk about how awful this is and yada-yada.
There's that one guy, Jordan Peterson who seems like some guru on life matters.
Applying one of the basic analytic tools, it's not at all clear here what "analytic philosophy" might be.
Maybe we can find some facts. The PhilPapers survey asked about method, allowing multiple choices. The highest rating went to "conceptual analysis". It ranked 71% overall, 69% in The USA, and, in Continental Europe, ten percent higher at 79%. Ranked next was 'Empirical Philosophy", then "Formal Philosophy", again ranking higher in Continental Europe than in anglophone countries. Out of 1733 respondents, fully 24 mentioned phenomenology. Make of that what you will.
Take a look at the web page for the ESAP. Alive and thriving, associated with over a dozen national analytic philosophy organisations and as many research centres. Hardly insignificant.
Nor is analytic philosophy equivalent to linguistic philosophy.
SEP has no article on "Analytic Philosophy". The IEP has an historical essay, tracing the developments in anglophone philosophy until the sixties, when analytic philosophy became ubiquitous. "On account of its eclecticism, contemporary analytic philosophy defies summary or general description."
Where does this lead? Nowhere. Like this thread.
I'm glad you like this thread.
I follow the idea that philosophy is "soft science". It requires a starting point that is abstract, lacking rules and logic, creatively critical, like a stream of consciousness around a certain topic, bouncing back and forth between the specific and the holistic.
But then it needs rigor and structure. If the ideas that flow cannot flow down into a more concentrated logic and find a grounded state, then it has to be dismissed.
A problem with the analytical school or similar methods can be that it demands so much initial logic that it limits how the brain finds new paths of ideas. It's one of the reasons behind Einstein's "thought labs". A place to play with ideas before solidifying them with proof, logic and math. Philosophers who get stuck in just the analytical rarely find new paths forward in their thinking.
The problem with other methods are that they seem to feature an inherit contempt for the analytical and thus they abandon all logic and apply a kind of "anything goes", inviting all sorts of biases and fallacies.
Most debates seem to just be about the methods rather than the subject being discussed. One interlocutor criticizing the other's way of conducting philosophy based on the above problems, and no common ground is found.
I think the "method" needs to be formed around how our brains actually work. We do not come up with anything analytical from the get go. We form abstractions and wild, illogical concepts through creativity and only when we've reached a point of confusion do we apply rigorous analytical logic to test our ideas.
It's only when we let go of our analytical side that we can think freely, but it's only when we apply our analytical side we can establish concepts as closer to truth.
There are no "best schools" of thought. There's only one way our brain works and it's better to follow that and then apply the analytical tools that exist in order to present ideas to the world that has sound logic for all and not just yourself.
:lol: :up:
Is there philosophy proper? Of course, just like there is pseudo-philosophy.
Wherever phenomena, or the relation between an effect and its cause, is not obviously explained by available evidence, there is opportunity for pseudo-philosophy to fill in the gaps. It thrives in new-age or business-cults, or in practices such as health care, education, sports, or fine arts.
I don't think the differences between analytic, hermeneutical or continental, or eastern philosophies has much to do with whether the philosophy is proper. I suppose they can all be proper. However, they are all susceptible to pseudo-philosophy (e.g. scientism, obscurantism, mysticism). Humans are susceptible to pseudo-philosophy because it is rational to interpret seemingly coherent explanations charitably until they have been proven to be unwarranted.
Sure, I see why not.
Quoting J
I'm no authority, so have at it.
I have always thought of Analytic philosophy as a way of interpreting an era of Continental philosophy via a range of stylistic moves. It is not as though Analytics ignored Continental philosophers as a whole. Rather, they concentrated on the era spanned by Leibnitz, Hume and Kant, producing work that elaborated on metaphysical themes consistent with this group, and either ignored or were actively hostile to Hegel and post-Hegelian Continental philosophy. This is why Rorty referred to post-analytic writers like Quine, Sellars, Davidson, Putnam and himself as the new Hegelians.
That said, I agree that there are a lot of interesting "bridge" figures between the two schools, and we shouldn't make a huge deal about some supposedly irremediable divide.
Have you read Nagel's essay Secular Philosophy and the Religious Temperament? He makes a similar comment in that essay. I know you're interested in his writings, you can find a copy here.
Quoting Christoffer
Is that so? Got a manual?
Sure. It's not so common now, given the aforementioned "eclecticism" more of historical interest. Many years ago I made an attempt to consolidate the Wiki article on Analytic Philosophy, but gave it away as a bad job. I could not find a framework that gave a neat contemporary account, and now think that none can be given. Rather, the historical approach found in IEP is the only option.
Some folk supose that the turn against linguistic philosophy marked the end of analytic philosophy, but that would be to exclude the likes of Davidson, Kripke, Putnam... all of whom rely on the formal logic and linguistic analysis that grew from Frege, Russell, Wittgenstein and so on. It seems better to think of analytic methods as being more widely applied since the seventies.
A recent article analysed a few thousand papers to see who cited who, expecting to see tow group, roughly analytic and continental. But instead it found three, the third being a group who focus more on empirical method and science. I think these three groups can be seen in the posts hereabouts.
I thought the IEP article was pretty good, actually. One paragraph that jumped out at me was this:
In other words, defined by what it is opposed to. The Brits, in particular, had many very clever fellows - oh, and some gals - who's logical skills were forensic. (Didn't Ayer and Austin work for British Intelligence during the war?) So they're forensic experts in slicing and dicing substantive philosophical ideas. Withering blights. That article I once linked to, by Ray Monk, about how Gilbert Ryle took over Oxford philosophy after Collingwood's early death, and the ripple effect from that - 'no ear for tunes'. I found at UniSyd that kind of Oxbridge positivist mentality reigned supreme under D M Armstrong. Which is why I absconded to the Comparative Religion department (a.k.a. the Depatment of Mysticism and Heresy.)
(Acually, Putnam I've begun to warm to a bit. He's one of the names I've become familiar with since joining forums.)
Yes, an excellent piece. That's one of the reasons I appreciate Nagel so much -- he refuses to be doctrinaire about the type of philosophy he was trained in.
Yes, I agree. A bit hard on Ryle. Monk has his own issues.
The thing that draws me to Nagel is that while he's a professed atheist, he's critical of philosophical and scientific materialism on the grounds of reason alone, because he sees that it doesn't make sense. Which is enough for many of his professional peers to excorciate him.
When Satre can be (colloquially) counted amount your group, you've got problems.
That's nonsense. Nothing doesn't make sense on the basis of reason alone except that which is self-contradictory. Materialism is self-contradictory only on the most tendentious and/ or simpleminded interpretations of its meaning. Such simplistic thinking is the go-to of polemicists
As to the OP philosophy if it is to be of any use should improve the quality of our lives. Someone mentioned conceptual analysis. Conceptual analysis would be useful if it produces clarity, and it is arguable that clarity should help us to live better than confusion.
Returning to the improvement of the quality of human lifewhy should we assume that it will be the same ideas which improve the quality of all human lives?
Another point is that so-called 'analytic philosophy' cannot consist entirely of analysis. Analysis without synthesis would be to quote Dostoevsky "pouring from the empty into the void".
Those who concern themselves with such pointless questions as what the correct way is to do philosophy for example regarding the 'analytic/ continental' or the 'materialist/ idealist' divides are mostly moral crusaders. As it is in science, so it should be in philosophyall avenues which yield fruit should be explored and we should maintain open minds.
Why should we concern ourselves with such tedious moralizing questions as which is the correct way to do philosophy? If there is one way not to do philosophy that would be it.
I don't usually like to quote passages from other writers but here is an interesting take on philosophy from E M Cioran's A Short History of Decay:
[i]Farewell to Philosophy
I turned away from philosophy when it became impossible to discover in Kant any human weakness, any authentic accent of melancholy; in Kant and in all the philosophers. Compared to music, mysticism, and poetry, philosophical activity proceeds from a diminished impulse and a suspect depth, prestigious only for the timid and the tepid. Moreover, philosophyimpersonal anxiety, refuge among anemic ideasis the recourse of all who would elude the corrupting exuberance of life. Almost all the philosophers came to a good end: that is the supreme argument against philosophy. Even Socrates' death has nothing tragic about it: it is a misunderstanding, the end of a pedagogueand if Nietzsche foundered, it was as a poet and visionary: he expiated his ecstasies and not his arguments.
We cannot elude existence by explanations, we can only endure it, love or hate it, adore or dread it, in that alternation of happiness and horror which expresses the very rhythm of being, its oscillations, its dissonances, its bright or bitter vehemences.
Exposed by surprise or necessity to an irrefutable defeat, who does not raise his hands in prayer then, only to let them fall emptier still for the answers of philosophy? It would seem that its mission is to protect us as long as fates neglect allows us to proceed on the brink of chaos, and to abandon us as soon as we are forced to plunge over the edge. And how could it be otherwise, when we see how little of humanitys suffering has passed into its philosophy? The philosophic exercise is not fruitful; it is merely honorable. We are always philosophers with impunity: a métier without fate which pours voluminous thoughts into our neutral and vacant hours, the hours refractory to the Old Testament, to Bach, and to Shakespeare. And have these thoughts materialized into a single page that is equivalent to one of Jobs exclamations, of Macbeths terrors, or the altitude of one of Bachs cantatas? We do not argue the universe; we express it. And philosophy does not express it. The real problems begin only after having ranged or exhausted it, after the last chapter of a huge tome which prints the final period as an abdication before the Unknown, in which all our moments are rooted and with which we must struggle because it is naturally more immediate, more important than our daily bread. Here the philosopher leaves us: enemy of disaster, he is sane as reason itself, and as prudent. And we remain in the company of an old plague victim, of a poet learned in every lunacy, and of a musician whose sublimity transcends the sphere of the heart. We begin to Eve authentically only where philosophy ends, at its wreck, when we have understood its terrible nullity, when we have understood that it was futile to resort to it, that it is no help.
(The great systems are actually no more than brilliant tautologies. What advantage is it to know that the nature of being consists in the will to live, in idea, or in the whim of God or of Chemistry? A mere proliferation of words, subtle displacements of meanings. What is loathes the verbal embrace, and our inmost experience reveals us nothing beyond the privileged and inexpressible moment. Moreover, Being itself is only a pretension of Nothingness.
We define only out of despair. We must have a formula, we must even have many, if only to give justification to the mind and a facade to the void.
Neither concept nor ecstasy are functional. When music plunges us into the inwardness of being, we rapidly return to the surface: the effects of the illusion scatter and our knowledge admits its nullity.
The things we touch and those we conceive are as improbable as our senses and our reason; we are sure only in our verbal universe, manageable at willand ineffectual. Being is mute and the mind is garrulous. This is called knowing.
The philosophers originality comes down to inventing terms. Since there are only three or four attitudes by which to confront the world and about as many ways of dyingthe nuances which multiply and diversify them derive from no more than the choice of words, bereft of any metaphysical range.
We are engulfed in a pleonastic universe, in which the questions and answers amount to the same thing.)[/i]
I can't help asking: Isn't the above a definitive answer to the question of how to do "proper" philosophy? So when you discovered the answer, were you engaging with a "tedious moralizing" question? I'm confused.
Why would it be when we are all individuals and may find very different approaches individually beneficial?
Even if there were only one way of doing philosophy which improved human life advocating that way.would not be a moral prescription but a pragmatic one.
To the second point: Indeed, I didn't see where morality came into it in the first place; I was only quoting you that it was a "moralizing" question.
I'm not sure we've completely eliminated the normative, though, by putting it in these terms. Presumably you'd say that someone who disagreed with the "philosophy should improve the quality of my life" position was wrong, wouldn't you? Or is that too only meant in the sense of "For me, philosophy is about improving the quality of my life. You may have a completely different conception of what the use of philosophy is, and there's no right or wrong here"?
Signing off for the night . . .
I see philosophy as essentially ethical. Whereas morality involves others ethics need not. "How should I best live" is an ethical question. The answer could be very different for different people and need not involve others for example in the case of those who find solitude paramount.
Where I made mention of the moralizing side of philosophy it was in reference to those who think such things as for example that materialism is a view that annihilates any hope and hence ought to be reviled.
To my way of thinking such an attitude is inherently moralistic and polemical and suggestive that there is only one true general way to think about human lifea way that does not reduce us to being mere animals or chemical robots. Such thinkers often yearn for a supposed golden age of philosophy. I count such attitudes as lacking in subtlety.
Quoting J
I think the best philosophies are those which are most in accordance with the facts of human life. I don't think living in illusion is likely to lead to flourishing in any real way. It is often the stuff of diversion and fantasy.
Most 'facts' of human life are not obvious enough to fall prey to philosophy, in the way you want. Surely, philosophy's main role (at least now, post-religion) is to investigate the 'facts of life' as found by science, say.
Interesting quote from E M Cioran. Thanks.
The above never really occurred to me. Kind of like that observation that in literature there are only 7 plots (Chris Booker).
'Inventing terms' resonates. Richard Rorty often talked about philsophy as being an ongoing activity of "finding new vocabularies." In his view, you get philosophical progress from the creation of new ways of speaking and thinking through which we identify and tackle new problems and experiences, rather than through discovering objective truths. The search for a final vocabulary that represents reality "as it is" was a misguided one. Or something like that.
Quoting AmadeusD
Are you saying that philosophy is obvious and science is not? And that philosophys role is subservient to the facts that science discovers?
Quoting Janus
One persons illusion is anothers emancipation. Could be that a bit more diversion and fantasy might actually enhance your life. Perhaps it will even reveal that the facts of human life you feel you need to anchor yourself to are more a recipe for conformism than for flourishing.
There are many obvious facts of human life that are pre-science. There are also newer scientific facts. How do you purport to know what way I supposedly want these facts to "fall prey" to philosophy whatever that is even supposed to mean?
I don't know what you are referring to. By "fantasy" I was mostly alluding to ideas about afterlife. Do you support people believing in such fantasies. Note that I don't condemn people holding fantastic beliefs that might be psychologically necessary for them. But I would imagine that such fantasies become impossible for those who are more highly educated and reasonable.
Diversions are okay provided they don't dominate one's life to the point of occluding reality. Everyone perhaps needs some time off for the mind to 'go on holiday'. Would you count the mind being permanently on holiday as being a desirable state of affairs?
Quoting Janus
This quote amounts to no more than confusing a personal preference for a profound insight. He falls into a common misapprehension of those with a talent for a specific form of expression. Poets believe there is no truer access to the natural of things than through poetry, while musicians preserve this privilege for music, novelists for novels, artists for art, r for science , philosophers for philosophy.
I agree with that. Thinking about things in new and fruitful ways can certainly be a positive creative aspect of philosophy. Philosophy as art more than as science. I think the caution needs to be there to avoid imagining those ways as being absolute truths rather as being useful provisional entertainings.
Quoting Joshs
I see no reasoned critique in or adequate explanation of this seemingly flippant and facile attempted dismissal
Christ, you sound like a joyless unimaginative old man. Reasonableness is entirely overrated. Heres a little secret. Whatever works in persons life to open up and keep open possibilities of creative transcendence is real. Todays tried and true verities become tomorrows superstitions.
Quoting Janus
Youre missing Rortys point. He believes that the goal of science isnt to arrive at the way things truly are, but to enhance social solidarity. For Rorty it is not just philosophy that resembles art but science as well.
That's it. When argument fails you resort to ad hominem. You failed to answer the question as to whether you think it is a good thing to put faith in superstitious beliefs which have no evidence to support them. As I noted I would never seek to deny anyone the right to believe whatever they want provided those beliefs do not serve as a detriment to others. It doesn't follow that I have to respect their intellectual integrity even if their beliefs are socially benign.
Quoting Joshs
That's not necessarily true. That past superstitions founded on human imagination and storytelling have been supplanted by scientific knowledge founded on observation does not entail that current science will later be seen as superstition. The fallacy you are falling into lies in thinking that the past gives an inerrant or even more or less reliable guide to the future.
Quoting Joshs
I was only addressing what Tom Storm said about Rorty valuing philosophys role in discovering new ways of thinking about things. I haven't anywhere denied that science also may do this.
No, not quite. But clearly philosophy about things that doesnt adhere to the facts as science finds them (perhaps I mean which does not obey the laws of nature cant be of much use. Philosophy needs to deal with the same facts science provides, I guess, to be helpful to humans who cannot but obey them. Pretty new thought so it might simply be crap
Cant see how. Science is a method not an institution, in my sentence. Upon investigation might be a better term there and I misspoke. But in any case, ignoring that problem, I cant make sense of what I said now anyway in relation to your post that I replied to. Sorry about that
I'm referring to just the common psychology of how people reason. We don't start with factual cold logic, we tend to think creatively first and apply logic second. Kind of like letting go of all the animals and then building a fence around where these animals want to be, not where you want them to be. As a half-baked analogy.
Interesting. I haven't done a detailed study of Frege, the father of logicism, but with what you said in mind he makes a lot more sense. If the purpose of philosophy or science is to discover how new vocabularies make sense within the current vein of philosophy or sciences' framework, then sure, philosophy makes sense in that aspect.
See my comment a couple above yours (assume you have, just using a figure of speech).
Clarity seems to be the biggest difference between the two 'camps'.
OK, I'll stand up for the Continentals here! Is it possible that what you're calling "unclarity" could better be called "difficulty"? Case in point, perhaps, is Husserl, arguably the father of Continental thought. At first reading, he's as clear as mud. But you have to persist. In part this is because he's not a gifted writer, at least not in translation. (And if that's what you mean by unclarity, then you're correct.) But something can become clear, given time. His ideas are unusual and difficult, and require slow, patient reflection and discussion. The thing is, it pays off richly in philosophical insight.
This is not to take sides in any alleged Analytic/Continental debate. The same could be said for many Anglophone philosophers too.
Quoting J
That might come as news to Hegel, Schelling, Schopenhauer, Dilthey, Nietzsche and Bergson. On the other hand, it would be accurate to call Husserl the father of Phenomenology.
Quoting J
My take aligns somewhat with that of Rorty, who argues that analytic philosophy doesnt go any further than Kantian modes of metaphysics, which is why he refers to the community of post-analytic philosophers he identifies with (James, Dewey, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Derrida, Foucault, Sellars, Davidson, Putnam, etc) as we Hegelians.
I agree with you about Husserl and phenomenology. I think Rorty misread them. I see Husserls and Sartres work as very much indebted to Hegelianism. But Rorty isnt the only one who treats Hegel as a crucial philosophical and cultural dividing line. First of all, consider this: can you think of any philosophers generally thought of as Analytic who mentioned Hegel positively, or at all, in their work? The same is not true with regard to Kant, Hume and Leibnitz. In the political world, Hegel has been targeted by conservatives such as Andrew Breitbart, who blamed Hegel for Marx, Relativism, Critical theory, poststructuralism, postmodernism and deconstructionism. And he would be right in that such movements would not have been possible without Hegel.
Arthur C. Danto is the only name that comes to mind. His early works were certainly Analytic but as he became focused more on aesthetics, his interests broadened. He remained committed to what I would call Analytic rigor, in the best sense. He openly acknowledges his debt to Hegel in his theories about "the end of art" in works like The Transfiguration of the Commonplace and The Philosophical Disenfranchisement of Art.
Politically, re Hegel, I think you (and Rorty) are right.
But it's also fair to say that you might not a get a big tagging of "phenomenology" even among contemporary Continental philosophers. It's my impression that phenomenology as such -- as an actual method of inquiry -- has by now been subsumed into larger contexts, both Analytic and Continental. Not to oversimplify ridiculously, but if you're doing work that emphasizes hermeneutics and the exploration of the objective / subjective boundary, then in some important sense you are standing on the shoulders of phenomenology. Possible comparison: You might identify yourself as working within Kantianism or critical philosophy without thinking to call yourself a practitioner of a "transcendental method." The term has both dissolved and broadened, I think, which isn't necessarily a comment on its usefulness or fecundity.
Full disclosure: History of phil is not my specialty, as may be obvious. I've got no stake in being right here, so feel free to correct.
Have a look at How the premature death of Collingwood changed philosophy
Here's the data, specifying not just the target group, for those specialising in continental philosophy in Europe. Conceptual analysis comes out higher than the general population. And curiously, linguistic philosophy is popular with European continental philosophers.
22 respondents.
All this by way of positing that if we restrict ourselves to thinking in terms of an analytic/continental divide, it might no be the analytic side that is in difficulty.
So is there any alternative data? A similar survey of the supposed vast ranks of continental philosophers?
John McDowell and Robert Brandom.
Good question. Anyone know?
This isn't very fair. The distinction between the "two strands" was done for historical and political, rather than content related reasons. It was also made internally to the demographic of the analytic camp. At this point it's little more than cultural posturing for a culture that no longer exists. You find Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze, Heidegger, Gadamer, Boudrillard, Lyotard... - all the names you could ever want to namedrop - all over the humanities, in sociology, nursing, pedagogy... anything human.
Yep.
Quoting Janus
Its true that the Pittsburgh school is well versed in Hegel, but I would argue that in embracing Hegel, hermeneutics, and other Continental strands of thought based on a grounding in Hegel, they represent a departure from classic Analytic thought. Rorty wasnt the only one among that group who thought that what they were doing was no longer Analytic philosophy. Putnam said:
I think that the direction take by the Pittsburgh school was reflective of increasing crosstalk between Analytic and Continental types which has led to a blurring of the boundaries between them , to the point where perhaps these labels are no longer very useful. I want to share this from Quora, because I found it to be so thorough , and also because Im know. around here for extensive quotes and I didnt want to let anyone down.
Quoting Joshs
Here you have an exceedingly vague category "'classic' analytic thought". I wonder why you placed the 'classic' under inverted commas.
I find the relatively standard Continentals, all, plus Haabermas, who have been mentioned in the last page, not only unclear in terms of writing (i find that fairly easy to get through) but totally unclear as to what's actually being posited or 'argued for' in a lot of cases. Hegel being a pretty notable exception, I mainly just conclude that most of his more fundamental ideas are rubbish.
Maybe i've not given it enough time - but it seems to me that "You just don't get it yet" is the underlying notion here, which also tends to come when you don't like th same music as someone else :P
Well, not quite. The response I and others are making is more like, "Keep trying." And the "keep trying" can take many forms, including asking another philosopher who admires Habermas (to pick one of your examples) to point out to you some critical sections, and/or a good commentary. Then there's this: If the Continentals are "totally unclear as to what's actually being posited or 'argued for'," then you need a very robust "theory of error" to explain how it's the case that thousands of skilled philosophers think otherwise, and spend a great deal of time discussing the ideas of Habermas et al. Yes, it's possible they're all just unintelligent, but that's not what I'd call a robust theory!
. . . And then there's Derrida. Like Janus, I've done my due diligence with him and have concluded that he's an extremely good rhetorician who discovered a "cool gig" and stuck with it. So, an exception to every rule . . . :smile:
Quoting J
I have to disagree here. Ive read and published on Derrida, and see his most substantive contribution to philosophy as recognizing where Heidegger stopped short of explicating the most radical implications of his own thinking. I think Heidegger is the most advance thinker of our era, and Derrida took his ideas a bit further, albeit only a little bit.
Quoting J
Hmm, you might try his lecture course on Heidegger from the mid 60s:
Heidegger: The Question of Being and History
He keeps the play on language to a minimum here, opting instead for a straightforward exposition ( or as straightforward as he gets). His interviews are another way to avoid the rhetorical tricks. I recommend Points and Positions, as well as the last part of Limited, Inc.
Not at all. Their output makes vaguely more sense - which is not enough to shift the burden on to me. They provide no access to clarity - it's usually fairly pained interpolation, from what I see. Trying to rescue nonsense. If my response to those philosophers is the same (and aligns with basic psychosocial habits, imported into this field) as my response to the fundamental writings, then I need explain nought, but that this(being the above psychosocial habits mentioned) explains it (for me, obviously). A lot of people thought Mein Kampf was a great book.
I'd also point out that there are the same number, if not more philosophers, on the side of perhaps not taking Continentals that seriously, for the reasons I've given. I'm unsure that rejection of a modern turn on a millennia old practice requires much explanation, beyond "Well, you're doing something else, now".
The comparison with Mein Kampf doesnt really work, because we do have a good theory to explain why many people were fooled by that book. What explains a Habermas scholar being fooled by Habermas? Dumb? Perverse? Doesnt really seem to fit. What, then?
Indeed. Isn't it traditional to dismiss as nonsense ideas we don't understand or ideas which sit at odds with our own sense making intuitions? There are numerous writers and thinkers I find unappealing, on the basis of their prose or subject matter. I would never mistake this for nonsense, except perhaps that I can make 'no sense' of their work. In my experience, many people believe they must grasp the entire spectrum of philosophical ideas. If they don't, they often conclude that the work itself is flawed.