Okay, this is almost certainly not the last rehashing of the dispute between “analytic” and “Continental” philosophy in the blogworld. But it’s a topic I would personally like to take my leave of, in that I’ve contributed comments to various takes on this chestnut elsewhere, and I don’t want to look totally one-sided. The typical analytic-continental debate has a few predictable characteristics, and a few genuinely enlightening results. Looking back into philosophical history, it is sometimes hard to determine who is a forerunner of what: many analytics have a deep and sincere admiration for Nietzsche, whereas the more technical Husserl is more commonly studied by continentals. But as far the Internet can now be a barometer of general opinion, the recent period of confusion about the distinction between the two, induced by Richard Rorty and other synthesizers, is over: we are dealing with two mature “research programs” which are sharply distinguished from each other. What can bring them close enough for comparison?
I think that the most sensible way of contrasting these two styles of inquiry needs to draw on a Hegelian concern which is rarely invoked by either. For much of his working life Hegel was not an ordinary philosophy professor, but a tutor or newspaper editor or school headmaster, and even when he became a famous Ordinarius in Berlin he still paid a great deal of attention to matters pedagogical. The theoretical import of the business of educating people in the business of understanding philosophy he collected under the heading “philosophical culture”, and this often plays a fairly significant role in his “idealist” accounts of how morality and history progress. It is also of significance for evaluating philosophical argumentation more narrowly construed: in the Phenomenology the “proof” of a metaphysical system’s character, its significance for “Science”, is displayed by the worldview it gives birth to.
Now, people (including, in many moods, myself) are often prone to distinguishing analytic and Continental groupings on political grounds. But the distinction between the two ways of educating people about philosophy is far more marked than the divergence in politics between professors of each (which the intelligent observer should probably be sociologist enough to reckon as minimal, on account of closeness in “social space”). Continental philosophy relies on the traditional notion of “rational animal” in considering its target market: it aims to appeal to anyone who makes reasoning their custom in life, be they journalist or union organizer. This is partially due to the fact that its traditional institutional partisans are social-democrats and Catholics, who have their own, mutually incompatible, reasons for aiming at universality: but whatever the affiliations of the Continentally minded, their vision of the philosophical world is deliberatively democratic, and perhaps this can go some way towards explaining the less-prized qualities of Continental philosophy.
By contrast, analysis is “for everyone and no one”. Most analytic philosophers are dubious about the prospects for mass participation in rationally reconstructing anything. This is not to say there is not a public face to analytic philosophy, but it is restricted, for the most part, to those who have a professional interest in the results of philosophical analysis: for example, lawyers and judges, rather than the readers of political magazines, are the target market for analytic philosophy of law. Of course, in a liberal democracy the professions are at least notionally open to talents, and many people lacking an honorific are both ready and willing to take an interest in “shop talk” anyway, so one can’t really fault analytic philosophy for being inaccessible on this account: however, it is true that the kinds of reasoning analytics go in for are affected by the kinds of people they want to make the point to.
But perhaps this criterion of division only complicates things further: for I am tempted to say that effect of this difference is that one can sentimentally favor one genre and be for the most part intellectually preoccupied with another, as I find is the case with me. So, more confusion. (It was probably too much to ask for an answer to the question “Which one is better?”: that is something which is never resolved in any such effort, since all participants are probably trying to maximize the time they spend doing some kind of philosophy.)
Thank You
Depends what you want to do. For inflamming revolutionary passion, Nietzsche and Marx are quite more effective than analytical sorts. But for making the gear that the revolutionaries need–whether fascist or communist—you are going to need some Quine like propeller heads in the back rooms of the Reichstag, right. Postmods generally fail both as ideologues and as propeller heads.
“Disseminator”, I’m familiar with your output, and I have to tell you: this is trolling absolute zero. You almost certainly make more money than me, and are probably better respected in the “real world”: your project of *epater les eggheads* doesn’t really make sense in this context. I have had “some Quine” since a magical day when I had just turned seventeen, where I went from work (gluing ads on photostat pages for the phone book) into Portland and bought an ex libris copy of *From a Logical Point of View*. I think Quine was a magnificent American stylist, and a good guide to understanding (the more conventional parts of) formal logic; I don’t think he advanced far enough beyond far-right flouridation fantasies to have anything useful to say about social life. So I don’t agree.
I’m not a Quinean. More Russellian, perhaps, though I too object to the sort of hard-core positivism of some of the analyticals (i.e. Carnap’s famed assertion that all metaphysical AND ethical propositions were meaningless—rather steep). In some sense the analyticals have a Humean edge which however cool is ultimately sort of untenable (Russell while respecting Hume also objected to much of DH’s skepticism). Quine’s behaviorism also rather extreme.
I find the postmod project and marxism, psychoanalysis far more objectionable than analytical phil., however. I’m sort of contra-philosophy as a whole, but I think some verificationism, referentiality, and awareness of “truth-process” is important—even for progressives. My own take on academic philosophy is that few people ever realized the implications of Hobbes’ Leviathan (tho’ Marx did–and did the wrong thing with the economic materialism of Hobbes, which also figures in the thought of classical economicsm, at least implicitly), or of Locke’s denials of innateness. Hobbes’ criticisms of Descartes are still entertaining reading. Dennett also wrote some fairly respectful things of Hobbes: not surprising, since TH anticipates much Darwinist thought.