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Philosophy and the Analytic-Continental Divide, 17.2-3

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Philosophy and the Analytic-Continental Divide, 17.2-3 claim. Analytic philosophers are not much interested in In : 1993 in Stanford French Review, Special number: Philosophy and the either defining or defending the presuppositions of their Analytic-Continental Divide, 17.2-3, ed. Pascal Engel, 133-150. work. Indeed the gap between "analytic" and "non-analytic" philosophy nowadays coincides pretty closely with the division between philosophers who are not interested in POST-CONTINENTAL PHILOSOPHY. historico-metaphilosophical reflections on their own activity NOSOLOGICAL NOTES* and philosophers who are...2 Kevin Mulligan I should like in this essay to furnish some of the connections between nosology and history that will enable us to understand how Continental Philosophy came to occupy the §1 An Analysis position it did and what we may now look forward to. §2 A History §3 An Example: Musil, not Dewey §1 An Analysis By "Continental philosophy" (CP) I mean the sort of Born 80 years ago, Continental Philosophy is on its last philosophy produced by or in the wake of philosophers such as legs. Its extraordinary career has been helped along by an almost Husserl, Heidegger and Adorno, Habermas and Apel, Sartre and total absence of interest on the part of analytic or other exact L‚vinas, Foucault, Lacan, Althusser, Lyotard, Deleuze and Derrida, philosophers in what the Australian philosopher David Stove calls Severino and Vattimo. Skew to such a characterisation in terms of "the nosology of philosophy"1, the exploration of the manifold proper names there is also the possibility of characterising CP in forms taken by bad philosophy. Stove points out that such an terms of movements and tendencies such as "Critical Theory", enterprise involves doing history. A nosology of Continental "Decontructionism", "Structuralism", "Neo-Structuralism", "Feeble Philosophy is, at least in the first instance, inseparable from philosophy" (filosofia debole), many varieties of feminist and the history of this strand in twentieth century philosophy, a marxist thought and "Theory" tout court, pregnant like the Irish history which would make clear the relations, philosophical and bull, widespread and proudly unqualified. historical, between it and exact philosophy. Rorty is quite right to point to the absence of such a historical perspective: CP is in many ways an Anglo-American creation. It is by no means identical with philosophy on the continent, analytic or non- Analytic philosophy has pretty well closed itself off from analytic, continental philosophy. Nor is the term much used or contact with non-analytic philosophy and lives in its own understood on the continent. But it is true that since an enormous world. The scientistic aproach to philosophy which Husserl proportion of philosophers on the continent are actually shared with Carnap lives on, forming a tacit presupposition historians of philosophy the figures mentioned would have to of the work of analytic philosophers. Even though analytic figure prominently in any account of philosophy done on the philosophy now describes itself as post-positivistic, the continent. idea that philosophy "analyses" or "describes" some ahistorical formal "structures" - an idea common to Husserl, The contrasts between the way CP has been done and the way Russell, Carnap and Ryle - persists. However, there is little Analytic Philosophy is done are familiar. Analytic philosophy is explicit metaphilosophical defense or development of this first and foremost the culture of the argument, of the objection, of the distinction, of description, examples and counter-examples, even of theory construction. Whatever an analytic philosopher's * This essay complements Mulligan 1990 & 1991 and summarizes a series of lectures, Superficialities and other actual views about philosophy and science his practise almost Holes: Analytic vs Continental Philosophy (the Agnes Cumings Lectures), given at University College, Dublin, invariably exemplifies a severely theoretical attitude. in May 1992. I am grateful to Dermot Moran, Richard Kearney and others in Dublin for their comments. Thanks also to Jack Smart for putting me right about the correct Australian line on nosology and to Paul Mullen. On the topic of this essay, see the papers in Mulligan (ed.) 1991. CP, on the other hand, is melodramatic. The melodrama begins with the strident oppositions between organic Kultur and dead 1 Stove 1991, 188. Stove emphasizes that "we have as yet scarcely the glimmerings of...a nosology of human Zivilisation in Germany in the twenties. Heidegger accuses the thought" (187) although identification of examples of the pathology of human thought is so easy. He is also entire Western tradition of failing to see that the meaning of concerned to show how such examples can be found even in the writings of very good philosophers. Being involves more than mere presence. Derrida's version of this 2 Rorty 1991, II, 21. But see Skorupski 1991. melodrama is slightly more precise: the special case of the structuralist ideas, Hegelian anthropology and Freud. Habermas and ideology of presence he denounces with great eloquence is the Apel combine certain traditional moves within transcendental privilege accorded to speech and the "repression" of writing. philosophy with bits and pieces of analytic philosophy, Ethnocentrism and logocentrism "control" the concept of writing; particularly ideas from that part of the philosophy of language writing is seen as a "contamination"; it is "subversive", that deals with pragmatics. "Quelle salade !", Sartre rightly "feared". And in general the philosopher who sees through one or noted, might well be the reaction to Being and Nothingness. another of these great illusions requires above all great courage. "Syncretism", in one of its senses, is a pejorative term. But CP contains few examples of the pursuit of a thesis, of an of course the fact that a philosopher combines two or more ideas, increase in the understanding of a position. It is very rare to however distinct their provenance, is never by itself a bad thing. find a claim that has been modified as the result of discussion by It is completely unimportant where a good idea comes from. a number of philosophers. Positions are elaborated and then Syncretic philosophy is bad philosophy only when it is combined jettisoned. This lack of any continuing dialectics in CP may be with the illness I called under-determination: in particular, it held to count in favour of the view that it is a spurious entity, is only when the links between philosophemes from very different a product perhaps of the North American job market. But this would traditions or heterogenous sources - eg topology and Freud - are be to underestimate the extent to which there really is not made out that we get the characteristically Continental disagreement and opposition within CP - think of Sartre vs Lévi- variety of free association of ideas. Strauss and Foucault, Gadamer vs Habermas or Deleuze and Guattari vs Lacan. The trappings of disagreement are there. But there is CP almost invariably has politically progressive allures. It very little precise controversy. This is due, amongst other is often politically melodramatic. This is obviously the case for things, to another feature of CP. the more directly political philosophies within CP such as the anarchisms of Deleuze and Lyotard, the Marxism of Althusser or the CP contains few examples, and less arguments. Positions connexions between hermeneutical philosophy and emancipation in are under-described and under-argued, that is, under-determined. Habermas' philosophy. More surprising is the way in which Again and again one finds that the meaning of key terms remains feminists have taken seriously what they see as the political vague because they are not introduced with the help of lower order potential, progressive or not, of Lacan, and the way examples. A fortiori, the notion of a counter-example remains deconstruction has been taken to provide the means to bring out unknown. It is often held that detailed criticism is completely the reactionary nature of this or that canon. But argued, beside the point. This feature of CP goes together with another rationalist, left-wing political philosophy remains, alas, a one. rarety. CP is problem free. Positions that are systematically One example must suffice to illustrate these claims. Consider underdetermined can never achieve the sort of focus that comes the history of the concept of structure within French CP. I refer from pursuing a particular problem throughout the twists and turns to its use by avowed structuralists such as L‚vi-Strauss in his of the different arguments for and against different solutions. philosophical moments, its rôle in the criticisms of structuralism This type of underdetermination is quite compatible with another by for example Sartre and also to its rôle within Lacan's system feature of CP which lends to its texts and positions what and in the quite different alternatives to structuralism that go determination they do have. under the heading of post-structuralism and, for example, to its use by Derrida. In nearly all these cases it appears that the CP is done by doing the History of Philosophy. A philosophers in question not only did not know what a structure is Continental Philosopher typically elaborates his views in the form but, a point almost as important, did not seem to be really of a commentary on, criticism or application of the views of one interested in finding out. One finds simply the obligatory and or more of the great philosophers of the tradition3. cursory references back to Jakobson and to Levi-Strauss' applications of mathematical structures. Now the concept of a CP is syncretic. Thus a handful of ideas from semiology linguistic or non-linguistic structure suggests all sorts of and structuralism have been combined with a variety of philosophical questions: What sort of relation holds between the philosophical positions. Lacan managed to yoke together members of a contrast class and the sentence frame or frames that yields the class ? Is it an internal relation ? If so, what sort of internal relation ? What are the differences between the terms 3 On the background to this, see Smith 1991.
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