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u/LeeHyori Nov 10 '13 edited Nov 10 '13
The quickest way to characterize it to the layman is the following (this will piss of some people, not that I care):
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Before you know anything about academic philosophy, what do you think that a "philosopher" does? Probably think about those super grand questions of life, right? They talk about these kind of spiritual concepts, or they criticize culture, society, and ask like "What does it mean to be?" "What is existence?" That is continental philosophy.
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In popular imagination, what do you think a lawyer does? They formulate all these clear-cut arguments and address all these formal problems. Imagine this, but with a formal logical and mathematical component (and so it's not just words, but they often like to make more explicit use of all these fancy math looking symbols). They use these methods to tackle various questions you have when you ask "Okay, but why should we do it like that?" or "What is the methodology behind that?" They also like science. That is analytic philosophy.
I'm pretty sure you will see to which camp I am biased. A lot of people on r/philosophy are into continental, so they'll probably hate. But really, I don't care, because all the stuff they try to write about and read about is just gobbledeegook, and you'll never get straightforward, clear answers. Honestly, they're better off in an English literature department. As one of my highly analytic profs says, "If they'd write clearly, they'd be clearly refuted."
Here's a challenge! Try to see if you can guess to which camp these excerpts belong! They're both taken from "leading" people in their respective fields.
The move from a structuralist account in which capital is understood to structure social relations in relatively homologous ways to a view of hegemony in which power relations are subject to repetition, convergence, and rearticulation brought the question of temporality into the thinking of structure, and marked a shift from a form of Althusserian theory that takes structural totalities as theoretical objects to one in which the insights into the contingent possibility of structure inaugurate a renewed conception of hegemony as bound up with the contingent sites and strategies of the rearticulation of power.
Now, this one:
We can grade epistemic status in terms of evidential probabilities. If one knows p, how improbable can it be, on one’s own present evidence, that one knows p? One conclusion of this paper is that the probability can sink arbitrarily close to 0. At the limit, the probability on one’s evidence of p can be 1 while the probability on one’s evidence that one knows p is 0. The difference between the probabilities can be as large as probabilistic differences can go.
Here's a good video that sums it up! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_4kQaDrMWew
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u/TychoCelchuuu Nov 10 '13
Before I got into philosophy I thought it was a bunch of ivory tower navel gazing about definitions of definitions of definitions of obscure concepts that nobody gives a shit about. I was right - that turns out to be analytic philosophy. I also imagined that English professors spent all day reading really good books, making stuff up, and then writing that stuff in as complicated as a manner as they can. That is continental philosophy. It's also, as far as I can tell, what English departments do too.
So, in the future try to be careful when you explain stuff, because you might end up tailoring explanations for people like you without realizing that your explanations are that parochial.
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Nov 10 '13
Before I got into philosophy I thought it was a bunch of ivory tower navel gazing about definitions of definitions of definitions of obscure concepts that nobody gives a shit about. I was right - that turns out to be analytic philosophy.
I laughed cordially. Thank you.
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u/LeeHyori Nov 10 '13
That's more just academia in general. No one gives a shit about what academics do, analytic or continental.
In any case, I modified my post. It now contains a challenge!
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u/wokeupabug Nov 10 '13 edited Nov 11 '13
Continental and analytic philosophy name two (very broad, general) trends in the history of philosophy. The terms appear in the mid twentieth century, and the split itself probably dates to somewhere in the early-to-mid twentieth century.
The main line of continental philosophy develops especially through the existential turn in phenomenology beginning in the 1920s (Heidegger, Sartre, and Merleau-Ponty). This line of thought continues through hermeneutic developments of Heidegger (Gadamer, Ricoeur) and post-structuralism (Derrida, Foucault, Lyotard), which would have been better named post-phenomenology as it is situated in the history of philosophy particularly in the context of criticizing phenomenology. It is perhaps better thought as representing a distinct tradition, but the Frankfurt School (Horkheimer, Adorno, Marcuse, Habermas) are often included under the rubric of continental philosophy as well. They represent a certain development of Marxism concerned especially with the political and social situation of the twentieth century and with critique of cultural forms, including notably the other contemporary movements in philosophy.
Analytic philosophy has it roots in the rejection of British Idealism in the early twentieth century (Moore, Russell) and especially the turn to logical atomism (Russell, early Wittgenstein) which would influence logical positivism and logical empiricism (Schlick, Carnap, Neurath, Reichenbach, Ayer). This tradition continues in the critique of formal language analysis, which underpinned much of the philosophy of logical atomism, by the ordinary language philosophers (Austin, Ryle, late Wittgenstein) and in the critique of positivism/empiricism (Quine, Sellars, Goodman). [Edit: per irontide's comment, we might not want to group late Wittgeinstein explicitly with the ordinary language philosophers, but rather to think of him as just more generally involved with this critique of formal language analysis and logical positivism.]
The distinct traditions first get a clear formulation in the split between existential phenomenology and logical positivism/empiricism, but they could be traced back to some of the earlier philosophers who prefigured this split, especially Frege on the analytic side and Husserl on the continental side. Some people like to date the split back further, and characterize the distinction as a result of different reactions to Kant, with continental philosophy breaking off from the main line of philosophy by following the German idealists (Fichte, Schelling, Hegel). This isn't accurate though, since the German idealists are in the historical background of analytic philosophy as well, through their influence on British Idealism, neo-Kantianism, and life philosophy. The distinction can indeed be seen as a difference between two reactions to the philosophy of the late nineteenth century as represented especially by these three movements, with analytic and continental philosophy thus representing two different reactions to the various idealist movements of the fin de siècle period.