Continental philosophy

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Continental philosophy (English continental philosophy ) is a collective term used especially in English-language philosophy for various currents of philosophy operated in continental Europe (especially Germany and France), which have in common that they have been in empirical and logical-analytical schools, as they have for a long time prevailed in the Anglo-American region, have hardly met with approval. In some cases, other differentiation criteria, such as methodological, content or institutional type, are suggested.

Continental philosophy encompasses a wide spectrum of very different schools of philosophy. These include German neo-Hegelianism , phenomenology , hermeneutics , the works of Schopenhauer , Nietzsche and Kierkegaard , various varieties of Marxism , critical theory , psychoanalysis , French existential philosophy , structuralism , deconstruction and poststructuralism as well as feminism with French influences. Many of these continental thinkers or schools are judged critically from the point of view of some decidedly analytical philosophers , for example because the positions represented are unclear and imprecise, cannot be checked or are implausible. In such judgments, the term continental philosophy is often used pejoratively .

Problem of containment

In the last few decades, the demarcation between “analytical” and “continental” tradition, schooling or method has been problematized from different sides for different motives and reasons. For example, positions that can be clearly attributed to “continental” thinkers are reconstructed, elaborated or defended by analytically trained philosophers in explicit connection with these thinkers. Conversely, philosophers from “continental” schools find positions of interest that are developed by theorists who originally came from “analytical” contexts. Examples of this can be found in the exegesis of the classics mentioned or in debates about self-confidence , intentionality and phenomenological topics in general, idealism or feminist theories. One of the factors that favor this can be seen in the fact that many initially largely authoritative assumptions and methodological specifications of "analytical" philosophers, such as an empirical, metaphysical-critical or language- analytical orientation, have been enriched by a wide variety of alternatives since the 1960s at the latest. Right from the start, several philosophers trained in analytical methodology who were familiar with or discussed analytical debates were interested in “continental” traditions. Many authors such as Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz , Bernard Bolzano or Franz Brentano , later for example Ludwig Wittgenstein or William James and other pragmatists, became important for many “analytical” as well as many “continental” philosophers.

In spite of such tendencies, many theorists and historians of philosophy propose to hold on to the distinction. It is emphasized from time to time, for example, that “analytical” philosophers are more oriented towards factual questions and arguments than towards certain classics. On the other hand, it is sometimes argued that different leading figures are orientated or that the difference is based on methodical approaches, the characterization of which is also controversial. Typical stereotypes ascribe to “analytical” philosophers, for example, a greater interest in theoretical specifications of narrowly defined questions than in historical, cultural or political conditions, whereas “continental” philosophers ascribe the latter.

See also

literature

  • Peter Bieri: What remains of the analytical philosophy? In: German magazine for philosophy. 55, 2007, pp. 333-344.
  • Anat Biletzki: Introduction: Bridging the Analytic-Continental Divide. In: International Journal of Philosophical Studies. 9/3, 2001, pp. 291-294.
  • David E. Cooper: Analytical and Continental Philosophy. In: Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society. 94, 1994.
  • Simon Critchley , William R. Schroeder (Eds.): A Companion to Continental Philosophy. Blackwell, Oxford 1998.
  • Simon Critchley: Continental Philosophy: a Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2001.
  • Andrew Cutrofello: Continental Philosophy: a Contemporary Introduction. Routledge, London 2005.
  • Pascal Engel (Ed.): Stanford French Review. 17 / 2-3 (1993), Special number: Philosophy and the Analytic-Continental Divide
  • Michael Friedman: A Parting of the Ways: Carnap, Cassirer, and Heidegger. Chicago 2000. (German Michael Friedmann: Carnap. Cassirer. Heidegger. Divided paths. Fischer-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2004, ISBN 3-596-16006-5 . Foreword )
  • Gottfried Gabriel: Continental Heritage and Analytical Method. Nelson Goodman And The Tradition. In: Knowledge. 52/2, 2000, pp. 185-198. doi : 10.1023 / A: 1005557524926
  • Simon Glendinning (Ed.): Edinburgh Encyclopaedia of Continental Philosophy. Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh 1999.
  • Simon Glendinning: The Idea of ​​Continental Philosophy. Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh 2006.
  • Hans-Johann Glock: Could anything be wrong with analytic philosophy? In: Graz Philosophical Studies. 74 2007, pp. 215-237.
  • Hans-Johann Glock: Analytic Philosophy: Wittgenstein and After. In: D. Moran (Ed.): A Companion to Twentieth-Century Philosophy. Routledge, London 2007.
  • Hans-Johann Glock: What is Analytic Philosophy? Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2008.
  • Richard Kearney (Ed.): Continental Philosophy in the Twentieth Century. (= Routledge History of Philosophy. Volume 8). Routledge, London 1994.
  • Brian Leiter, Michael Rosen (Ed.): Oxford Handbook of Continental Philosophy. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2007, ISBN 978-0-19-923409-7 .
  • Neil Levy: Analytic and Continental Philosophy: Explaining the Differences. In: Metaphilosophy. 34/3, 2003, pp. 284-304. doi : 10.1111 / 1467-9973.00274
  • John Mullarkey: Post-Continental Philosophy: an Outline. Continuum, London 2007.
  • Kevin Mulligan: On the History of Continental Philosophy. ( Memento of May 13, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF file; 182 kB). In: Topoi. 10/2, 1991, pp. 115-120.
  • Kevin Mulligan: The great divide. ( Memento of March 22, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF file; 110 kB). In: The Times Literary Supplement, “The battle of the two schools”. June 26, 1998, pp. 6-8.
  • Ludwig Nagl , Hugh J. Silverman (ed.): Textuality of philosophy - philosophy and literature. Oldenbourg-Verlag, Vienna / Munich 1994, ISBN 3-486-55990-7 . (This volume contains an afterword by Hugh J. Silverman, which deals with the genesis of "Continental Philosophy" in the USA.)
  • CG Prado (Ed.): A House Divided: Comparing Analytic and Continental Philosophy. Humanity Books, 2003, ISBN 1-59102-105-7 . Review by Samuel Wheeler
  • Michael Rosen: Continental Philosophy from Hegel. In: AC Grayling (Ed.): Philosophy 2: Further Through the Subject. Oxford University Press, Oxford 1998, pp. 663-704.
  • M. Sandbothe (ed.): The renaissance of pragmatism. Current entanglements between analytical and continental philosophy. Velbrück Wissenschaft, Weilerswist 2000.
  • William Schroeder: Continental Philosophy: a Critical Approach. Blackwell, Oxford 2005.
  • Charles E. Scott, Arleen B. Dallery, P. Holley Roberts (Eds.): Crises in Continental Philosophy. SUNY Press, Albany 1990.
  • Barry Smith (Ed.): Continental Philosophy: For and Against. In: The Monist. 82/2, 1999.
  • Robert C. Solomon, David L. Sherman (Eds.): Blackwell Guide to Continental Philosophy. Blackwell, Oxford 2003.
  • Robert C. Solomon: Continental Philosophy since 1750: the Rise and Fall of the Self. (= Oxford History of Philosophy. Volume 7). Oxford University Press, Oxford 1988.
  • James R. Watson (Ed.): Portraits of Contemporary American Continental Philosophers. Bloomington, Indiana UP 1999.

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ This is emphasized, for example, by Brian Leiter in his report from 2006–2008 published by blackwell ( memento of the original from September 27, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. : "The conventional demarcation of" analytic "versus" Continental "philosophy has become less and less meaningful. With the demise of analytic philosophy as a substantive research program since the 1960s ... "analytic" simply demarcates a style of scholarship, writing and thinking " @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.philosophicalgourmet.com
  2. ↑ An extreme example is Richard Rorty's development of bonds to e.g. B. Wilfrid Sellars in defense of culturalistic relativistic positions; see. more detailed Bjørn Ramberg:  Richard Rorty. In: Edward N. Zalta (Ed.): Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy .
  3. ↑ Examples are the studies by Robert Brandom , Tom Rockmore , Brian Leiter , John Richardson , Barry Smith , Hubert Dreyfus , Dagfinn Føllesdal and others. a.
  4. ↑ A relatively well-known example in the German-speaking world are Manfred Frank's attempts to relate “continental” and “analytical” theories of self-consciousness to one another (such as in Self-consciousness and Self-Knowledge , Stuttgart 1991), and in phases also writings by Dieter Henrich .
  5. ↑ This is exemplified by Hubert Dreyfus / H. Hall ( Husserl , Intentionality and Cognitive Science. Cambridge 1982) DW Smith / R. McIntyre (Husserl and Intentionality, Dordrecht-Boston 1982) ed. Compendia.
  6. ^ For example, in works by Tom Rockmore or Timothy Sprigge .
  7. ↑ See, for example, Intersections Between Analytic and Continental Feminism. In: Edward N. Zalta (Ed.): Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy .Template: SEP / Maintenance / Parameter 1 and Parameter 2 and not Parameter 3
  8. ↑ For example, W. Löffler clearly emphasizes in the Jesuit magazine Voices of the Time that the cliché that analytical philosophers are only “language analysts, formalists, atheists and naturalists” has long been unfounded. ( Who is afraid of analytical philosophy? A relationship that is still clouded , Voices of the Time 6/2007, pp. 375–388).
  9. ↑ Much-cited examples are Quine's criticism of Zwei Dogmas des Empirismus (1951) and his rehabilitation of ontology by paying attention to ontological commitments, for example for mathematics and thus also physics ( Was there giving , 1948). Gabriel 2000, Hilary Putnam ( inter alia in Pragmatism - an open question , 1995, Ethics Without Ontology, 2004 and many places) et al. B. Influences of American Pragmatism.
  10. ↑ For example, the philosophers Elizabeth Anscombe , Peter Geach , who were partly influenced by Wittgenstein and Thomas Aquinas and who also pursue moral and religious philosophical issues , and the British idealist John McTaggart Ellis McTaggart
  11. ↑ The influence of the latter was z. B. Emphasized by Barry Smith , Kevin Mulligan and Daniel von Wachter
  12. ↑ See, for example, that of Sandbothe 2000 ed. collection
  13. ↑ See for example the respective "heroes" listed by Mulligan in 1998.
  14. ↑ For example, in Leiter, Report 2006–2008, Sections What the Rankings mean ( Memento of the original from September 27, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. and “Analytic” and “Continental” Philosophy ( Memento of the original from November 15, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.philosophicalgourmet.com @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.philosophicalgourmet.com
  15. ↑ Beckermann 2007, for example, discusses criteria such as “clarity, conceptual overview and the weight of arguments” and believes that such criteria cannot be used as distinguishing criteria: “the interesting analytical philosophy” is “not interesting because it is analytical, but rather because it is good philosophy ”.
  16. ↑ Levy 2003, for example, goes so far that analytical philosophy moves within a certain “paradigm” (in the sense of Thomas S. Kuhn ), while continental philosophy draws less heavily on shared assumptions, problems, methods and approaches.
  17. ↑ See for example Kurt Rudolf Fischer / Franz Martin Wimmer: The historical consciousness in the analytical philosophy. In: Ludwig Nagl , Richard Heinrich (ed.): Where does analytical philosophy stand today? Vienna / Munich 1986.