Johnny Foreigner

REVIEWS Johnny foreigner Simon Glendinning, ed., The Edinburgh Encyclopedia of Continental Philosophy, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, 1999. xiv + 685 pp., £80.00 hb., 0 7486 0783 8. If the Encyclopédie project of Diderot et al. is quotes Ryle (of whom one might have expected better) remembered today, it is not because it is much con- addressing an audience in France at a supposedly sulted, but for the tremendous Enlightenment optimism bridge-building conference in 1958, explaining how that made its conception (if not its completion) pos- analytic philosophers have avoided the puff and pre- sible. In historical terms, it is the idea of the Ency- tension of the continent. In contrast to the likes of clopédie that is most important, not what is contained Husserl, says Ryle, within the volumes themselves. The idea of the or British thinkers have showed no inclination to even an Encyclopedia is, however, beginning to look assimilate philosophical to scientific enquiry.… increasingly like a Borgesian fantasy. Most contem- I guess that our thinkers have been immunized porary encyclopedias are decidedly (purposefully) against the idea of philosophy as the Mistress of limited in scope; to be successful they must function, Science by the fact that their daily lives in Cam- bridge and Oxford Colleges have kept them in con- immediately and with some enduring relevance, as tact with real scientists. Claims to Führership vanish sources of reference and information to be used in when postprandial joking begins. Husserl wrote as if piecemeal fashion. To this extent, The Edinburgh he had never met a scientist – or a joke. Encyclopedia of Continental Philosophy works. The Edinburgh Encyclopedia is also, however, the Perhaps the reference to Führership (alluding, as Glen- expression of a grand idea. To this extent, it does not dinning notes, to Husserl – a Jew) indicates what the work. The aim of the encyclopedia, according to its character of this postprandial joking might have been editor Simon Glendinning, is to reveal to the world of like. In a slightly different vein, Glendinning quotes Anglo-American analytic philosophers that so-called R.M. Hare from his lectures on British philosophy, this continental philosophy is neither dangerous nor stupid; time to various German audiences in 1957: that there is no compelling philosophical explanation We do not think it a duty to write books; still less for the continental/analytic divide; and that if they do we think it a duty to read more than a few of – the analytic philosophers to whom Glendinningʼs the books which others write.… Our duty is to Introduction is wholly and unambiguously addressed discuss philosophy with our colleagues and to teach our pupils to do the same – books and articles are – were only to read some continental work ʻin the an unconsidered by-product of this process; their right spirit and … with goodwillʼ this would become content is generally quite familiar from verbal clear. discussion years before they get published … [Brit- Glendinning adopts the strong thesis that the idea ish philosophers] find it hard to discuss philosophy of ʻcontinental philosophyʼ does not just originate with with, or read the books of, people who do not even analytic philosophy, but survives only as its defining seem worried about convincing the sceptic that their philosophical propositions mean something. ʻnot-partʼ. ʻContinental philosophyʼ staggers under the burden of its constitutive negative implications. The lesson that Glendinning draws from these quo- According to the analytic philosophical tradition which tations – and others like them – is that this arrogant coined it, it means inferior philosophy: what, qua doltishness is more or less all that characterizes the analytic philosopher, one does not do, but also what analytic justifications for any substantive differences ought not to be done. For what one hears coming from between analytic and continental philosophy. (Glen- the continent is not the clearly enunciated vowels of dinning, though, is a tad more polite, given that it ʻordinaryʼ English but the incomprehensible jabberings is the analytic side that he is addressing.) Ryleʼs and of Johnny foreigner, not just odd and perverse but Hareʼs standards of philosophical rigour dissolve on morally pernicious. contact with this question, and there remains no philo- If this is a caricature, it is one that analytic philosophical reason for the division of philosophy into two sophers have, on occasion, lived up to. Glendinning incompatible streams. They have always been and are 42 Radical Philosophy 102 (July/August 2000) now held apart, Glendinning writes, by ʻgulf-seeking to study them. For whilst Glendinning may be right polemicsʼ for which a psychoanalytically structured that the label first spewed forth from Oxbridge, it has explanation is more appropriate: externalization of subsequently been appropriated precisely in order to (analytic) philosophyʼs internal possibility of failure gain some critical distance from the Ryle/Hare mental- – sophistry. The category of ʻcontinental philosophyʼ ity exhibited above. Continental philosophy in Britain, survives, according to Glendinning ʻonly as long as especially, has achieved a level of self-determination the thinkers and themes [of continental philosophy] which Glendinningʼs remarks fail to recognize – a are not only supposed not worth reading but, in fact, self-determination which long ago dispensed with the are not seriously readʼ. fawning need for Oxbridge acceptance. That Glendinningʼs imagined readership comprises Were Hare a young man today, his attitude towards analytic philosophers is clear, given that the ʻlong publication would, of course, make him unemployable. obscure booksʼ to which Hare refers are in fact seri- And so much the worse for British intellectual life, a ously read by quite a few non-analytic philosophers chorus of voices cry. But the principle of the RAE in the Anglophone world. It also betrays – whether funding system – suitably adjusted to dispel the fiction consciously or not – a certain accommodation to the of that level playing field on which one plays cricket supposed analytic audience, which misses much of in white – looks veritably meritocratic compared to the point of the practice of ʻcontinental philosophyʼ the aristocracy of Oxbridge philosophical hegemony. in Britain over the last few decades. There is no sug- To be fair, Hare is, of course, a dinosaur and an easy gestion, for example, that the will-oʼ-the-wisp nature target here. To many in the thriving non-xenophobic of the category of analytic philosophy will also be analytic and post-analytic scene (viz., Glendinning) revealed. Rather, continental philosophy, once read and Hareʼs comments are excruciatingly embarrassing, understood, will be assimilated into the analytic tradi- because, on the whole, analytic philosophers are not tion, because there is no good philosophical reason like this any more. not to do so. In a connected manner, the idea that On the other hand, British philosophy is still domin- the phrase ʻcontinental philosophyʼ is primarily a ated – numerically, culturally, financially, and in terms disparaging one fails to acknowledge those who use of institutional power – by Oxbridge or practitioners it otherwise: for example, those who set up courses of the Oxbridge style. According to Glendinning, the in ʻContinental Philosophyʼ in British university phil- hostility towards continental philosophy from these osophy departments, and the students who choose quarters is based primarily on political and cultural Radical Philosophy 102 (July/August 2000) 43 differences masquerading as philosophical disagree- sections comprises a general introduction and six or so ment, and his hope is that a philosophical appreciation essays of some five or six thousand words on individual of analytic/continental commonalities would cut across thinkers or, more rarely, on sub-themes. However, there the political-cultural and institutional divide. However, is little editorial coherence in the scope and ambition this overlooks the inextricable intertwinement of the of the essays. In probably the best of the sections, ʻThe philosophical with the cultural-political, which is one Frankfurt School and Critical Theoryʼ, the essays on of the first principles of twentieth-century continental Horkheimer, Adorno, Marcuse, Benjamin, Bloch and philosophy. Glendinningʼs ʻsolutionʼ actually reaffirms Habermas all attempt to cover the intellectual careers the location of the problem in the realm of philosophy, of their subjects in their entirety, and each is about as a location that it claims to deny. In effect, Glendinning authoritative an introduction of this length that one is envisages an overcoming of the continental/analytic likely to get. In the section on ʻClassical Idealismʼ, on divide in Idea only. In Britain, however – the only the other hand, the essay on Kant deals only with the place, really, where the distinction is significant – this Critique of Pure Reason and that on Hegel restricts is not a problem that is going to go away whilst the itself to the Phenomenology of Spirit. Within these various institutional and political conditions which self-imposed limitations each of these pieces would gave rise to it remain in place. Ryle and Hareʼs refer- certainly function well as an introduction, which is, in ences – implicit and explicit – to high table, the senior fact, how the encyclopedia will actually be used. Still, common room, the tutorial system, the intimate,

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