| Part of a series on |
| Philosophy |
|---|
 |
Continental philosophy is a group ofWestern philosophies first prominent in 20th-centurycontinental Europe that derive from a broadlyKantian tradition of focusing on the individual and society.[1][2] Continental philosophy includesGerman idealism,phenomenology,existentialism (and its antecedents, such as the thought ofKierkegaard andNietzsche),hermeneutics,structuralism,post-structuralism,deconstruction,French feminism,psychoanalytic theory, and thecritical theory of theFrankfurt School as well as someFreudian,Hegelian, andWestern Marxist views.[3]
There is no academic consensus on the definition of continental philosophy. Prior to the twentieth century, the term "continental" was used broadly to refer to philosophy from continental Europe.[4][5] A slightly narrower use of the term originated among English-speaking philosophers since the second half of the 20th century, who use it as a convenient catch-all term to refer to a range of thinkers and traditions outside the movement known asanalytic philosophy.[6] The termcontinental philosophy may mark merely afamily resemblance across disparate philosophical views; a similar argument has been made for analytic philosophy.[7]
The termcontinental philosophy, in the above sense, was first widely used by English-speaking philosophers to describe university courses in the 1970s, emerging as a collective name for the philosophies then widespread in France and Germany, such as phenomenology, existentialism, structuralism, and post-structuralism.[8]
However, the term (and its approximate sense) can be found at least as early as 1840, inJohn Stuart Mill's 1840 essay onColeridge, where Mill contrasts theKantian-influenced thought of "Continental philosophy" and "Continental philosophers" with the English empiricism ofBentham and the 18th century generally.[9] This notion gained prominence in the early 20th century as figures such asBertrand Russell andG. E. Moore advanced a vision of philosophy closely allied with natural science, progressing through logical analysis. This tradition, which has come to be known broadly asanalytic philosophy, became dominant in Britain and the United States from roughly 1930 onward. Russell and Moore made a dismissal ofHegelianism and its philosophical relatives a distinctive part of their new movement.[10] Commenting on the history of the distinction in 1945, Russell distinguished "two schools of philosophy, which may be broadly distinguished as the Continental and the British respectively", a division he saw as operative "from the time of Locke"; Russell proposes the following broad points of distinction between Continental and British types of philosophy:[11][clarification needed]
Since the 1970s, however, many philosophers in the United States and Britain have taken an interest in continental philosophers since Kant, and the philosophical traditions in many European countries have similarly incorporated many aspects of the "analytic" movement. Self-described analytic philosophy flourishes in France, including philosophers such asJules Vuillemin,Vincent Descombes,Gilles Gaston Granger,François Recanati, andPascal Engel. Likewise, self-described "continental philosophers" can be found in philosophy departments in the United Kingdom, North America, and Australia.[12] "Continental philosophy" is thus defined in terms of a family of philosophical traditions and influences rather than a geographic distinction. The issue of geographical specificity has been raised again more recently inpost-colonial and decolonial approaches to "continental philosophy", which critically examine the ways that European imperial and colonial projects have influenced academic knowledge production. For this reason,Nelson Maldonado-Torres has advocated for "post-continental philosophy" as an outgrowth of continental philosophy.[13]
The termcontinental philosophy, likeanalytic philosophy, lacks a clear definition and may mark merely afamily resemblance across disparate philosophical views.Simon Glendinning has suggested that the term was originally more pejorative than descriptive, functioning as a label for types of western philosophy rejected or disliked by analytic philosophers.[14] Nonetheless,Michael E. Rosen has ventured to identify common themes that typically characterize continental philosophy.[15] The themes derive from a broadly Kantian thesis thatknowledge,experience, andreality are bound and shaped by conditions best understood throughphilosophical reflection rather than exclusivelyempirical inquiry.[2]
Thehistory of continental philosophy (taken in the narrower sense of "late modern /contemporary continental philosophy") is usually thought to begin withGerman idealism. Led by figures likeFichte,Schelling, and laterHegel, German idealism developed out of the work ofImmanuel Kant in the 1780s and 1790s and was closely linked withromanticism and the revolutionary politics of theEnlightenment. Besides the central figures listed above, important contributors to German idealism also includedFriedrich Heinrich Jacobi,Gottlob Ernst Schulze,Karl Leonhard Reinhold, andFriedrich Schleiermacher.
.jpg)
As the institutional roots of "continental philosophy" in many cases directly descend from those of phenomenology,[i]Edmund Husserl has always been a canonical figure in continental philosophy. Nonetheless, Husserl is also a respected subject of study in the analytic tradition.[20] Husserl's notion of anoema, the non-psychological content of thought, his correspondence withGottlob Frege, and his investigations into the nature of logic continue to generate interest among analytic philosophers.
J. G. Merquior argued that a distinction between analytic and continental philosophies can be first clearly identified withHenri Bergson (1859–1941), whose wariness of science and elevation ofintuition paved the way forexistentialism.[21] Merquior wrote: "the most prestigious philosophizing in France took a very dissimilar path [from the Anglo-Germanic analytic schools]. One might say it all began with Henri Bergson."[21]
.jpg)
An illustration of some important differences betweenanalytic andcontinental styles of philosophy can be found inRudolf Carnap's "Elimination of Metaphysics through Logical Analysis of Language" (1932; "Überwindung der Metaphysik durch Logische Analyse der Sprache"), a paper some observers[who?] have described as particularlypolemical. Carnap's paper argues that Heidegger's lecture "What Is Metaphysics?" violates logical syntax to create nonsensical pseudo-statements.[22][23] Moreover, Carnap claimed that many German metaphysicians of the era were similar to Heidegger in writing statements that were syntactically meaningless.
With the rise ofNazism, many of Germany's philosophers, especially those of Jewish descent or leftist or liberal political sympathies (such as many in theVienna Circle and theFrankfurt School), fled to the English-speaking world. Those philosophers who remained—if they remained in academia at all—had to reconcile themselves toNazi control of the universities. Others, such asMartin Heidegger, among the most prominent German philosophers to stay in Germany,aligned themselves with Nazism when it came to power.
 | This sectiondoes notcite anysources. Please helpimprove this section byadding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged andremoved.(August 2020) (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
Both before and afterWorld War II there was a growth of interest inGerman philosophy inFrance. A new interest incommunism translated into an interest in Marx and Hegel, who became for the first time studied extensively in the politically conservative French university system of theThird Republic. At the same time the phenomenological philosophy of Husserl and Heidegger became increasingly influential, perhaps owing to its resonances with French philosophies which placed great stock in the first-person perspective (an idea found in divergent forms such asCartesianism,spiritualism, andBergsonism). Most important in this popularization of phenomenology was the author and philosopherJean-Paul Sartre, who called his philosophyexistentialism.
Another major strain of continental thought isstructuralism/post-structuralism. Influenced by thestructural linguistics ofFerdinand de Saussure, French anthropologists such asClaude Lévi-Strauss began to apply the structural paradigm to the humanities. In the 1960s and '70s, post-structuralists developed various critiques of structuralism. Post-structuralist thinkers includeJacques Derrida andGilles Deleuze. After this wave, most of the late 20th century, the tradition has been carried into the 21st century byQuentin Meillassoux,Tristan Garcia,Francois Laruelle, and others.
| This sectionneeds additional citations forverification. Please helpimprove this article byadding citations to reliable sources in this section. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed.(August 2020) (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
From the early 20th century until the 1960s, continental philosophers were only intermittently discussed in British and American universities, despite an influx of continental philosophers, particularlyGerman Jewish students of Nietzsche and Heidegger, to the United States on account of the persecution of the Jews and laterWorld War II;Hannah Arendt,Herbert Marcuse,Leo Strauss,Theodor W. Adorno, andWalter Kaufmann are probably the most notable of this wave, arriving in the late 1930s and early 1940s.
Theanalytic-contintental divide is a term used to describe a perceived schism within 20th-21st centuryWestern philosophy. This divide has traditionally been understood in terms of differences inmethodology, subject matter, historical or geographical development, or foundational beliefs as described above. 21st century debate on the divide often focuses not on the specifics or definitions of each tradition, but rather on whether these distinctions remain justifiable and constructive for understanding and participating in current philosophical practice. It is important to note that in the canons of analytic and continental philosophy, there are some subfields with next to no cross-pollination with the other tradition--philosophy of mind amongstanalytic thinkers andphenomenology among continental thinkers for example—leading to the idea that the labels retain some truth despite potentially overgeneralizing.[24] Despite the ideological validity of the divide being questioned, the distinction remains particularly relevant to the organization of philosophy in academia where journal publications[25][26] and university departments[27] often identify as either continental or analytic.Anglo-American universities are overwhelminglyanalytic[28][29] while naturally many universities in Germany and France are continental focused.
Despite the persistence of the divide in many ways, the boundaries separatinganalytic and continental philosophy, particularly in the identification of university departments, have increasingly eroded as more programs feature a pluralistic approach.[30][31][32]Philosophy of science has also become increasingly popular and started to become the primary focus in some programs,[27] diminishing a binary distinction.
The prevalence of the analytic-continental divide in university programs is part of the reason William Blattner[33] contends that the division is not deeply rooted in ideological or methodological differences, but rather sociological and academic-political factors.[34] He argues that many of the authors most commonly associated with continental philosophy have "nothing in common methodologically, stylistically, or doctrinally."[34] And, that the logical or scientific characteristic often attributed to analytic philosophy fails as some "continental" philosophers such asEdmund Husserl were interested in mathematics and frequently used logical tools while many "analytic" philosophers discussing ethics, political philosophy, or literature did not.[34] Blattner also points to work bridging the divide such as a Martin Heidegger and other traditionally continental philosophers being used in artificial intelligence research work and a revival of interest inpragmatism.
Hegelians had all kinds of arguments to prove this or that was not 'real'. Number, space, time, matter, were all professedly convicted of being self-contradictory. Nothing was real, so we were assured, except the Absolute, which could think only of itself since there was nothing else for it to think of and which thought eternally the sort of things that idealist philosophers thought in their books.
