The Analytic / Continental Divide
From analysis of arithmetic to the philosophy of logical analysis: all significant thought and discourse can be analyzed into elementary propositions that directly picture states of affairs
The Analytic / Continental Divide
Analytic philosophers make notoriously bad historians . . . NOT BUT Frege/Husserl Bentham/Coledridge (ca. 1905) (ca. 1780)
The Analytic / Continental Divide
Philosophical Methods and Results like Science! “Since science in principle can say all that can be said there is no unanswerable question left.” (Schlick, 1918)
Quine
The Analytic / Continental Divide
Who? When? What? Why? & Who cares? Anglo-American philosophers (ca. 1970) Analytic / Continental distinction is a professional self-description Distinguish philosophy from nonsense Study Abroad / Ridicule
The Analytic / Continental Divide
Carnap (Late Wittgenstein)
Contemporary Analytic philosophers: “think and write in the analytic spirit, respectful of science, both as a paradigm of reasonable belief and in conformity with its argumentative rigor, its clarity, and its determination to be objective” (OCP, 1995)
analytic and Continental traditions” (CCCP, p. 1)
The Analytic / Continental Divide
The Analytic / Continental Divide
The ‘Analytic’/’Continental’ distinction is a product of analytic, not Continental philosophy!
Two experimental methods in chemistry:
Chemical Analysis Chemical Synthesis
The Analytic / Continental Divide
Analytic philosophy is philosophical method II.a) What is Analysis? Analysis = decomposition
The Analytic / Continental Divide
Relativity Theory ‘space’ and ‘time’ ‘matter’ ‘events’ Psychology mind as ‘mental’ mind as ‘physical’ ‘space-time’
The Analytic / Continental Divide
Philosophical problem-solving: e.g. ‘existence’ since Plato’s Theaetetus “The golden mountain does not exist’ = “There is no entity c such that ‘x is golden and mountainous’ is true when x is c, but not otherwise”
OVERVIEW: Part 1: History of Distinction Part 2: Systematic Analysis of Distinction CONCLUSIONS:
The Analytic / Continental Divide
Part 1: History of the distinction “Kant . . . final great figure common to both
The Analytic / Continental Divide
Warning: Category conflation ‘Continental’ ‘Analytic’ Geography Method
However: ‘Analytic’ & ‘Continental’ are used
The Analytic / Continental Divide
The Analytic / Continental Divide
Two part characterization: “What distinguishes analytical philosophy, in its diverse manifestations, from other schools is the belief, first, that a philosophical account of thought can be attained through a philosophical account of language, and, secondly, that a comprehensive account can only be so attained” (Dummett, 1993)
The Analytic / Continental Divide
Part II: Systematic Approach What is the distinction between ‘analytic’ and ‘Continental philosophy? What does this distinction between analytic and Continental philosophy mean? II.a) What does ‘analytic’ mean? II.b) What does ‘Continental’ mean? II.c) What distinguishes them?
The Analytic / Continental Divide
Origins of Analytic Philosophy:
From Frege through Russell & Wittgenstein to Vienna & Berlin
The Analytic / Continental Divide
“Philosophy is not one of the natural sciences . . . The result of philosophy is not a number of ‘philosophical propositions’, but to make propositions clear.” (Wittgenstein)
The Analytic / Continental Divide
philosophy of logical analysis
philosophy of language
The Analytic / Continental Divide
Ordinary Language Philosophy or Linguistic Philosophy (1945-1960, Austin, Ryle)
The Analytic / Continental Divide
Examples: 1. material objects 2. mental states sense-data behavioral dispositions
The Analytic / Continental Divide
Historical context of the movement
Two related difficulties: 1) technical nature 2) historical context “”Continuity” had been, a vague word convenient for philosophers like Hegel, who wished to introduce metaphysical muddles into mathematics. . . . . . . . . a great deal of mysticism, such as that of Bergson, was renderd antiquated” (Russell. 1945)
The Analytic / Continental Divide
"Frege was the grandfather of analytical philosophy, Husserl the founder of the phenomenological school, two radically different philosophical movements . . . remarkably close in orientation . . . They may be compared with the Rhine and the Danube, which rise quite close to one another and for a time pursue roughly parallel courses, only to diverge in utterly different directions and flow into different seas„ (Dummett, 1993)