Analytic Versus Continental: Arguments on the Methods and Value of Philosophy

by James Chase, Jack Reynolds

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.

Genres: Philosophy

288 pages, Hardcover

First published November 1, 2010

Reviews

[Kamakana · Rating 4 out of 5]

if you like this review i now have website: www.michaelkamakana.com

131012: interesting comparison as the title suggests, as is reluctantly affirmed, agnostically expressed- primarily from the analytic point of argument. i have read some philosophy, almost all from canon of the continental syllabus, so have always already predisposition and while no hostility, also little desire to read much of this other tradition...

for this is tradition, is shown as history, as border controls, as insistent propaganda, as developed through the twentieth century. beginning with some historical dispute and deliberate attempts to establish each perspective, primarily but not exclusively from the analytic side, the first chapters refer to names of which i am familiar only with continental lists- bergson, husserl, heidegger, derrida- though it is intriguing to hear their ideas rendered sympathetically, simplified, for the likely analytic reader. i have rarely read the disputant analytics, know little of the logicians, but i do not know if their ideas are equally understandable for continental scholars..

i am not a professional, a scholar, my interests are only abstract. i am drawn to literary treatments- mostly continentals- to those authors often described more as writers and mystics, and it seems entirely reasonable to contest the analytics as particularly narrow, simple, rigid and too schematic in logic. this book does not much encourage me to read more analytics. this is my loss and think of what i lose in not knowing this other tradition as similar but not entirely equivalent to not reading languages other than english, of thereby being deaf to subtle colouring of words in say japanese, and recognize the ambiguity thus born not entirely such as loss. but more than language, terminology, between continental and analytic there is a divide in ways of thinking, value of topics, of naturalist to constructed world view...

and just this- ambiguity- characterizes my interest in continental philosophy, and purported excessive claims of how this world is to us humans, do not seem immodest. i think of such theory and anti-theory, of phenomenological descriptions, of marxian, of postmodern, of any such logical edifice, must always recognize it is not based on apodictic certainty. i think this is not or should not be, forgotten by philosophers of either tradition...

in these early chapters i had some difficulty- my deficit not the text- in knowing either the names or the apparently well-known arguments of various analytics, but if you have started out in that tradition you probably follow it better. this is an organized book, and though it could be read as a book, it could also be a simple resource too, as the signal disputes are named and easy to find. this is the method explored. if you wonder what are some ideas batted about, you will find a clear description of an intuition pump, of thought experiments, of reflective equilibrium, of deployed common sense, and continental rejections. i only had to use wikipedia once to find out what 'gettier thought experiment' is... (what is justified true belief re. mistaken or accidental proof, as in whether jones' cow is in the pasture, yes correctly by error- truth as correlation? as result? as independent of how thought proven?)

there are some arguments from the continentals of analytic ideas, such as in ethics the concept of a 'veil of ignorance' as somehow guaranteeing we as ethicists would be best, would tend to the fairest ordering of any situation- if we were not aware of details such as gender, ethnicity, class, and so on, of this or that subject. but this must be mistaken, for what exactly is any subject but exactly described as gender, ethnicity, class, and so on? does this not argue for a more situational understanding of ethics, aware against such veil, or that we should never consider such details as details, but possibly defining what the ethics are all about...

after arguments taking off in entirely different directions- particularly the ideas of continental transcendental reasoning- and the imbrication of time- the book finally reaches the areas most definitively continental: phenomenology- and its varied and colourful and engaging progeny, of genealogy, hermeneutics, postmodernism, deconstruction. and then a chapter nearest to my overriding interest and possibly annoying to many analytics- style and clarity. this is exactly where ambiguity shows its use and where formal logic and apparatus of say math, are particularly unhelpful. there is here also some discussion of philosophy's true relationship to those other human projects of art and science, ranging from reductionist attitudes of some analytics where philosophy should spend its energy in trying to incorporate or even cede all values to science- not by making philosophy into science as husserl, but science into philosophy as say russell. or alternatively, in continental extremes we should disregard science as say heidegger, we should value only poetry, we should appreciate the world in our lives, rather than our lives in the world...

the third section of the book could be the applications section, the interpretations of key concepts, and it is here most clear that there is a major conceptual gap between the traditions...

ontology and metaphysics, well this is a dispute 1. truth, objectivity, and realism? here too 2. time? absolutely 3. here it is clear, for what is defining and essential in most of those two previous realms of questions, is not something avoidable- time is essential in continental thought, rather simplified and reduced if not ignored by analytic thought. if there is one chapter emblematic of the divide, it is this one. mind, body, the world etc. as representation? 4. ethics, 5, politics 6... problem of other minds, well this is just getting impossible: is there anywhere these guys agree? by here, i must admit my hope there will be things i want to read of the analytic tradition, things of interest, things to engage my original point of argument, this hope is flat-lining...

but then there is an encouraging conclusion, where the attitude of 'meta-philosophical weak-agnosticism' is suggested. i have to live with that. i read with the belief that the more a human project- such as philosophy- can encompass extreme divergence, when the opposite of one great truth may be another great truth, the closer this project is to truth of our truly diverse world...

[Ethan Zimmerman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Coming out of college with a lot of questions about philosophical methodology, goals, and norms, I found this book helpful in charting and describing the ways in which traditions and individuals differ. There's a lot of content covered here but it does little actually to lead someone in traversing the landscape and ops instead to describe it from afar. So my questions continue but perhaps are slightly more informed than before.

There's a lot of assumed background knowledge so I wouldn't recommend this unless you have a degree in philosophy or have acquired knowledge of the history of philosophy otherwise. Even for me with a degree, there was a fair amount I missed.

[Antonia Faccini · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantástico, para mi las mejores partes son la segunda y la tercera; aunque la primera es necesaria para ver cómo se solaparon figuras importantes de ambas tradiciones y proponer ahí una medio reconciliación. Clave la diferencia en cuanto a la reticencia de lo continental con el “common sense” y la reticencia de lo analítico ante los argumentos transcendentales.

Siento que lo que tiene más salida de lo continental hacia lo analítico es la fenomenología, sobre todo desde las interpretaciones de Dreyfus, y creo que las partes que tratan esa conexión fueron las que más me interesaron.

[L. Elaine · Rating 4 out of 5]

James Chase and Jack Reynolds, in their professional scholarship, represent the two main approaches to the practice of philosophy in the West: the ‘analytic’ tradition, which dominates in the UK, the US, and to a large extent in Australia, and the ‘continental’ one, whose roots are in France and Germany. In this valuable book, the authors have come together to examine the points of difference between these two traditions. Neither analytic nor continental philosophy constitutes a body of substantive claims, and although they can be differentiated by style of writing and argument, this is not a hard and fast distinction either. A better way to characterise ‘the divide’ is in terms of the different questions on which they focus.

Chase and Reynolds examine some of the foundational disputes between early exponents of each tradition, explain the methodological disagreements, and in the third part examine the differences in how key philosophical topics have been addressed. They shed light on why the continentals haven’t shared the analytic enthusiasm for thought experiments, or for finding ways of making necessary and sufficient conditions for knowledge – or causation, or truth, or any number of ontological entities – cohere with ordinary language or common-sense intuitions, and on why the analytic community tends to keep ethical and political inquiries separate from metaphysics and epistemology.

I did my undergraduate and graduate study at Ohio State – a department that is analytic to the core. Apart from one class in the history of philosophy, my acquaintance with ‘the other’ was limited. I found continental philosophers’ writing style obscure and jargon-heavy (as if our own were any less prone to using terms of art!), and thought their interests more akin to those that occupied literary critics of a certain stripe than to questions of serious philosophy. I warmly recommend this book to anyone in a similar position, on either side of the divide. It will act as a welcome corrective to hostility born of ignorance. However, it does presuppose a working familiarity with the subject matter and questions of academic philosophy. Fortunately, anyone who feels that he or she needs to establish or re-establish the same can start with the excellent notes and bibliography. Editorial errors are relatively few, and most of these fall into the predictable classes of mistake that we see everywhere in these days of minimal or no professional copy-editing.