[HN Gopher] Analytic versus Continental Philosophy (2009)
___________________________________________________________________
Analytic versus Continental Philosophy (2009)
Author : bluetomcat
Score : 30 points
Date : 2022-07-21 07:48 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (philosophynow.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (philosophynow.org)
| bluetomcat wrote:
| I think it can be better summarised as "Anglo-French rationalism
| versus post-Kantian German idealism". The first view asserts that
| we can accumulate knowledge by reason alone, whereas the second
| view asserts that our mind constructs representations of the
| real-world objects by ideas alone. It's an intellectual lineage
| that has given birth to most political ideologies and grand
| narratives.
| jfengel wrote:
| I'm rather a dilettante on this, so perhaps a question will
| help me clarify it.
|
| I'm a bit surprised that you call it "Anglo-French"
| rationalism. I'd always associated the French with the
| continental tradition; the main names I know associated with
| continental philosophy are French. I'd thought it was called
| "continental" in explicit contrast with the British (and
| Anglophones in general).
|
| Is there a large French "analytic" tradition that's getting
| swept under the carpet here?
|
| I gather that the entire argument about the distinction is
| rather moot here. But I think I may also be missing your point
| entirely, and I'm curious if you could elaborate.
| bluetomcat wrote:
| > Is there a large French "analytic" tradition that's getting
| swept under the carpet here?
|
| Rene Descartes is considered to be the father of rationalism,
| meaning that knowledge can be obtained through reason and
| logic alone. The British tradition is more deeply rooted in
| empiricism with regards to observing natural phenomena, but
| it is not at odds with rationalism.
| jfengel wrote:
| Ah, thank you. That's the context I needed.
| thyrsus wrote:
| I am reminded of the recent experiment confirming quantum
| mechanics: reality does not exist until it is measured, but
| once measured it is a _shared_ reality among the observers[0].
| And what is measurement? The assigning of names such that the
| name can be shared among observers - and once the names are
| assigned, you can manipulate the names in a more (mathematic)
| or less (poetic) rigorous fashion (there are, of course,
| gradations in rigor). So: Anglo-French rationalism is true, at
| least for pure mathematics which explicitly disclaims
| application to any specific real-world object - but once we
| start discussing experience, perception (an accumulation of
| measurements, again, more or less rigorous) must occur so that
| reason can be applied. Until each of us has multiple universe-
| size supercomputers available, mathematical rigor cannot be
| applied to to the most important aspects of life, such as love
| (and even then, only if it escapes a Goedel-like
| undecidability).
|
| [0] https://www.science.org/content/article/reality-doesn-t-
| exis...
| gus_massa wrote:
| > _reality does not exist until it is measured_
|
| It's a weird way to explain the result of the experiment. The
| experiment is some variant of the ERP paradox and the result
| is that the polarization of a pair of entangled photons is
| not defined until it's measured, that is well known since
| many years. They use two properties of the photons (for some
| strange game for technical reasons?), but the result is not
| more surprising that the usual Bell inequality experiment.
|
| It just means that polarization of a pair of entangled
| photons is not defined until it's measured, not that reality
| exists or not.
| __sisyphus__ wrote:
| This is how I've always understood it as well. It's probably
| not quite this simple, but for a couple of sentences, I can't
| imagine having a much clearer picture.
|
| Part of me wants to replace "post-Kantian" with some sort of
| Hegelian descriptor, but I suppose the difference in meaning
| would be somewhat negligible. I've just always felt like every
| continental philosophy since Hegel has essentially been a
| response to him less than Kant, but Kant certainly provided the
| foundation for what was to come.
| fmajid wrote:
| They should have started with this Cicero quote instead:
|
| "There is nothing so absurd that it has not been said by some
| philosopher."
| gexaha wrote:
| The summary is a bit outdated (as can be seen by the year). I
| don't know any articles about recent intersections between
| analytic and continental philosophies (and the split between them
| seems irrelevant nowadays), but you could check various
| philosophers, like Robert Brandom, Quentin Meillassoux, Reza
| Negarestani or Ray Brassier.
| thebooktocome wrote:
| It is interesting that the split does seem irrelevant these
| days.
|
| Reflecting back, it seems to me like a lot of the wind spilled
| from continental sails after Derrida died with no clear
| intellectual inheritor.
|
| Anyway, this is an interesting insight, thanks.
| thomasjudge wrote:
| Recovering former philosopher (well, grad student) here, can
| one of you say more about why "the split does seem irrelevant
| these days"?
| Schiphol wrote:
| While there is much more cross-talk these days, and relying
| on the A-C distinction is (at least in the analytic camp)
| frowned upon, rumors of its demise have been greatly
| exaggerated.
| zvmaz wrote:
| > Analytic philosophy should be able to enter into phenomenology,
| existentialism, literature, and politics with the same enthusiasm
| as continental philosophy
|
| It _is_ able and very good at that, and way better then what
| continental philosophers have produced.
|
| A few examples: Colin McGinn for Literature: Ethics, Evil, and
| Fiction, David Benatar for "Existentialism": The Human
| Predicament, Peter Singer for Politics: The Darwinian Left.
| Schiphol wrote:
| Analytic philosophers (I am one of them) have produced
| excellent work that engages deeply with the phenomenological
| tradition. Dan Zahavi or Tony Chemero come to mind. But
| "continental" philosophers (Merleau-Ponty, Sartre, Heidegger)
| have produced extremely deep, much more influential work.
| That's because they _are_ the phenomenological tradition.
| hyperpape wrote:
| This article is not entirely bad, but I think it still overstates
| the distinction.
|
| It is true that there's something of a divergence, where analytic
| philosophers are much more likely to read Russell, Wittgenstein,
| Quine and Lewis, while continental philosophers are more likely
| to read Heidegger or Derrida. There are accompanying differences
| in style and "feel". But it is extremely hard to generate robust
| generalizations about differences. For any high level
| philosophical position, you can find authors on both sides
| arguing for or against it.
|
| Additionally, while early in the 20th century, you could try to
| argue that analytic philosophy had a core of logical analysis (in
| the sense of Russell/early Wittgenstein, Logical Positivism,
| Carnap) and ordinary language, starting in the 1960s, the field
| increasingly fragments, and becomes more varied in the topics it
| studies, the approaches it takes, and so on. By the present day,
| we have "analytic philosophers" like Kieran Setiya writing a book
| on Mid-Life Crises, or Laurie Paul writing about whether one can
| anticipate the experience of parenthood
| (https://lapaul.org/papers/whatCantExpect.pdf).
|
| All in all, it's true that there are two relatively independent
| traditions, it's hard to say much more about them than "people
| tend to read different books, and that has some influence on how
| they approach matters."
| [deleted]
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-07-22 23:02 UTC)