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[edit] Schism of Analytic and Continental philosophy

^[1] The late modern period in philosophy, beginning in the late 19th century, was marked by a schism between two divergent ways of doing philosophy: "Continental" and "Analytic". Analytic philosophy is associated mainly with English-speaking countries whereas Continental is associated with Europe.

This division begins to appear in the 1930s and coincides with a turbulent period in history when Communism, Capitalism and Nationalism vied for ideological dominance. There are a number of philosophical sources for this division. American philosopher, Babette Babich brings to our attention the politics of this divergence between Analytic philosophy and Continental philosophy:

there is a difference between analytic and continental approaches to philosophy not only because it is obvious and not only because as a professor of philosophy I live on the terms of a profession dominated by this noisome distinction but because the claim that there is no such distinctive divide is politically manipulative.^[2]

The schism also appears as something that has been growing rather than receding in recent years, "the past three or so decades have seen an a widening of the gap by the weighing in of postmodernist thought on the Continetal side"^[3]

There are many differences between the two.

One lies in how each tradition treats the 19th Century. While, unlike Continental philosophers, Analytic philosophers tend to ignore Hegel, Kierkegaard, Nieztsche, they instead refer to other philosophers from the 19th century. The main issue however is that the two sides of the schism remain in many respects cut-off from one another. With some exceptions, continental and analytic philosophers, in general, tend to ignore one another.^[4]

A second difference is in the overall attitude to history. Richard Rorty characterises the schism in terms of ahistoricist and historicist loyalties and commitments, stressing how Analytic philosophers understand philosophical questions as perennial while Continental philosophers see them as emerging from "the friction between old cultural inheritances and new developments"^[5]

The origin of the schism might date back as far as Kant philosophically, but the first appearance of cracks in the edifice of philosophy occurred in 1929 when Gilbert Ryle gave a negative and dismissive review in the journal Mind of Heidegger's magnus opus Being and Time.^[6]

In 1929 there was a confrontation of Heidegger and Ernst Cassirer in Davos, Switzerland. The debate was attended by the major Continental philosopher, Levinas and a major Analytic philosopher, Carnap. Levinas, who viewed Heidegger as having won out, later remarked that this confrontation showed the "end of a certain humanism." Carnap, on the other hand, sided with Cassirer. This is how Heidegger wrapped up the discussion:

What matters to me is that you, Prof. Cassirer, take with you from this debate this one thing, namely, that you may have felt somehow (and quite aside from the diversity of positions of differently philosophizing men) that once again we are on our way to take seriously the fundamental questions of metaphysics. What you have seen here, writ small, namely, the differences between philosophers within the one-ness of a problem, suggests, however modestly, what is so essential and writ large in the controversies in the history of philosophy: the realization that the discerning of its different standpoints goes to the very root of all philosophical work.^[7]

In 1930, the analytic philosopher Rudolf Carnap accused Heidegger of a "violation of logical syntax" ^[8] Heidegger's language was based on a Greek rather than a mathematical understanding of logic. ^[9]

According to U.S. philosopher Richard Rorty:

The schism dates back to the 1940s and 1950s, when analytic philosophy took over at American universities

Before then, Anglophone philosophy departments -- those in the United States, and Britain -- and non-Anglophone schools -- in France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Scandinavia and other parts of Europe -- both focused on the study of philosophy from a historical perspective." [1]

In 1971 there took place a debate between Michel Foucault and Noam Chomsky on Dutch Television. Though Chomsky is not an Analytic philosopher he is read by Analytic philosophers. It was a confrontation of Chomsk's Enlightenment humanism with the more post-modern view of Foucault. See part one of the debate here: [[2]] and, part two: [[3]]. Foucault questioned an ideal of justice and of human nature, that had formed in the Western power/class system, an ideal upheld by Chomsky. After the debate Chomsky commented, "I’d never met anyone so totally amoral." ^[10]

In 1974 another well known event of the schism was a debate between John Searle and Jacques Derrida. Derrida had published a paper in the journal Glyph ^[11], critically considering the ordinary language philosophy of J.L. Austin. Searle, a former pupil of Austin, accused Derrida of obfuscation. Derrida replied with accusations of misreading. ^[12]

More recently, in 1992 the University of Cambridge awarded an honorary doctorate to Derrida, but a number of Analytic Philosophers, including W. V. Quine, signed a letter to try to prevent the award being made.

[edit] Some Historical notes on the Analytic side of the Schism

During the latter part of the twentieth century the Cold War produced an atmosphere in which Marxism as a philosophical theme was not given the same prevalence in the U.S. as it was perhaps in Europe. At the same time during the fascist periods of Germany, Italy and Spain, Marxist may have even carried legal penalties. However, evident in the emergence of large communist parties in many European countries after the war such restrictions were ineffective.

However, the issue goes all the way back to the ninetieth century when revolution was a constant threat to the status quo. British reaction to the French Revolution effected the growth of a more moderate Labour movement in the U.K. In Europe however, such was the promise of Marxism to the vast majority of working people that it terrified politicians and company owners.

Along with the French Revolution came major escalations in the activities of secret police. In Russia the Tzar began imprisoning leftists. Many similar actions were taken throughout Europe to quote a well known commentator of that time, "A spectre is haunting Europe".

In the U.S. the Red Scare of 1917 to 1920, and McCarthyism, which lasted for about two decades after World War II created an atmosphere not conducive to Marxist scholars. In this environment, anyone who in anyway was discovered to be associated with, or even reading, Marxist, or Marxist related, literature, was labelled a "Communist", became suspect of his loyalty to his county, and often lost, or was unable, to acquire gainful employment. On the Continent of Europe, there were more extreme oppressions during the fascist period but then a much more open attitude after world war two.

Philosophy in Great Britain was largely of an Idealist or Hegelian nature. In 1911 Betrand Russell, Alfred North Whitehead, wrote Principia Mathematica, the name echos that of Sir Isaac Newton's Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica. The work was founded upon Frege's logic. Russell had mathematical interests, and had published his thesis as his second published book entitled the Foundations of Mathematics around the turn of the century. He considered important by the major new field of Non-Euclidean geometry whereby Euclid's Fifth Postulate is not an axiom. His thesis was that Projective geometry was a priori. Five years later, when Einstein published his Theory of Relativity, a theory of physics, in which space was non-Euclidean, Russell's work proved philosophically worthless, as he himself asserted. Russel now bowed to science and accepted that the physicists were right, and that he had not been doing philosophy at all but physics. The mathematicians, and philosophers had done, that the nature of geometry, whether it had this or that set of axioms, was an empirical question to be answered by scientists.

Hegel had already show Kant's a priori necessary to be more complex issue. But for Russell, the last remaining subject which remained a priori necessary was arithmetic. And Russell turned his interest to this second division of mathematics. Russell wished to account for arithmetic. He had already absorbed the work of Weierstrass, Cantor, and Dedekind, who in the second half of the 19th century had succeeded in arithmetizing the calculus. It was at this stage that Russell was exposed to the work of Gottlob Frege who had published his work, including the Foundations of Arithmetic, in which he subscribed to the thesis that all of arithmetic is reducible to logic. Had Frege succeeded, he would have proved Kant wrong in his thesis that arithmetic was a priori, but synthetic, rather than analytic. Kant had maintained that only logic was both a priori and analytic. Russell, upon discovering a contradiction in Frege's first volume, sent I letter to Frege informing him of the discovery. Frege was devastated by the negation of his life's work. Russell, however, somewhat succeeded with his opus magnum.