/lit/ - Literature

>>13625305
Mostly analytic with some continental. If sniffer man wasn’t such a cucked faggot maybe I’d think continental would be more useful, but sadly that’s not the case.

>>13625305
There isn’t an actual split lmao, please stop this arbitrary shit

Analytic. All philosophy sucks shit but continental philosophy is just pseud unfalsifiable garbage. At least the analytic school makes efforts to be mathematically precise.
Stop reading 200 year old texts and pick up a science textbook, faggots.

>>13625305
Analytic philosophy is a bunch of autists circle jerking about trollies and shit while they refuse to address more important, meta level issues. Continental philosophy is a bunch of elitists circle jerking about mentally ill French people and refusing to stop sniffing their own farts for more than 5 seconds.

So this is like the whole STEM vs humanities thing?

Continental stuff (outside of certain parts of Hegel and Husserl's work) is mostly pseud-magnet bullshit.
Analytic philosphy is what you get when you've got people who want to contribute to a scientific field without doing any research or calculations.

>>13625325
Yeah, but it's more like
Humanitiesfags who wished they'd gotten a Mathematics or Physics degree
vs
Philosophyfags who wished they were creative enough to write fiction, but instead write tons of bullshit
It's kind of an inner dispute between two factions of people who dedicate themselves to describing much of the same stuff (the reasons behind the existence of language, cultures, ideas, etc.), but with very different terminology and intentions.

>>13625305
I'm seriously convinced that Husserl and Habermas is more analytic than continental. Even in this divisions.

>>13625305
Left brain hemisphere vs right brain hemisphere

Can someone please give a couple of examples of both?
I still don't get which works/philosophers are categorised where

Pragmatism and reading both

>>13625305
Anonynental Philosophy

>>13625430
Philosophy in symbols cf. philosophy in natural language

well analytic philosophy is just platonism and continental philosophy is just sophism.

theyre hardly worth spending time on.

>>13625430
>Can someone please give a couple of examples of both?
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus by Wittgenstein and Phenomenology of the Spirit by Hegel

>>13625305
So-called "continental" philosophy is philosophy proper. Analytics are wanna-be mathematicians and would be better off studying physics instead of dabbling with philosophy. Not that analytic philosophers are all bad, they just picked the wrong profession. I mean, it's called "mathematical" logic for a reason.

>>13625305
I'm trained in the former, but I often find more value in the latter. Analytical Philosophy is a tool to find objectivity in a world that is reluctant to give it, continental philosophy is a tool to understand oneself and what comes from oneself. Perhaps they meet in the middle?

>>13625321
>unfalsifiable
You think modal realism is falsifiable? Let me guess, you don't know what that is because you've never seriously engaged with either analytic or continental philosophy?

>>13625305
It's mostly a sociological distinction now (or a cultural difference if you will). You can probably find analytic and continentals who are closer to one another in most respect than they are with most people in their own camp.

In other words, this >>13625313.

>>13625488
If you want to deal with those kinds of association it's more analytic being aristotelian and continental being platonic. But even that doesn't really cut it.

>>13625488
>when you haven't read analytic, continental, platonic, or sophist philosophy

>>13625321
>unfalsifiable
Popper was a mistake.

>>13625485
>>13625491
oh okay,
so would Nietzsche be continental, and the Greeks too?
Analytic is a 20th century thing?
I'm majoring in philosophy atm, but no-one has made mention of this distinction, it seems that it's all analytic though

>>13625305
continental is nothing but sophistry so analytic for sure

>>13625702
The analytics/continental divide is a 20th century thing. Everyone can claim the Greeks (claiming and commenting the Greeks is pretty much the business of philosophy, at least in the Western and Muslim world).

Some say Kant is the last who belonged to both traditions, but iirc analytic philosophy as a term was coined by brit logical positivists in the early 20th century (think Russell and co). The "continental" category was obviously created as a wrap-up term for Western philosophy that is not analytic (note the britbong intent behind the term, no continental European would call himself continental unless he was referring to some general opposition to the Brits).

Note also the inappropriateness of the descriptor, some of the first and very best analytics were continentals (think of the arch-analytic, the German Frege, to a lesser extent Wittgenstein, and you might add their ancestor Brentano) while several islanders could be classified as continental (see Oakenshott and later Whitehead). Add that it pits a methodological characterization (philosophy that proceeds by analysis) against a geographical one (philosophy that happens in Continental Europe) and you realize how retarded the whole conceit is.

See for instance >>13625719 as a example of the arrogance that the very distinction conveys. Keep in mind continental philosophy is literally all Western philosophy that hasn't been classified as analytic past a certain date. So it's really a case of "everyone who is not in our club is retarded". >>13625719 probably has read very little of any philosophical tradition.

pssh nothin personnel

If we all just collectively decided to stop reading the French, philosophy would be rehabilitated overnight.

>>13625770
thanks for that,
I had a feeling the categorisation 'continental' was stupid

Another way to look at it is inductive (platonic) vs deductive (analytic) reasoning.

The point for platonic style is that it has some speculative power that feels intuitively right. In hard sciences, inductive arguments frequently occur as hypotheses. A lot of work involves finding a proof which is formally sound (deductive) from the initial intuition. In context of philosophy, the approach then would be to do first something in platonic style, and then find a proof of equivalence via analytical argument.

>>13625702
>majoring in philosophy but hasn't heard about continental/analytical

oof bruh how's community college treatin ya?

>>13625927
hey nig,
it's been irrelevant to the content
how's "General philosophy 101" treating you
>oof
>bruh
>ya
do your parents a favour and hang yourself you redditcunt

>>13625942
favor*

>>13625818
"Continental" is an adjective Oxbridge philosophers came up to denigrate British idealism, it doesn't matter to them that Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle are Austrians and therefore also from the continent. It really shows how much do they really care for clarity and rigour in their use of language.

The divide is about the answer to the question: "Where do we go after Kant?" If your answer is: "German idealism and Lebensphilosophie should not be studied", you're analytic.

There is a huge split. For some reason whenever this gets posted, people act like they're taking the nuanced position by claiming there isn't. The split is gigantic. I study phenomenology a good bit, and I recently took a Husserl class with a sorta-pragmatist Oxbridge logical positivist analytic prof, and it was like we were speaking two completely different languages. From where I was sitting, he reduced everything in the text to a "flat surface" of simplified English-language abstractions so that he could manipulate them with logical formalisms, but he didn't put any effort into the initial stage of interpretation. That's what made no sense to me. He wanted this ultra-rigid, ultra-precise logical latticework of absolute certainty, but he founded it on completely half-assed, spitball guesses about what Husserl meant, as translated into bowdlerized English. When I tried to ask him about his justifications for various things, he seemed annoyed by the question.

Took another class with a big-time analytic Aristotelian, on Aristotle's metaphysics, one of the most difficult texts to interpret. Similarly, he reduced everything in the text to an extremely simple English-language abstraction. When I asked what his justification was for doing so, and told him I had read Rist and Windelband and two other books as prep for the course to get a sense of the historical consensus on what Aristotle meant by various terms, told him about the developmental vs. the static models of Aristotle's thought, etc., again, he just seemed annoyed. And again, what seemed most strange to me was that he wanted to affect extreme care for precision at this higher level, but that his justification for the definitions used at that higher level was "come on, that's probably what he meant, let's just move on," even when contradicted by two centuries of philological scholarship on something absolutely crucial.

This is more vague, but they tend to jam their preferred frameworks into everything too. If I'm talking to one about the epistemology of belief, and I'm meeting you halfway by citing James and Wittgenstein on the subject, you can't just repeatedly force your "justified true belief" epistemology on me like that solves anything. The whole point is that James and Wittgenstein disagree with the foundational assumptions of that kind of "justificationist" epistemology and I'm posing their critiques as a problem for you. You can't solve that by smugly repeating the framework and vaguely gesturing at how much of a good stolid empiricist you are.

If the distinction is breaking down, it's not so much because of improved conversation between the two camps. It's more because fewer people give a shit about formal logic and the chimeras it generates with every generation, and to avoid being shut down many philosophy departments are strongly pushing a "handmaiden of computer science and AI research" approach to justify their continued existence.

>>13625969
They're trained to be manual laborers of English translated texts, you're asking too much of them.

>>13625969
The only split here is that your prof is a huge autist. How do analytics like Parfit and Anscombe fit into this? Don't mistake the tree for a forest. Those meme-analytics are that, just meme. The broader categories are much, much fuzzier.

>>13625969
It seems you've put your finger on one thing that's very annoying about a certain trend within analytic philosophy: the tendency to willfully ignore the complexities of an issue while affecting to have the only "precise" and "rigorous" take on it, compounded with a terribly unself-aware Anglocentrism.

>>13625979
That's what it seems like. There's some joke I heard but can't remember, about how a British philosopher ca. 1960 goes and spends decades learning the most complex logic-chopping and doing all these deductions, only to conclude that the default human way of thinking, and default best form of human life, is ca. 1960s British moderate whiggism. All other cultures and worldviews ought to be judged by this metric.

>>13625986
These are just some of the examples though. I could go on and on. I couldn't study philosophy at my undergraduate university at all because it was a major analytic hub, and nothing but what I've described. I had to go hunt down continentals in smaller departments like German Studies and Comp Lit to find people who were even aware that texts need to be interpreted.

Granted, the vast majority of continentals are total dog shit. Especially lately, where the trend seems to be that you learn 80% of some trendy philosopher like Deleuze, and then supply the additional 20% of your reading with a boring fucking crypto-bourgeois shibboleth like "Cartesianism is Eurocentric! We need post-Cartesian pluralism!" that EVERYBODY ELSE is already doing, while LARPing as a hip professor who wears jeans. Actually makes me prefer "Oxbridge is the center of the universe"-chauvinism, at least that's more honest than this hipster shit.

>>13625770
>everyone who is not in our club is retarded
that's the blatant truth though, analytical philosophy is the only valid way of perceiving the world, it's fine to engage in thought experiments and whatever but the ideas of continental philosophy just dont stand up to any serious scrutiny

>>13626117
>he thinks most of modern analytic philosophy isn't thought experiments
>he thinks using logic to confirm logic is impressive or even useful

Lets be proper analytics about this, shall we? Please define the following, for the sake of clarity: thought experiment, serious scrutiny, and valid

>>13626117
>it's fine to engage in thought experiments
This applies particularly to analytics who are fond of retarded thoughts experiment that prove nothing.

>just dont stand up to any serious scrutiny
What scrutiny? Despite their smugness analytics have produced very little in the way of effective criticism of continental philosophy (to the extent that continental philosophy is an unified school, which it isn't, far less than analytic philosophy which is itself pretty wide). And quickly enough there have been major analytics recognizing the importance of philosophers like Heidegger.

Just a quick test to assess how much you know about what you're saying: how many books of analytic and/or continental philosophy have you read? Could you mention the major schools wrapped up under Continental philosphy, name their major figures, sum up their approach in a sentence or two? That much should be easy for someone who has put it under "serious scrutiny".

>>13626007
>I couldn't study philosophy at my undergraduate university at all because it was a major analytic hub, and nothing but what I've described.

If that's the case it's worrying indeed. I'm all for Anglo-bashing banter, but the truth is there are make up one of the main philosophical areas of the West, if they really have gone full autist it can't be good for anyone.

What you say about modern continental philosophy also rings painfully true, but there are probably oasis of hopes.

Have you talked with anyone in a History of Philosophy department? Historian in general are pretty based, and those specialized in philosophy are less prone of falling for fads than their colleagues. There are also continentals schools that have little to do with postmodernistic pseudery (btw it seems this obsession with continental postmodernism is rather American, and ironically it only spread back to France as an outgrowth of American thought). I'm thinking of the phenomenologist, existentialists, the late rationalists associated with Christianity, etc. Between Alain, Bachelard, Bergson, Weil, Boutang, Meyerson, Brunschvig, Brentano, Husserl, Levinas, Jankélévitch, Canguilhem and Lautman (off the top of my head) there should be enough to choose from.

>>13625491
>hegel
His phenomenology was very different from husserl's. Hegel is definitely not continental

>>13625927
To be fair, I took philosophy at a really good university as well as at a community college. There wasnt much a distinction in quality

>>13626371
>His phenomenology was very different from husserl's
I wasn't asked about Husserlian phenomenology.
>Hegel is definitely not continental
Hegel didn't know he was a continental philosopher. "Continental" begins as a signifier for British idealists who read Hegel used by people in Oxbridge who are rebelling against Hegel and neo-hegelian philosophy and working to get it out of their philosophy departments. Much later continental philosophy continues to find Hegel worthy of study and discussion, even when it's critical of the guy.

>>13625430
Here you go, senpai.

>>13625430

>>13625430
If you want a good illustration of the split, compare Carnap's The Logical Structure of the World (classic analytic work) with Heidegger's Being and Time (classic continental work).

>>13625341
that's because they are

Brainlet here. Can anyone give me a QRD of what continental philosophy is all about?

>>13627536
Delighful meme.

>>13628102
It's pretty much about everything.

>>13628102
Its a "how" more than a "what"

>>13628209
Tell me more. Do C20th continental philosophers have something in common in how they do philosophy, which distinguishes them from analytic philosophers?

Is there something about how C20th continental philosophers philosophise that

>>13628102
Continental philosophy is the out-group, the external enemy of analytic philosophy that the latter seeks to prevent the teaching of in the Anglosphere, in Germany, in Scandinavia and even in philosophy departments located outside Europe and North America.

Within continental philosophy you find innumerable currents and thinkers yelling at each other, there is little in common between them beyond a greater taste for the history of philosophy when compared to the analytics.

There is no "quick rundown" for continental answers to: "Where do we go after Kant?", because it's two whole centuries of the history of philosophy.

Nonfiction vs fiction

>>13628296
Okay, thanks. So the only common thread to continental philosophers is that analytic philosophers don't like them.

>>13628336
Pretty much, "continental" is a derogatory shortcut for "nonanalytic western philosophy".

>>13628241
Continental philosophy:
>metaphysical/idealist solutions to Kant's dualism (absolute idealism, Naturphilosophie, renewed interest in older philosophical systems like Neoplatonism, to a degree openness to esotericism)
>hermeneutics (Schleiermacher, Dilthey, Gadamer, Ricoeur)
>critiques of ontological presuppositions (Nietzsche, Heidegger's destruction, Derrida's deconstruction)
>phenomenology (the study of phenomena as they appear for the subject, and as they primordially constitute the lifeworld of any given subject prior to higher-order abstractions about them)
>linguistic philosophy in the sense of a hermeneutic approach to ontology
>attempts to treat subject-object dualism as itself something to be destructed, either metaphysically or as a metaphor for deconstructing the bourgeois self-contained, self-legislating subject
>"hermeneutics of suspicion" (Freud's unconscious, Marx's structure and superstructure, Nietzsche's genealogical criticism)

>>13627526
I'm convinced that most humanities professors are geared towards socialism because their research is so worthless that no university administrator would actually pay them for it if they understood it.

>>13628395
these are definitely topics in continental philosophy but you also have Lebensphilosophie, existentialism, structuralism, marxism and post-marxism, feminism, the Konservative Revolution, personalism, continental philosophy of religion, Foucault's genealogical method picked up by Agamben, assorted post-moderns and neo-hegelians and neo-kantians... just listing the movements takes forever and you always have the suspicion of having excluded something or someone

I studied analytic philosophy, and I'm pretty much a continental philosophy virgin. I was told - or rather, I was given the impression - that continental philosophy is, in general, pretentious bollocks. I read a couple of Heidegger essays and they didn't help. Could an anon give me a suggestion for an easy-going middlebrow introduction to continental philosophy?

>>13628445
Yeah true, a lot of them are offshoots and/or mixtures of each other too so it's hard to characterize exactly. In general it's one big dialogue.

It's a good sign that continental philosophy is half-decent when Ricoeur and Bourdieu, two of the best Heideggerians, immediately picked up on the significance of Wittgenstein's late work and incorporated it into their own, and most people see Wittgenstein/Heidegger as very similar in key ways.

Another reason I hate analytic philosophy is the set theory cult. They ruined philosophy of math by burying it under a century of autism.