"A Dangerous Liaison: the Analytic Engagement with Continental Philosophy," Department of Philosophy, University of York, December 9, 2011.

The history of antagonism between the analytic and hermeneutic-phenomenological traditions of philosophy suggests that dialogue is simply not possible, and that the difference runs deeper than approaches, methods, and styles. It seems, however, that both are asking the same questions – or at least questions about the same subjects – even if their answers differ radically. The problems of knowledge, existence, ethics, and aesthetics feature on the agendas of Anglo-American and Continental philosophy alike, and a minority of analytic philosophers have regarded their counterparts as a source of potential enlightenment. Phenomenology in particular is relevant to the philosophy of mind, and Merleau-Ponty’s work has been employed by Shaun Gallagher, Alva Noë, Brian O’Shaughnessy, and Charles Taylor. Husserl is another popular choice, with Dan Zahavi and Shaun Gallagher editing Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, a journal aimed at applying Husserl’s work to analytic philosophy and other disciplines. Heidegger’s hermeneutics have drawn attention from Richard Rorty, Hubert Dreyfus, Gilbert Ryle, and Andy Clark. Christopher Norris has even argued against the perception of Derrida as a postmodernist, advancing his work as a Kantian critique rather than a deconstruction of analytic philosophy. It appears that cross-pollination is not just possible, but actively practised by a self-selected few.  The aim of this one-day conference is to explore the potential for the analytic engagement with the hermeneutic-phenomenological tradition, and consider the value of such an engagement.

09:00: Registration.
09:30: Professor Christopher Norris (Cardiff) on Derrida.
Response: Dr Donnchadh O Conaill (Durham).
10:45: Break.
11:00: Mr Paul Giladi (Sheffield): ‘Hegel: Analytic Philosophy’s Pharmakon’.
11:45: Break.
12:00: Professor Barry Dainton (Liverpool) on Husserl.
Response: Mr David Allen (Warwick).
13:15: Lunch.
14:30: Dr Denis McManus (Southampton) on Heidegger.
Response: Dr Andreas Vrahimis (Birkbeck).
15:45: Break.
16:00: Mr Joshua Tepley (Notre Dame): ‘Heidegger and the Properties of Being’.
16:45: Break.
17:00: Dr Joel Smith (Manchester) on Merleau-Ponty: ‘Egocentric Space’.
Response: Mr Jack Wadham (Sheffield).
18:15: Close

https://sites.google.com/site/rafemcgregor/conference-a-dangerous-liaison

"A Dangerous Liaison: the Analytic Engagement with Continental Philosophy," Department of Philosophy, University of York, December 9, 2011.

The history of antagonism between the analytic and hermeneutic-phenomenological traditions of philosophy suggests that dialogue is simply not possible, and that the difference runs deeper than approaches, methods, and styles. It seems, however, that both are asking the same questions – or at least questions about the same subjects – even if their answers differ radically. The problems of knowledge, existence, ethics, and aesthetics feature on the agendas of Anglo-American and Continental philosophy alike, and a minority of analytic philosophers have regarded their counterparts as a source of potential enlightenment. Phenomenology in particular is relevant to the philosophy of mind, and Merleau-Ponty’s work has been employed by Shaun Gallagher, Alva Noë, Brian O’Shaughnessy, and Charles Taylor. Husserl is another popular choice, with Dan Zahavi and Shaun Gallagher editing Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, a journal aimed at applying Husserl’s work to analytic philosophy and other disciplines. Heidegger’s hermeneutics have drawn attention from Richard Rorty, Hubert Dreyfus, Gilbert Ryle, and Andy Clark. Christopher Norris has even argued against the perception of Derrida as a postmodernist, advancing his work as a Kantian critique rather than a deconstruction of analytic philosophy. It appears that cross-pollination is not just possible, but actively practised by a self-selected few. 

Keynote Speakers:

· Professor Barry Dainton (Liverpool) on TBA
· Professor Christopher Norris (Cardiff) on Derrida
· Dr Denis McManus (Southampton) on Heidegger
· Dr Joel Smith (Manchester) on Merleau-Ponty

https://sites.google.com/site/rafemcgregor/philosophy/conference-a-dangerous-liaison

"Philosophy: the Great Divide (Continental / Analytic)." THE PHILOSOPHER'S ZONE (AUSTALIAN BROADCASTING CORPORATION) July 4, 2009.

This week, we examine a division in the philosophical world, between what's called analytic philosophy, as practised in the English-speaking world and the Nordic nations, and continental philosophy. If you're an analytical philosopher, all that French and German stuff looks vague, verbose and romantic. If you're sitting Paris, the analytical stuff is likely to seem abstract, dry and quite unconnected with human realities. Professor Paul Patton straddles the divide and this week he tells us whether he thinks it's real. Listen here: http://www.abc.net.au/rn/philosopherszone/stories/2009/2607224.htm.

"On Knowledge: at the Origins of the Analytic-Continental Split," Department of Philosophy, Leiden University, May 6, 2008.

(All Talks in: Wijkplaats 4.005, Leiden University) Session I Chair: Göran Sundholm (Leiden) 9:30-11:00: Marietje van der Schaar (Leiden) "Husserl and Heyting on knowledge and assertion" 11:00-11:15: coffee 11:20-12:50: Wim Christiaens (Gent) "Cassirer, Heidegger and the Enlightenment" 13:00-14:30 Lunch: TBA Session II Chair: Fred Muller (Erasmus, Rotterdam) 14:40-16:10: Lieven Decock (VU, Amsterdam) "From a linguistic point of view: Carnap and Quine on the analytic-synthetic distinction" 16:10-16-30: Coffee 16:30-18:00 Alan Richardson (UBC) "On Taking Logical Empiricism as a Science Seriously: Metrology, Metalogic, and the Technologies of Philosophy." All are welcome, but if you wish to attend we ask that you RSV by April 28, 2008 at: Eric Schliesser (nescio2@yahoo.com).

Smith, Barry. "What's Wrong with Contemporary Philosophy?" TOPOI 25.1-2 (2006): 63-67.

Philosophy in the West now divides into three parts – Analytic Philosophy, Continental Philosophy and History of Philosophy. Analytic Philosophy (AP), although it comes in many varieties, has four striking properties. First, it is cultivated with every appearance of theoretical rigour. Second, its practitioners do not, by and large, believe that philosophy is or can be a science, i.e., they do not believe that it can add to the stock of positive human knowledge. Third, the philosophers who until very recently were the most influential models in the pursuit of philosophy as a theoretical enterprise – Chisholm, Davidson, Armstrong, Putnam, Kripke, Searle… – have no obvious successors. Finally, AP has succeeded in the institutional task of turning out increasing numbers of highly trained, articulate and intelligent young philosophers. Each of these properties reflects a relatively uncontroversial empirical claim. Continental Philosophy (CP) comes in almost as many varieties as does AP but is always decidedly anti-theoretical. This is particularly true of those varieties which sport the name “Theory”, but it holds in general of all those CP philosophical traditions in which political goals are more or less preeminent. The heroes of CP – Heidegger, Foucault, Deleuze, Derrida – also belong to the past and they, too, have no obvious successors. The History of Philosophy (HP) is pursued by both analytic philosophers and their Continental consoeurs. In Continental Europe – with the exception of Scandinavia and Poland – philosophy is, in large measure, just the history of philosophy. In the Anglosaxophone world most philosophers are not historians of philosophy. The almost total identification of philosophy with its history in Continental Europe reflects massive scepticism about any theoretical ambitions on the part of philosophy. These claims are also uncontroversial, as an examination of the publications of philosophers in Continental Europe easily shows. . . . Read the rest here: http://ontology.buffalo.edu/smith/articles/WhatsWrong.pdf. (Thanks to Ed Brandon for the link.)

Babich, Babette E. "On the Analytic-Continental Divide in Philosophy: Nietzsche's Lying Truth, Heidegger's Speaking Language, and Philosophy."

(From A House Divided: Comparing Analytic and Continental Philosophy. Ed. C. G. Prado. New York: Humanity Books, 2003. 63-103.) . . . What are we doing and what do we mean when we name a being defined utterly beyond human comprehension? Can we think of God? What do we think of when we think we do? How can we know something we cannot know? Can we conceive a divinity, a being greater than which is not to be imagined, an infinite, omnipotent, self-caused creator of the world and everything in it? Or is our monotheistic thought of God, as Nietzsche wondered if it might be, nothing more than a de-deification of a god-filled world, a "monotono-theism" [74] - as Nietzsche named it - little better than, and more than half way to the disenchanted universe of a science bent on replacing divinity with a singularity at the beginning: the big bang as the boy scientist's idea of God. The rationalistic justification of atheism however is itself only another kind of "better knowing." As Nietzsche would say the claim to know and the claim not to know are both overweening claims, presuming in each case to know too much. And the question of freedom, tied to the question of self or the subject, who is it that speaks whenever one speaks? One is not transparent to oneself, one has no more certain knowledge of oneself than one has of the universe, of the past or the future. If one wills one's subjugation is one less or no less subject? If we have discovered mirror neurons, have we solved the problem of consciousness or do we merely presume it, once again? If there are unconscious motivations, if we are beings whose thoughts are manifestations of brain and body functions, what can be said of freedom? What is an illusion, what is truth? what is lie? Nietzsche, who began to raise questions of this kind, as we have seen, reaped a harvest of contradictions in his philosophy - but more insights into the nature of truth and indeed of human beings who use language to think about truth than many other, more sanguine and clear philosophers. To questions like these, and certainly to ones far better framed, analytic philosophers have answers, rather a lot of them, carefully repeated in the literature. For their part (and this should be kept in mind when reading authors like Heidegger and Nietzsche), continental philosophers tend less to answer or conclude inquiry than to compound their own (and our responding) questions - adverting to ambiguity, unclarity, complexity and all the detail that ultimately is required to begin to think philosophy as the meaning of life. It is significant that of the analytic answers given, none would seem to have purchase or staying power, not even for the analysts themselves. Hence and seemingly having exhausted their own mandate and with it their own project, analytic philosophy has begun to turn toward continental philosophy. Not, alas as rapprochement, not by inviting practitioners of continental philosophy to join the discussion, but only and all by themselves, and as if bored to tears by their own analytic themes, taking up the themes (and the names, like Nietzsche, like Heidegger and Deleuze) of continental philosophy. For the analytic tradition is intentionally bankrupt (this is the internal logic of the analytic method) but although rendered moribund at its own hand, within the profession (aka academic and editorial control) it enjoys the power of the majority or dominant tradition. To keep itself going it means to seize (but not to "think") the spiritual capital of a tradition whose own authority is denounced as that of non- or "bad" philosophy. The claim then, as it may be heard from Brian Leiter to Simon Critchley and Manfred Frank but also in almost every analytic book and review on the topic, is that anything continental philosophy can do, analytic philosophy can do better, much better.What makes it so much better is, it goes without saying in this assertion, its much vaunted clarity. But it is a claim that remains ultimately unclear, not only because unclarity belongs to the essence of what it is that continental philosophers do (and because unclarity, the very idea, is anathema to analytic philosophy) but also because the analytic method is ineliminably self-dissolving: whatever it takes into its mind, it ends up clarifying, that is, in Skorupksi's and not only Skorupski's account of it: analyzing away. Analytic philosophy as the clarification of questions or as the enterprise of problem solving works elegantly for idle problems of logic - one thinks of Russell's "tea-table" [75] - or for crossword and other puzzles (or within a closed system or defined universe of variables) but it may be that there is still yet more in heaven (and out of it) than dreamt of in such a philosophy. And continental philosophy in its best practitioners still does know this. Although there has yet to be an authentic conversation between analytic and continental philosophy, so that one justifiably speaks of a dubious estrangement - it still seems to the present author that the best way to resolve this estrangement is not to deny to acknowledge differences between one's own and another's language and theoretical concerns, all for the sake of a "conversation," if we may use Gadamer's all-too ordinary language for this indispensable and fundamentally hermeneutic engagement of one scholar with another. Not in spite of the differences but because of these differences, we might begin by speaking to one another, recognizing the divide between analytic and continental, and so including both in philosophic discourse. Read the rest here: http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/babich02.htm.

Leiter, Brian. "'Analytic' and 'Continental' Philosophy." PHILOSOPHICAL GOURMET REPORT 2006 - 2008.

"Analytic" philosophy today names a style of doing philosophy, not a philosophical program or a set of substantive views. Analytic philosophers, crudely speaking, aim for argumentative clarity and precision; draw freely on the tools of logic; and often identify, professionally and intellectually, more closely with the sciences and mathematics, than with the humanities. (It is fair to say that "clarity" is, regrettably, becoming less and less a distinguishing feature of "analytic" philosophy.) The foundational figures of this tradition are philosophers like Gottlob Frege, Bertrand Russell, the young Ludwig Wittgenstein and G.E. Moore; other canonical figures include Carnap, Quine, Davidson, Kripke, Rawls, Dummett, and Strawson. "Continental" philosophy, by contrast, demarcates a group of French and German philosophers of the 19th and 20th centuries. The geographical label is misleading: Carnap, Frege, and Wittgenstein were all products of the European Continent, but are not "Continental" philosophers. The foundational figure of this tradition is Hegel; other canonical figures include the other post-Kantian German Idealists (e.g., Fichte, Schelling), Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Marx, Nietzsche, Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Sartre, Gadamer, Horkheimer, Adorno, Marcuse, Habermas, and Foucault. Continental philosophy is sometimes distinguished by its style (more literary, less analytical, less reliance on formal logic), its concerns (more interested in actual political and cultural issues and, loosely speaking, the human situation and its "meaning"), and some of its substantive commitments (more self-conscious about the relation of philosophy to its historical situation). . . . Read the rest here: http://www.philosophicalgourmet.com/analytic.asp.

Mulligan, Kevin. "The Great Divide." TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT June 26, 1998, 6-8.

At the turn of the century, Russell, Husserl and Couturat singled out Leibniz the logician as an important precursor of the way they thought philosophy should be done. Like their most gifted contemporaries they conceived of philosophy as essentially argumentative and - as Russell put it in a 1911 talk in French - analytic. Unsurprisingly, the search for the best arguments and analyses meant that good philosophy was cosmopolitan. William James and Ernst Mach were read everywhere. James studied Mach and the pupils of Brentano, whom Stout introduced to Cambridge. Moore recognised the deep kinship between his work on ethics and that of Brentano. Russell was influenced by Peano, used and criticised Meinong and was attacked by Poincaré. Pragmatism was subjected to a series of criticisms by realists in German and in English but gradually began to win adherents, for example in Italy, where Vailati and Calderoni introduced both pragmatism and Austrian philosophy of mind. Philosophy at the end of the century presents a very different aspect. Two very different complex (families of) philosophical traditions occupy the scene - Analytic and Continental philosophy. The terminology is neither happy nor stable. John Searle likens distinguishing between philosophies in this way to the claim that America has two parts, Kansas and business; Bernard Williams compares it to the distinction between cars which are Japanese and those with front-wheel drive. Members of the first tradition hesitate between "analytic" and "analytical" and many of their heroes were in fact from the continent. A short list of such heroes would include the names of Russell and Moore, Wittgenstein, Carnap and Tarski, Quine, Davidson, Kripke, Lewis, Putnam, Nozick and Rawls, Strawson, Armstrong, Dummett, Wiggins, Williams and Evans. Behind them stands the tradition's grandfather, the great German logician and philosopher Gottlob Frege. Among Frege's earliest readers were Couturat and Russell - who immediately proclaimed his importance - and Husserl - who maintained a strange silence on the subject. . . . To read the rest of the essay, please visit the following URL: http://www.unige.ch/lettres/philo/enseignants/km/doc/GreatDivide.pdf.

Rockmore, Tom. "Remarks on the Structure of Twentieth Century Philosophy." METAPHILOSOPHY 35.4 (2004): 466-478.

The first step in considering the structure of twentieth century philosophy is to limit the discussion in identifying the important philosophical movements, those that must be included on any list of what went on in that period. In one sense the answer is simple enough. If we limit the question for the moment to roughly the last hundred years, we know that towards the beginning of the twentieth century, at a time when other philosophical tendencies were in the ascendant, three important movements emerged independently, movements which for different reasons rapidly came to dominate the debate: American pragmatism, so-called continental philosophy, and Anglo-American analytic philosophy. These three tendencies are very different, independent, and cannot be reduced to each other. Much of the discussion over the ensuing century takes the form of a contest for hegemony between them fought out in the philosophical space. Each of these tendencies has its own undeniable charms. It would be a mistake not to be knowledgeable about one or the other. It would be just as mistaken to think that one has a decisive advantage over its philosophical competition. I further think that at a minimum all three of them must be taken into account to have any hope of arriving at a viable understanding of the evolution of the recent debate. Anything less, an account which fails to consider one or another of these tendencies, presents a false view of the debate in the twentieth century. In different ways and to different degrees, these three tendencies have dominated the philosophical debate since they emerged. Their fortunes have been very varied. As a result of a variety of pressures, after they emerged each of them later changed in ways that perhaps could not have been foreseen. Analytic philosophy, which for about a half century has clearly been the dominant tendency in English-speaking countries, although that may be changing, emerged in part through a struggle against British idealism in England. This struggle was pioneered by Russell and Moore, classmates at the University of Cambridge and the thinkers most responsible for the emergence of analytic philosophy in England. Ever since Frege, analytic philosophy has been concerned with the semantic problem under the heading of reference (or what Russell called denotation). About a century later, analytic philosophy seems to be in the process of abandoning a theoretical approach to reference, hence the very problem as originally understood, while turning to pragmatism and curiously to Hegel. In different ways, for Quine, Putnam, Rorty, and Brandom, though not for McDowell a neo-analytic form of pragmatism is increasingly seen as the most viable alternative to a formal theory of reference. Continental philosophy emerged in Husserl’s breakthrough to phenomenology and continued through Heidegger, then later through such others as Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Gadamer, and Derrida. Yet understood as phenomenology it was severely tested by Heidegger, and seems, with some exceptions, to have sharply declined after his death. Heidegger’s theories, which he officially constructs on his reading of Husserl – Being and Time, his major work, is dedicated to Husserl – seem less to continue than rather sharply to oppose a number of central tenets of Husserl’s position, such as reduction, essential intuition, and the claimed link to Cartesianism. There is a lot of confusion about what ‘phenomenology’ means. Yet if the truth be told, Heidegger contributes less to prolonging than to putting an abrupt end to what has been called the phenomenological movement. Although there are still many philosophers committed to phenomenology, it is unclear that, beyond the term, they share anything approaching a central doctrinal commitment. Pragmatism, which is the only indigenous American philosophical movement, nearly came to a halt when Dewey died. Although it was still studied after Dewey, there was little original work from the time of his death in 1952 until, say, the end of the 1970s, when it was taken up and transformed by a number of important analytic thinkers. It has lately been revived in very different form, mainly through Rorty’s efforts, through the migration, or conversion, of such analytic stalwarts as Quine, Putnam and Rorty to neo-analytic pragmatism. Peirce, the inventor of pragmatism, was a strong critic of Cartesian epistemological foundationalism, which he criticized in a series of articles in the 1880s. Pragmatism, which emerged in the wake of Peirce’s canonical critique of Descartes, has always been a very pluralist movement centered on the concern to continue the discussion of knowledge on a non-foundationalist basis (see Rescher 2000). Yet neo-analytic pragmatism arguably consists in a collection of theories which bears little direct relation to the views of Peirce, who founded the movement. In simplest terms, pragmatism has now split into scholarly discussion of first-generation American pragmatists such as Peirce, James and Dewey, and so-called neo-analytic pragmatism, including such thinkers as Rorty, Putnam, and now Brandom, concerned to appropriate selected pragmatic themes for their analytic concerns, on the other. . . . For the rest of this essay, please visit the following URL: http://www.arsdisputandi.org/index.html?http://www.arsdisputandi.org/publish/articles/000128/index.html.