Analytic philosophers have until recently been reluctant to pursue historical investigations into the Central European roots of their own philosophical tradition. The most recent book by Michael Dummett, however, entitled Origins of Analytic Philosophy, shows how fruitful such investigations can be, not only as a means of coming to see familiar philosophical problems in a new light, but also as a means of clarifying what, precisely, ‘analytic philosophy’ might mean. As Dummett points out, the newly fashionable habit (...) of referring to analytic philosophy as ‘Anglo-American’ leads to a ‘grave historical distortion’. If, he says, we take into account the historical context in which analytic philosophy developed, then such philosophy ‘could at least as well be called "Anglo-Austrian"’ (p. 7). We here show the implications of this assertion for a more adequate understanding of the relations between analytic and Continental philosophy. (shrink)

In my paper I argue that a successful theory of vagueness should be able to account for faultless disagreement concerning borderline cases.Firstly, I claim that out of the traditional conceptions of vagueness the best equipped to account for faultless disagreement areparaconsistent solutions. One worry concerning dialetheism is that it seems to allow not only for faultless disagreements between different speakers, but also for such ‘disagreements’ between the given speaker and himself. Another worry, at least for some people, is that subvaluationism (...) and dialetheism account for faultless disagreements by allowing contradictions. Next, I go on to argue that contextual conceptions, which are free from this latter worry, are equally well able to account for such disagreements. To this aim I offer a new account of the usage of personal taste predicates and suggest that we model the usage of all vague predicates on them. The idea is that in clear cases “a is F” means “a is F simpliciter”, whereas in borderline cases it means “a is F-to-me”. Since the boundary between borderline and nonborderline cases depends on context, my solution weds content-contextualism with truth-contextualism. (shrink)

The paper discusses the gap which opened up between the so called Anglo-American, analytic Philosophy and the continental, hermeneutic tradidtion and the mutual reproaches of either side against the other - e.g. the neglect of the historical dimension in philosophy vs. the lack of conceptual and methodological rigor. After an examination of the hermeneutic approach it is suggested that analytically trained philosophers should chng to their techniques and their ideal of clarity but not hesitate to cope with the (...) issues brought up by hermeneutics, while the hermeneutic approach recommends itself as a respectable tool for those pursuing substantive issues in the analytic stile. (shrink)

The paper discusses the gap which opened up between the so called Anglo-American, analytic Philosophy and the continental, hermeneutic tradidtion and the mutual reproaches of either side against the other - e.g. the neglect of the historical dimension in philosophy vs. the lack of conceptual and methodological rigor. After an examination of the hermeneutic approach it is suggested that analytically trained philosophers should chng to their techniques and their ideal of clarity but not hesitate to cope with the (...) issues brought up by hermeneutics, while the hermeneutic approach recommends itself as a respectable tool for those pursuing substantive issues in the analytic stile. (shrink)

In this paper I criticise some aspects of the view that Ernie Lepore and Mathew Stone propose in their book Imagination and Convention. I concentrate on their analysis of indirect speech acts and contrast it with the view held by Searle. I point out some problems that arise for Lepore and Stone’s ambiguity view and argue that admitting conventions of usage that are not meaning conventions allows one to avoid postulating global ambiguity, which in my opinion threatens the view proposed (...) in Imagination and Convention. In addition, if one admits that there might be such conventions of usage, one is in a position to provide an adequate analysis of sub-sentential speech acts and semantic underdetermination as well as indirect speech acts. (shrink)

A number of writers have tackled the task of characterizing the differences between analytic and Continental philosophy.I suggest that these attempts have indeed captured the most important divergences between the two styles but have left the explanation of the differences mysterious.I argue that analytic philosophy is usefully seen as philosophy conducted within a paradigm, in Kuhn’s sense of the word, whereas Continental philosophy assumes much less in the way of shared presuppositions, problems, methods and approaches.This important (...) opposition accounts for all those features that have rightly been held to constitute the difference between the two traditions.I finish with some reflections on the relative superiority of each tradition and by highlighting the characteristic deficiencies of each. (shrink)

This chapter contains section titled: Philosophy vs. Science, Continental vs. Analytic France: Neo‐Kantians and Bergson Germany: Neo‐Kantians and Phenomenology France: From Existentialism to Foucault Germany: Habermas and the Frankfurt School France: Poststructuralism and the Abuse of Science?

This article makes four claims. First, that the analytic/Continental split in political theory stems from an unarticulated disagreement about human nature, with analytics believing we have an innate set of mostly compatible moral and political inclinations, and Continentals seeing such things as alterable products of historical contingency. Second, that we would do better to talk of Continental-political-theory versus Rawlsian-political-philosophy, given that the former avoids arguments over principles, whilst the latter leaves genuine analytic philosophy behind. Third, that (...) Continentals suffer from a lack of such arguments, even by their own lights, whilst Rawlsians suffer from inconsistencies within the thought-patterns on which their principles depend. Fourth, that there is an alternative method – ‘normative behaviourism’ – that at least tries to move beyond the problems of both approaches, whilst sharing an idea of ‘praxis’ with the first, and an idea of deriving-principles-from-existing-judgements with the second. (shrink)

On the basis of recent work concerning the meaning of the term stoicheion in Aristotle’s Analytics, we strengthen the view that this treatise can be viewed as a precursor of Euclid’s Elements.

Throughout much of the twentieth century, the relationship between analytic and continental philosophy has been one of disinterest, caution or hostility. Recent debates in philosophy have highlighted some of the similarities between the two approaches and even envisaged a post-continental and post-analytic philosophy. Opening with a history of key encounters between philosophers of opposing camps since the late nineteenth century - from Frege and Husserl to Derrida and Searle - the book goes on to explore in (...) detail the main methodological differences between the two approaches. This covers a very wide range of topics, from issues of style and clarity of exposition to formal methods arising from logic and probability theory. The final section of this book presents a balanced critique of the two schools' approaches to key issues such as time, truth, subjectivity, mind and body, language and meaning, and ethics. "Analytic versus Continental" is the first sustained analysis of both approaches to philosophy, examining the limits and possibilities of each. It provides a clear overview of a much-disputed history and, in highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of both traditions, also offers future directions for both continental and analytic philosophy. (shrink)

Marc Champagne argues that the supposedly ’professional’ style of the analytic tradition does not ensure professionalism, nor indeed, clear-mindedness.

Contemporary interest in realism and naturalism, emerging under the banner of speculative or new realism, has prompted continentally-trained philosophers to consider a number of texts from the canon of analytic philosophy. The philosophy of Wilfrid Sellars, in particular, has proven remarkably able to offer a contemporary re-formulation of traditional "continental" concerns that is amenable to realist and rationalist considerations, and serves as an accessible entry point into the Anglo-American tradition for continental philosophers. With the aim of appraising (...) this fertile theoretical convergence, this volume brings together experts of both analytic and continental philosophy to discuss the legacy of Kantianism in contemporary philosophy. The individual essays explore the ways in which Sellars can be put into dialogue with the widely influential work of Quentin Meillassoux, explaining how—even thought their methods, language, and proximal influences are widely different—their philosophical stances can be compared thanks to their shared Kantian heritage and interest in the problem of realism. This book will be appeal to students and scholars who are interested in Sellars, Meillassoux, contemporary realist movements in continental philosophy, and the analytic-continental debate in contemporary philosophy. (shrink)

Twentieth-century Western philosophy divides untidily into two traditions, analytic and continental, and two figures stand tall at the forking of the ways—the philosophers Gottlob Frege and Edmund Husserl. However, the division is not reducible to this convenient alternative between two great contemporaries equally committed to the provision of firm foundations for the advancement of philosophy.

Twentieth-century philosophy has often been pictured as divided into two camps, analytic and continental. This study challenges this depiction by examining encounters between some of the leading representatives of either side. Starting with Husserl and Frege's fin-de-siècle turn against psychologism, it turns to Carnap's 1931 attack on Heidegger's metaphysics (together with its background in the Cassirer-Heidegger dispute of 1929), moving on to Ayer's 1951 meeting with Bataille and Merleau-Ponty at a Parisian bar, followed by the 'dialogue of the (...) deaf' between Oxford linguistic philosophers and phenomenologists at the 1951 Royaumont colloquium, leading up to the Derrida-Searle controversy. Careful study shows that it is implausible to assume the existence of a century-old 'gulf' between two sides of philosophy. Vrahimis argues that miscommunication and ignorance over the exact content of the above encounters must to a large extent be held accountable for any perceived gap. (shrink)

Gaining momentum during the last third of the twentieth century, the philosophy of biology is now a distinct field with its own debates, journals, audiences, and professional societies. This professionalization came along with the forging of an intellectual identity based on the existence of disciplinary frontiers that demarcated philosophy of biology from neighboring disciplines such as philosophy of medicine, history of biology, or general philosophy of science. Here, I argue that the identity of this emerging philosophy of biology also excluded (...) Continental traditions often called “biological philosophy” or “historical epistemology of the life sciences”. Going back to the 60s and 70s, I explore the emergence of the philosophy of biology at a time when its identity was still in flux and its analytic orientation debated. To do so, I focus primarily on the works of David Hull and Marjorie Grene, and I draw on their unpublished correspondence. Although Grene’s intellectual contribution to the philosophy of biology has been widely acknowledged, her coming from a different philosophical universe created tensions with the identity Hull and others sought to establish. Overall, this chapter raises a question about the historical conditions that make fields such as the philosophy of biology possible, and calls attention to the exclusions that permeated the philosophy of biology from its inception and what this involves in terms of the proper relation between philosophy and science, especially biology. (shrink)

Although there is no consensus on what distinguishes analytic from Continental philosophy, I focus in this paper on one source of disagreement that seems to run fairly deep in dividing these traditions in recent times, namely, disagreement about the relation of natural science to philosophy. I consider some of the exchanges about science that have taken place between analytic and Continental philosophers, especially in connection with the philosophy of mind. In discussing the relation of natural science (...) to philosophy I employ an analysis of the origins of natural science that has been developed by a number of Continental philosophers. Awareness and investigation of interactions between analytic and Continental philosophers on science, it is argued, might help to foster further constructive engagement between the traditions. In the last section of the paper I briefly discuss the place of natural science in relation to global philosophy on the basis of what we can learn from analytic/Continental exchanges. (shrink)

This paper seeks to apply some of the tools of analytic philosophy to a text written by a 'continental' philosopher, in order to evaluate the quality of its arguments. In 'On Forgiveness', Jacques Derrida seems to be making two different claims about forgiveness. First, he claims that an act of forgiveness is only truly meaningful as forgiveness when one is forgiving the unforgivable. Second, he is also recommending that we change our understanding of the concept of forgiveness for (...) ethical reasons. I examine three lines of argument used in the essay to support the first claim. I find each of these lines of argument problematic. Since these arguments are unconvincing, I argue that this leaves only the second claim for Derrida to defend. (shrink)

Australasian Journal of Philosophy, Volume 0, Issue 0, Page 1-5, Ahead of Print.

The boundary between analytic and synthetic sentences is well definable. Quine’s attempt to make it vague is based on a misunderstanding: instead of freeing semantics from shortcomings found, e.g. in Carnap’s work, Quine actually rejects semantics of natural language and replaces it by behavioristically articulated pragmatics. Semantics of natural language as a logical analysis is however possible and it can justify hard and fast lines between analyticity and syntheticity.

From the vantage point of comparative philosophy, this anthology explores how analytic and "Continental" approaches in the Western and other philosophical traditions can constructively engage each other and jointly contribute to the contemporary development of philosophy.

Throughout much of the 20th Century, the relationship between analytic and continental philosophy has been one of disinterest, caution or hostility. Recent debates in philosophy have highlighted some of the similarities between the two approaches and even envisaged a post-continental and post-analytic philosophy. -/- Opening with a history of key encounters between philosophers of opposing camps since the late 19th Century - from Frege and Husserl to Derrida and Searle - the book goes on to explore (...) in detail the main methodological differences between the two approaches. This covers a very wide range of topics, from issues of style and clarity of exposition to formal methods arising from logic and probability theory. The final section presents a balanced critique of the two schools’ approaches to key issues such as Time, Truth, Subjectivity, Mind and Body, Language and Meaning, and Ethics. -/- Analytic Versus Continental is the first sustained analysis of both approaches to philosophy, examining the limits and possibilities of each. It provides a clear overview of a much-disputed history and, in highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of both traditions, also offers future directions for both continental and analytic philosophy. (shrink)

From the vantage point of comparative philosophy, this anthology explores how analytic and "Continental" approaches in the Western and other philosophical traditions can constructively engage each other and jointly contribute to the contemporary development of philosophy.

In the division between analytic and continental thought, pragmatism has often been cast as a middle way. Fundamentally critical of each, it also shares resonances with both of these traditions. However, while this observation is common, remarkably little has been done to examine its truth in contemporary political thought. Drawing on recent trends in political theory, including ‘New Realism’, critical genealogical methods and a surge in pragmatic approaches, this article identifies an emerging situated turn in political thought. Emerging (...) from several major traditions in contemporary political thinking, this trend has pragmatic themes at its centre. Having identified this as a fertile opportunity for inter-methodological work across the analytic/continental divide, it then turns to the late work of Richard Rorty in order to expose his productive framework for such cross-border exchanges. Arguing for its fundamentally democratic and pluralistic nature, this analysis also exposes this framework’s weaknesses before illustrating how recent methodological exchanges between genealogy and pragmatism rectify these deficiencies while providing a viable model for future work across traditional philosophical boundaries. (shrink)

David E. Cooper; I*—The Presidential Address: Analytical and Continental Philosophy, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 94, Issue 1, 1 June 1994, P.

On offer here is a tradition-neutral way of understanding the distinction between analytic and continental philosophy of music. The distinction is drawn in terms of methodology, rather than content, by identifying contrasting methodological tendencies of each tradition—initial maneuvers that frame an investigation, which are related to one another insofar as they involve, or do not involve, two kinds of methodological detachment. These maneuvers are extracted through a consideration of contrasting pairs of examples. The pairs consist of an (...) class='Hi'>analytic and a continental account of a core issue in the philosophy of music. The issues considered are musical experience, musical ontology, and the relationship between music and the emotions. The philosophers considered are Roger Scruton and Pierre Bourdieu, Jerrold Levinson and Lydia Goehr, Peter Kivy, and Andrew Bowie. (shrink)

The paper seeks to indicate ways in which the crude distinction between Anglo-Saxon and Continental philosophy may have to be amended in light of recent developments in Eastern Europe. As is well known, the philosophy of science is to no small part a product of the universities of the Habsburg Empire (in Vienna, Prague, Lemberg/Lwow, etc.). Logic, too, has played a more significant role in Eastern Europe (not least in Poland) than in the philosophical cultures of Germany or France. (...) For these and other reasons, a shift in the center of gravity of Continental philosophy is currently being realized, as younger Eastern European philosophers in newly liberalized institutions begin to return to their roots in their native pre-Communist intellectual traditions. (shrink)

Demonstrates that the divisions between analytic and continental philosophy are being replaced by a transcontinental desire to address common problems in a common idiom.

For more than seven decades there has been a broad gap between how philosophy is conceived and practiced. Two ill-defined but well-recognized traditions have developed—the "analytic" and "Continental" schools of philosophy. The former traces its roots to philosophers like Frege, Russell, Moore, Wittgenstein, and the logical positivists. The latter has been heavily influenced by Nietzsche, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Foucault, and Derrida, among others. The aim of this collection is to reconsider the often facile characterization of major thinkers as belonging (...) to either one or the other philosophical tradition. The contributors—philosophers from both sides of the divide working in different countries and contexts—all question the problematic conception that the two traditions are incommensurable. Each of their articles compares individual philosophers who have had a major influence on the analytic and Continental traditions with a view to clarifying their similarities and dissimilarities of approach. What this collection of thoughtful articles clearly demonstrates is that regardless of approach and precedents, analytic and Continental philosophers are all doing philosophy, and there are many important points of contact between them. The contributors are: Richard Rorty, whose thoughtful overview highlights the salient points in both traditions; Barry Allen ; Babette E. Babich ; David Cerbone ; Sharyn Clough ; Jonathan Kaplan ; Richard Matthews ; Carlos G. Prado ; Bjorn Torgrim Ramberg ; Mike Sandbothe ; Barry Stocker ; and Ed Witherspoon. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Directions in Contemporary German AestheticsMatthew PritchardÄsthetisches Denken, 6th ed., by Wolfgang Welsch. Stuttgart: Reclam, 1990 (2003), 223 pp.Aisthetik: Vorlesungen Über Ästhetik Als Allgemeine Wahrnehmungslehre, by Gernot Böhme. Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 2001, 199 pp.Ästhetische Korrespondenzen: Denken Im Technischen Raum, by Reinhard Knodt. Stuttgart: Reclam, 1994, 166 pp.The relationship between the Anglo-American and German aesthetic traditions is a paradoxical one. On the one hand, acquaintance with one or more figures from (...) the “great tradition” in German aesthetic thought over the last 250 years is a given for most philosophically oriented writers on aesthetics in Britain and America. Thinkers such as Kant or Adorno form a real and abiding part of our background. In some cases the connection with German intellectual lineages goes a good deal further. As an extreme case, take Terry Eagleton’s The Ideology of the Aesthetic,1 whose engagement with German thought is so deep that I have come across it as a set text for aesthetics courses in German universities (despite the fact that none of the dozen authors Eagleton analyzes are cited in their original language). On the other hand, interest in contemporary German aesthetics in English and American circles appears to be relatively slight. One would have little idea, from reading any of the philosophical journals in English, of just how much activity there is in this area, only a small proportion of which has been translated, cited, or reviewed. And yet the past two decades have seen the publication of dozens of relevant books by German authors, many proposing independent theoretical approaches. Among these—aside from the books reviewed here—are the substantial work done on performance and performativity by Erika Fischer-Lichte (Ästhetik des Performativen, 2004) and Dieter Mersch (Ereignis und Aura, 2002); the theoretical oeuvre of the prize-winning literary critic Karl Heinz Bohrer, of which Suddenness: On the Moment of Aesthetic Appearance, originally published in 1981, has made it into English; Ruth Sonderegger’s Romantic-leaning plea Für eine Ästhetik des Spiels (2000); Dieter Heinrich’s work on the philosophy of art and subjectivity, Fixpunkte: Aufsätze [End Page 117] und Essays zur Theorie der Kunst (2003); Martin Seel’s Aesthetics of Appearing (2004); the traditional neo-Kantian perspective of the late Rüdiger Bubner as set out in his Ästhetische Erfahrung (1989); Gábor Paál’s Was ist schön?—Ästhetik und Erkenntnis (2003); Konrad Paul Liessmann’s Reiz und Rührung: Über ästhetische Empfindungen (2003)... the list could be continued. And this is not to mention empirical-psychological approaches, works on the history of aesthetics, the reception accorded to analytical aesthetics and American philosophers such as Goodman and Danto, or the continuation of European poststructuralist and Frankfurt School traditions (for example, in the work of Albrecht Wellmer and Christoph Menke).Given this large “backlog” of writing not yet assimilated into Anglo-American discussion, it makes sense to be selective and range a little further than the most recently published texts. Owing to sheer diversity, I cannot honestly claim that the three books I am going to discuss here are “representative” of the interests driving contemporary German aesthetics. But I have chosen them for certain common traits, traditions, and emphases that seem to me to present a stimulating contrast with the approach of Anglo-American philosophical aesthetics, while retaining many points of contact with non-German thought. That the contrast does not come down to the crass standoff of “analytical” vs. “Continental,” and all the clichés about academic style that go with it, should become obvious. It is more interesting than that, and although I want to leave the details to the discussion of the three books, I can mention at the outset a few aspects I regard as important. One is that none of these authors addresses themselves exclusively to either the philosophy of art or to the aesthetics of nature and the environment. Instead they tend to make points relating to both, or to regard both as aspects of a single situation. “Environmental aesthetics” in Anglo-American philosophy—for instance, the work of Allen Carlson—is not only of recent date but is still a subdiscipline separated from aesthetics... (shrink)

International Journal of Philosophical Studies, Volume 19, Issue 4, Page 633-637, October 2011.

While there is a great diversity of treatments of other minds and inter-subjectivity within both analytic and continental philosophy, this article specifies some of the core structural differences between these treatments. Although there is no canonical account of the problem of other minds that can be baldly stated and that is exhaustive of both traditions, the problem(s) of other minds can be loosely defined in family resemblances terms. It seems to have: (1) an epistemological dimension (How do we (...) know that others exist? Can we justifiably claim to know that they do?); (2) an ontological dimension that incorporates issues having to do with personal identity (What is the structure of our world such that inter-subjectivity is possible? What are the fundamental aspects of our relations to others? How do they impact upon our self-identity?); and (3) A conceptual dimension in that it depends on one's answer to the question what is a mind (How does the mind – or the concept of 'mind'– relate to the brain, the body and the world?). While these three issues are co-imbricated, I will claim that analytic engagements with the problem of other minds focus on (1), whereas continental philosophers focus far more on (2). In addition, this article will also point to various other downstream consequences of this, including the preoccupation with embodiment and forms of expressivism that feature heavily in various forms of continental philosophy, and which generally aim to ground our relations with others in a pre-reflective manner of inhabiting the world that is said to be the condition of reflection and knowledge. (shrink)

It is a truism that the attitude of deference to the text plays a lesser role in Anglo-Saxon philosophy than in other philosophical traditions. Works of philosophy written in English have, it is true, spawned a massive secondary literature dealing with the ideas, problems or arguments they contain. But they have almost never given rise to works of commentary in the strict sense, a genre which is however a dominant literary form not only in the Confucian, Vedantic, Islamic, Jewish and (...) Scholastic traditions of the past, but also in relation to more recent German-language philosophy (thus for example in work on Hegel, Heidegger or Wittgenstein). Moreover Anglo-Saxon philosophers have themselves embraced the commentary form when dealing with Greek or Latin philosophers outside their own tradition. The paper seeks to establish the reasons for this imbalance by examining those factors which might be conducive to the growth of a commentary literature in a given culture. (shrink)

There has recently been a plethora of attempts to understand the key differences that separate the analytic and continental traditions of philosophy, often involving either painstaking descriptions of the divergent argumentative techniques and methodologies that concern them, or comparatively examining in detail the work of certain major theorists in both traditions (e.g. Rawls and Derrida, Lewis and Deleuze). While partly drawing on these two approaches, in this particular essay I instead propose a rather more speculative way of teasing (...) out the differences between them, interpreting them through the lens of Gilles Deleuze’s non-oppositional typology of sadism and masochism, as it is expressed in Difference and Repetition and ‘Coldness and Cruelty’. (shrink)

"Arguing that debates over legitimacy, political violence, freedom, and justice would benefit greatly from cross-tradition theorizing, this book shows how putting analytic and continental political theory in conversation would help us to overcome these intractable problems"--.

Papers presented cover: new approaches to evolutionary epistemology, new applications, critical evaluations, and the nature of the mind. Paper edition (unseen), $25.50. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.