Analytic vs.

Continental Philosophy - The New York Times

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THE STONE

Bridging the Analytic-Continental Divide

By Gary Gutting

February 19, 2012 5:00 pm

The Stone is a forum for contemporary philosophers and other thinkers on issues
both timely and timeless.
Many philosophers at leading American departments are specialists in metaphysics: the study
of the most general aspects of reality such as being and time. The major work of one of the
most prominent philosophers of the 20th century, Martin Heidegger, is Being and Time, a
profound study of these two topics. Nonetheless, hardly any of these American
metaphysicians have paid serious attention to Heideggers book.

The standard explanation for this oddity is that the metaphysicians are
analytic philosophers, whereas Heidegger is a continental philosopher.
Although the two sorts of philosophers seldom read one anothers work, when
they do, the results can be ugly. A famous debate between Jacques Derrida
(continental) and John Searle (analytic) ended with Searle denouncing Derridas
obscurantism and Derrida mocking Searles superficiality.
The distinction between analytic and continental philosophers seems odd, first
of all, because it contrasts a geographical characterization (philosophy done on
the European continent, particularly Germany and France) with a
methodological one (philosophy done by analyzing concepts). Its like, as
Bernard Williams pointed out, dividing cars into four-wheel-drive and made-inJapan. It becomes even odder when we realize that some of the founders of
analytic philosophy (like Frege and Carnap) were Europeans, that many of the
leading centers of continental philosophy are at American universities, and
that many analytic philosophers have no interest in analyzing concepts.
Some attention to history helps make sense of the distinction. In the early
20th century, philosophers in England (Russell, Moore, Wittgenstein) and in
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Germany and Austria (Carnap, Reichenbach, Hempel all of whom, with the
rise of the Nazis, emigrated to the United States) developed what they saw as a
radically new approach to philosophy, based on the new techniques of symbolic
logic developed by Frege and Russell.
The basic idea was that philosophical problems could be solved (or
dissolved) by logically analyzing key terms, concepts or propositions. (Russells
analysis of definite descriptions of what does not exist e.g., The present King
of France remains a model of such an approach.) Over the years, there were
various forms of logical, linguistic and conceptual analysis, all directed toward
resolving confusions in previous philosophical thought and presented as
examples of analytic philosophy. Eventually, some philosophers, especially
Quine, questioned the very idea of analysis as a distinctive philosophical
method. But the goals of clarity, precision, and logical rigor remained, and
continue to define the standards for a type of philosophy that calls itself analytic
and is dominant in English-speaking countries.
At roughly the same time that analytic philosophy was emerging, Edmund
Husserl was developing his phenomenological approach to philosophy. He
too emphasized high standards of clarity and precision, and had some fruitful
engagements with analytic philosophers such as Frege. Husserl, however,
sought clarity and precision more in the rigorous description of our immediate
experience (the phenomena) than in the logical analysis of concepts or
language. He saw his phenomenology as operating at the fundamental level of
knowledge on which any truths of conceptual or linguistic analysis would have
to be based. In Being and Time Husserls student, Heidegger, turned
phenomenology toward existential questions about freedom, anguish and
death. Later, French thinkers influenced by Husserl and Heidegger, especially
Sartre and Merleau-Ponty, developed their own versions of phenomenologically
based existentialism.
The term continental philosophy was, as Simon Critchley and Simon
Glendinning have emphasized, to an important extent the invention of analytic
philosophers of the mid-20th century who wanted to distinguish themselves
from the phenomenologists and existentialists of continental Europe. These
analytic philosophers (Gilbert Ryle was a leading figure) regarded the
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continental appeal to immediate experience as a source of subjectivity and

obscurity that was counter to their own ideals of logical objectivity and clarity.
The analytic-continental division was institutionalized in 1962, when American
proponents of continental philosophy set up their own professional
organization, The Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy
(SPEP), as an alternative to the predominantly (but by no means exclusively)
analytic American Philosophical Association (APA).
Over the last 50 years, the term continental philosophy has been extended
to many other European movements, such as Hegelian idealism, Marxism,
hermeneutics and, especially, poststructuralism and deconstruction. These are
often in opposition to phenomenology and existentialism, but analytic
philosophers still see them as falling far short of standards or clarity and rigor.
As a result, as Brian Leiter has emphasized, continental philosophy today
designates a series of partly overlapping traditions in philosophy, some of
whose figures have almost nothing in common with [each] other.
The scope of analytic philosophy has likewise broadened over the years.
In the 1950s, it typically took the form of either logical positivism or ordinarylanguage philosophy, each of which involved commitment to a specific mode of
analysis (roughly, following either Carnap or Wittgenstein) as well as
substantive philosophical views. These views involved a rejection of much
traditional philosophy (especially metaphysics and ethics) as essentially
meaningless. There was, in particular, no room for religious belief or objective
ethical norms. Today, analytic philosophers use a much wider range of methods
(including quasi-scientific inference to the best explanation and their own
versions of phenomenological description). Also, there are analytic cases being
made for the full range of traditional philosophical positions, including the
existence of God, mind-body dualism, and objective ethical norms.
Various forms of empiricism and naturalism are still majority views, but
any philosophical position can be profitably developed using the tools of
analytic philosophy. There are Thomists and Hegelians who are analytic
philosophers, and there is even a significant literature devoted to expositions of
major continental philosophers in analytic terms. The claim that working in the
analytic mode restricts the range of our philosophical inquiry no longer has any
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basis.
This development refutes the claim that analytic philosophers, as Santiago
Zabala recently put it, do not discuss the fundamental questions that have
troubled philosophers for millennia. This was true in the days of positivism,
but no more. Zabalas claim that analytic philosophers have not produced deep
historical research is similarly outdated. It was true back when the popularity
of Russells A History of Western Philosophy signaled the analytic disdain for
serious history. Now, however, even though many analytic philosophers still
have little interest in history, many of the best current historians of philosophy
employ the conceptual and argumentative methods of analytic philosophy.
Because of such developments, Leiter has argued that there are no longer
substantive philosophical differences between analytic and continental
philosophy, although there are sometimes important differences of style. He
has also suggested that the only gap in principle between the two camps is
sociological, that (these are my examples) philosophers in one camp discount
the work of those in the other simply because of their personal distaste for
symbolic logic or for elaborate literary and historical discussions.
I agree with much of what Leiter says, but think there are still important
general philosophical differences between analytic philosophy and continental
philosophy, in all their current varieties. These differences concern their
conceptions of experience and of reason as standards of evaluation. Typically,
analytic philosophy appeals to experience understood as common-sense
intuitions (as well as their developments and transformations by science) and to
reason understood as the standard rules of logical inference. A number of
continental approaches claim to access a privileged domain of experience that
penetrates beneath the veneer of common sense and science experience. For
example, phenomenologists, such as Husserl, the early Heidegger, Sartre and
Merleau-Ponty try to describe the concretely lived experience from which
common-sense/scientific experience is a pale and distorted abstraction, like the
mathematical frequencies that optics substitutes for the colors we perceive in
the world. Similarly, various versions of neo-Kantianism and idealism point to a
transcendental or absolute consciousness that provides the fuller
significance of our ordinary experiences.
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Other versions of continental thought regard the essential activity of reason

not as the logical regimentation of thought but as the creative exercise of
intellectual imagination. This view is characteristic of most important French
philosophers since the 1960s, beginning with Foucault, Derrida and Deleuze.
They maintain that the standard logic analytic philosophers use can merely
explicate what is implicit in the concepts with which we happen to begin; such
logic is useless for the essential philosophical task, which they maintain is
learning to think beyond these concepts.
Continental philosophies of experience try to probe beneath the concepts of
everyday experience to discover the meanings that underlie them, to think the
conditions for the possibility of our concepts. By contrast, continental
philosophies of imagination try to think beyond those concepts, to, in some
sense, think what is impossible.
Philosophies of experience and philosophies of imagination are in tension,
since the intuitive certainties of experience work as limits to creative intellectual
imagination, which in turn challenges those alleged limits. Michel Foucault
nicely expressed the tension when he spoke of the competing philosophical
projects of critique in the sense of knowing what limits knowledge has to
renounce transgressing and of a practical critique that takes the form of a
possible transgression. However, a number of recent French philosophers
(e.g., Levinas, Ricoeur, Badiou and Marion) can be understood as developing
philosophies that try to reconcile phenomenological experience and
deconstructive creativity.
In view of their substantive philosophical differences, its obvious that
analytic and continental philosophers would profit by greater familiarity with
one anothers work, and discussions across the divide would make for a better
philosophical world. Here, however, there is a serious lack of symmetry
between analytic and continental thought. This is due to the relative clarity of
most analytic writing in contrast to the obscurity of much continental work.
Because of its commitment to clarity, analytic philosophy functions as an
effective lingua franca for any philosophical ideas. (Even the most difficult
writers, such as Sellars and Davidson, find disciples who write clarifying
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commentaries.) There is, moreover, a continuing demand for analytic

expositions of major continental figures. Its obvious why there is no
corresponding market for, say, expositions of Quine, Rawls or Kripke in the
idioms of Heidegger, Derrida or Deleuze. With all due appreciation for the
limits of what cannot be said with full clarity, training in analytic philosophy
would greatly improve the writing of most continental philosophers.
Of course, analytic philosophers could often profit from exposure to
continental ideas. Epistemologists, for example, could learn a great deal from
the phenomenological analyses of Husserl and Merleau-Ponty, and
metaphysicians could profit from the historical reflections of Heidegger and
Derrida. But in view of the unnecessary difficulty of much continental writing,
most analytic philosophers will do better to rely on a second-hand acquaintance
through reliable and much more accessible secondary sources.
It may be that the most strikingly obscure continental writing (e.g., of the
later Heidegger and of most major French philosophers since the 1960s) is a
form of literary expression, producing a kind of abstract poetry from its creative
transformations of philosophical concepts. This would explain the move of
academic interest in such work toward English and other language
departments. But it is hard to see that there is much of serious philosophical
value lost in the clarity of analytic commentaries on Heidegger, Derrida, et al.
There are some encouraging recent signs of philosophers following
philosophical problems wherever they are interestingly discussed, regardless of
the authors methodology, orientation or style. But the primary texts of leading
continental philosophers are still unnecessary challenges to anyone trying to
come to terms with them. The continental-analytic gap will begin to be bridged
only when seminal thinkers of the Continent begin to write more clearly.
Gary Gutting is a professor of philosophy at the University of Notre Dame,
and an editor of Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. He is the author of, most
recently, Thinking the Impossible: French Philosophy since 1960, and writes
regularly for The Stone.

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