/lit/ - Literature

>>17202581
Fuck Searle, read Derrida.

>>17202586
I'm not a teen

>>17202581
Read Richard Rorty.

continental philosophy is only difficult to understand if you are not grounded in the continental tradition. it all builds on each other and there is interplay of schools of thought

>>17202602
What are you trying to accomplish with this post?

>>17202639
I asked what are some continentals works that could change my mind and show me there is some substance and it's not just circlejerking and posturing.

>>17202638
The argument is not that it's impossible to understand (although some works are) but that ones you decode them there is nothing of substance left.

>>17202657
Oh I see you're just afraid of being judged and in turn pre-emptively judge others. Enjoy your 'analytical brain' you hopeless autist

>>17202700
Why are you acting like a child

>>17202581
honest question, have you tried taking estroegen? women are irrational and emotional just like continentals, estroegen might calm your male brains demand for no-bs clear, honest argument. men tend to talk to say something, women talk for the sake of talking. analytics write to say something, continentals write for the sake of writing.

>>17202702
This looks interesting. Thanks

>>17202657
Read Tales of the Mighty Dead by Robert Brandom. Pragmatists tend to have interesting takes on the analytic-continental divide, being outside the analytic and continental traditions yet flexible in incorporating ideas from both. Plus, they have better beards. You can't trust philosophers who don't have beards.

>>17202741
Can I trust this man?

Analytic philosophy (women-oriented thought experiments)
>everyday language, time traveling, brains in a vat, teleportation, reddit, animal rights

Continental philosophy (Chad philosophy)
>Death, Blanchotian dying, negativity, lack, absence, alterity, schizophrenic multiplicity, bodies without organs, apophatic theology

>>17202581
>I was curious though if there are any works by continentals that could change my analytical brain.
If you continue your philosophical development with an unrestricted curiosity, you'll eventually see the possibility that some things cannot be expressed with perfect analytical rigor. Only through some measure of vague references and metaphores can you try to strike the same chords in another mind and bring up the same idea. Depending on what you have in your head, even reading Plato can make you see this to some extent. If you're really in the need of having your analytical convictions shaken up, go through the structuralism and post-structuralism route. Prioritize primary sources.

>>17203177
People say this but I've never seen a example where it was actually essential

>>17202714
>here is one hand

>>17203189
Well if it were true than that would mean there's some limit to the language as a channel of communication, hence my (post-)structuralism suggestion, that's where you want to look for these kinds of musings.

It depends whether you are reading them under the aspect of analytical stereotypes of them or for what they really have to offer. What people mean when they say continental philosophy is a combination of older German philosophy, which was pregnant with most of the assumptions and problematics that analytics now take for granted, newer German philosophy that is very sophisticated epistemologically and addresses most of the pitfalls and blind alleys of most (not all) analytic philosophy, not surprisingly given they are both subsets of the older German philosophy, and French poststructuralism, which is 50/50: 50% what Searle accuses Derrida of being, 50% decent and occasionally great extensions of the older German philosophy, especially in applied areas.

It's hardly fair to study Hegel in the same way you study Gadamer, who's among the best and most careful of continental thinkers. But from Gadamer's extensive engagement with Hegel it should be obvious that Gadamer's stage of philosophy can understand itself better in light of Hegel's ideas, even Hegel's dead ends. So it's not that you just "only read the good ones," it's that you read them all sensitively and in their proper context, as part of a shared and developing tradition. That is one of the general strengths of continental thought, the sensitivity to history and especially development, what you could maybe call conceptual morphology as opposed to conceptual analysis. Or not so much opposed as beginning with and transcending.

It's funny the first person to spring to mind was Gadamer because Searle's debate with Derrida is less interesting than Gadamer's debate with Derrida, or rather non-debate, since Derrida refused to engage with him on multiple occasions. The most obvious reason for this is that Gadamer is an incredibly scrupulous, by-the-numbers thinker, and Derrida knew he would pin him down on his various metaphysical and epistemological commitments and force him to be less "playful" than he poses as being. Derrida may also have feared that Gadamer's way of reading the philosophical tradition, namely through unbelievably meticulous reading over a lifetime of dedication, would have made Derrida look stupid if he tried to flit around with, perhaps ingenious, but ultimately oblique "appropriations" of the tradition, a problem that Deleuze also has. Despite all this however, even Derrida can be read reasonably easily and with some profit if you know your shit.

>>17203327
The problem with the French is that for every Gadamer who knows his shit, and can take Derrida apart and separate the ingenious moments from the fluff by learning the internal language of his texts, there are a thousand graduate students who never attain 1/10th of this level of mastery over Derrida yet somehow manage to derive entire careers from posing as Derrideans. Posing, I think, even to themselves, and without being aware of it. The last time they tried really earnestly to understand Derrida was probably in the first seminar they took. Like Searle's, their eyes glazed over at the meandering and sometimes contradictory internal register of the text, with its systematic vagueness about its ontological comittments. But their eyes never unglazed. Unlike Gadamer they had no prior exposure to serious philosophy that doesn't try to hide its own ideas from the reader or impress him, but earnestly tries to show them forth. So, unlike Gadamer, they were unable to keep their calm and treat it like a slightly tedious intellectual puzzle, pinning down what Derrida says until they've circumscribed him and can force him to make his point, or at least force him onto the horns of some epistemological dilemma.

That's what's wrong with the French style of writing philosophy. It makes the latter process difficult, and thus it makes philosophers who have really carried it out rare. The process is what Searle is trying to do. And the fact that Gadamer could pull it off, well enough to embarrass Derrida and leave a stain on his legacy (well, another stain), while Searle had to throw his hands up and give up, is a testament to the power of continental hermeneutics and the continental style of conceptual morphology.

One final thing: Most characterisations of continental philosophy are given by retarded undergrads who know nothing about it, but who simply want to value positively what you value negatively in your stereotype of it, i.e. all the jargon and posing as a deep brooding aesthete. Both you and the entry level continental have in common that you're dealing with a stereotype that has very little correspondence with the real thing.

>>17202581
You won't fit nd any justification for the worst excesses of the continental tradition. At best you'll find its defenders bragging about how its stylistic density functions as a gatekeeping mechanism or proclaiming it's superiority derives from its practicality much in the same way Stemlords do with their fields. It's honestly just kind of sad. I have never once seen the continental tradition defended on it the merit of its ideas or methodology; all you get from its defenders is pettiness and superficiality.

>>17203327
>>17203345
Holy shit Anthony Gadamtano

Gadamer's "objection" to Derrida was that he thought that "deconstruction" was a negative and malicious affair (which it isn't) in that it didn't fuse parts with the whole. Hegelian synthesis and harmony doesn't vibe with differance, so the former's blind spot is understandable atleast.

>>17203387
>ideas or methodology
sounds like another stemshit opinion to me, thinking you can separate content from form and style so easily...

>>17202581
Try to convince me that this isn't a retarded distinction that means little to anyone who is interested in philosophy beyond being a part of your ideological costume.
Hume is considered a titan of analytical philosophy, yet using reason, analysis, and logic, he concluded that all of these faculties of the mind are ultimately sensation. All human understanding is dependent on the feeling of impressions and ideas. Furthermore, through his method of intense analysis, he also discovered that some aspects of human understanding (for instance object permanence) are, despite being unable to defy and undeniably fundamental to the comprehensive function of the mind, ultimately illogical and unprovable. He credited these functions to human nature, and considered them as necessary and important as skepticism and rationality. So how is he any more an analytic than he is continental? And if you take his thought seriously (which everyone should) then you should know that even the most logical, emotionless philosopher is ultimately operating in accordance human nature and feeling, and if they are attempting to defy it then they can only be a sophist.
How do these terms have any real distinctions, to the point where some faggot (OP) can say that they "hate continentals"? I understand their use as vague descriptive terms, but to refer to them as clearly defined categories? Pure pseudery.

>>17203327
You're describing Gadamer in a way that is true of Derrida and his approach to 'the internal language' of philosophy in general. I'm not sure what Derrida you've read but in the several books I've read of this is consistently apparent. What metaphysical and epistemological commitments of Derrida come to mind when he is analysing the metaphysical and epistemological commitments of Husserl? Are they just Husserl's?

>>17202747
>le German name must be in fraktur

>>17203481
> And if you take his thought seriously (which everyone should)
Haha

>>17203712
maybe read him first faggot, A Treatise on Human Understanding is the measure to hold all philosophers too. If any philosophy is incompatible with the principles he establishes then that philosophy is sophistry and is to be committed to the flames. all great philosophers pass this test
Hume is as good of a philosopher as there is. He's the most honest I have read; he did not form an idea and set out to prove it, he analyzed concepts and, through tenacious and unrelenting reasoning, came to conclusions, no matter how difficult these conclusions made his job.
The only people who dislike Hume are charlatans and sophists who he relentlessly dabbed on

>>17203963
Not that guy, but how hard is Hume to read?

>>17204176
/lit/ may look down on this but I think earlymoderntexts.com does a good service by abridging major texts, just leaving the important parts everyone really means when they refer to that text, and simplifying some of the language. I want to say Hume is easy, he's generally regarded as easy, but reading him with no prior experience of 18th century English might be jarring.

But you should definitely try either way. All of his stuff is online for free. Go read one of the Essays or something. Or his treatment of miracles in his natural history of religion. His histories are also very fun.

>>17204176
Pretty easy. He requires no background knowledge. If you've read Plato or Descartes, you're intelligent enough to understand the Enquiry. I found the Treatise more difficult, although I've only read parts of it.

>>17204176
Depends what you mean by hard. In terms of difficulty of understanding the ideas? Not hard if you read actively. He tries to make his reasoning almost annoyingly unambiguous, taking the time to restate previously established ideas constantly. He clearly hated being misunderstood. In terms of the language? Kind of difficult, only because the grammar is a bit different than ours, so complex sentences might not make sense the first time you read them.
Ultimately there are much more difficult philosophers to read. Hume makes an effort to communicate his ideas clearly, and there are even points where he restates his ideas in different language so that the layman can grasp it.
>>17204209
I don't recommend this for philosophers in general, but especially not Hume. A lot of his ideas are easily dismissed or objected to or seem simple when unsupported, but as you follow his reasoning it is clear that his logic is undeniable, and he likely directly addresses the exact objection that may appear on initial impression. Plus, the conclusions are given greater meaning and more wholistic understanding when you have followed him as he reasoned into the depths to reach that conclusion.

>>17204176
It's easy but it's not like a modern book where you can just skim through and understand. You have to take the effort to read and understand it.

>>17202714
You have to go back

I hardly ever see any continentals seethe as much as analytics. But that said, the line between the two disciplines isn't as pronounced as analytics claim. Methods certainly differ, but besides that I see that analytics tend to take metaphysical leaps without thinking about the implications of their word choices. Substituting words into algebraic equations has functional implications for shit like theory of mind, but it has a horizon that analytics have a hard time dealing with when it comes to morals/ethics, metaphysics, aesthetics, or value theory. Limiting yourself to a self-imposed limited perspective sounds antithetical to philosophy to me.

>>17202717
ha ha ha very funny, you're very clever.

>>17202581
Heidegger should fit you just perfectly
Autistically detailed and systematic

>>17204817
You write like an angered person. Do not be an angered person.

Analytical philosophers are just seething virgins

>>17204597
First day here? It's literally an inversion of the reddit one you lardass.

>>17202581
>the philosophical equivalent of watching Warhol film a toilet for 4 hours
lol

>>17204781
>morals/ethics
>aesthetics
>value theory
these arent philosophically relevant to analytics because they dont have answers, cuz they deal with kinda dumb questions to begin with
>Substituting words into algebraic equations has functional implications for shit like theory of mind
can u elaborate?

>>17204176
>>17204209
>I want to say Hume is easy, he's generally regarded as easy, but reading him with no prior experience of 18th century English might be jarring.
I did it a few months back. no problem. also I'm norwegian.

>>17203481
continentals are what hume and other thinkers in the intellectually honest british tradition referred to as "metaphysicians".

>>17202581
The problem with pure analytics is that nothing can be reduced down to a simple set of axioms. To do that is to only consider form and not content. To fully understand anything, you have to look at how it developed, how it changes over time and what its relation to everything else is.

>>17203963
>all great philosophers pass this test
none of the continentals do.

>>17207808
>these arent philosophically relevant to analytics because they dont have answers, cuz they deal with kinda dumb questions to begin with
What are you talking about? Analytics are the only ones left doing any sort of systematic ethics. Continentals tend to be way too cynical to make an attempt to begin with.

>>17203451
The stylistic tendencies of class continental thinkers tends to be so egregious and unnecessary that you totally can. It's a rare achievement on their part. It's rather telling that I've never actually seen anyone defend it as anything more than a gatekeeping apparatus.

>>17207848
i meant in a perscriptive way, not descriptive. but i guess if its descriptive thats just meme theory and not philosophy. so i hope no "analytic" is engaging with ethics in a perscriptive way, since that defeats the whole analytic thing

>>17203451
I can state a mathematical theorem a number of ways. the reason this is possible, is because a mathematical theorem actually says something. it's real thinking. deleuze and hegel aren't.

>>17207842
The continental tradition basically started with Heidegger's critique of metaphysics

>>17207910
I thought it was the split between Frege and Husserl is the typical starting point.
>>17207866
Normative ethics is a major field within analytic philosophy. How does a systematic approach to the question of how people should behave go against the analytic project?

>>17203189
one word: dionysus

try deleuzes book on expressionism and spinoza, its quite eloquently argued in a more classical philosophical style while still having a continental bent in the content. deals a lot with scholastic philosophy which has much in common with modern analytic philosophy

I've been reading a lot of analytical commentary on Deleuze. Smoothbrains like OP and 99.99% of /lit/ has no understanding of philosophy, you're all pseud retards hahhaha

>>17208194
>a lot of analytical commentary
Who else but Moore?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBalGUnuxnM

>>17208209
A shitton, there's an endless list although I just got done reading a text by Moore.
Any collection of essays titled something like "Cambridge Companion to Gilles Deleuze" IS analytical in nature.

>>17208036
Frege and Husserl's projects were pretty similar and not at odds (resisting psychologism and grounding mathematics/logic). Husserl was initially drawn to philosophy because of his interest in mathematics.

The explicit encounter between Carnap and Heidegger is much more telling to the continental/analytic split. University politics in the UK also played a major part (the split isn't as meaningful in continental Europe), but that was mostly in order to "exorcise" British Hegelianism.

>>17208233
>IS analytical in nature.
I see alot of continental "interpreters" in that volume though

>Francois Dosse
french cultural historian
>Rosi Braidotti
continental feminist thinker
>Leonard Lawlor
expert on Derrida
>Manuel Delanda
post-continental philosopher

>>17207847
Nietzsche does

>>17202581
postmodern shit is gross and terrible but analytic philosophy is not as good as you think it is. Reason and logic are great but it has created the "i fucking love science" mentality that really serves as a secular religion. What's worse is that something like half or more of scientific studies can't be reproduced. You could say it's not TRUE science, but the only point I'm trying to make is watch out because there is a big trap in thinking the world can be figured out through reason and logic alone. Look at Niels Bohr or people like that, who describe the edges of science as pure consciousness or completely impossible. When you get to questions that big the answer usually is "the people who are correct are inarticulate and the people who are wrong are reasonable (reasonable sounding) and articulate"

>>17202926
>(women-oriented thought experiments)
Sorry feminist thought and the likes of it are continental not analytic, analytic is for male brained autists, not effeminate poets.

What can you do with analytical philosophy? I work with theorem prover software for a living and analytical philosophy always seemed like a child playing with toys? Genuinely curious

>>17209975
Thought experiments are concrete and situational, Chad (continental) philosophy is solely on an abstract level where truth is manufactured ex nihil. Women enjoy thought experiments because it is something rooted and realistic, while men rave and poeticize, creating a new world.

>>17209912
>postmodern shit is gross and terrible but analytic philosophy is not as good as you think it is. Reason and logic are great but it has created the "i fucking love science" mentality that really serves as a secular religion.
stop posting brainlet

>stop posting brainlet

>>17202581
>>17202620
I second the Richard Rorty rec. He's the bridge between analytical and continental philosophy. Nietzsche also has some interesting ideas, but for you I would recommend reading secondary literature like The Affirmation of Life by Bernard Reginster where Nietzsche's arguments are stated in a very sequenced and logical fashion.

>>17203505
>not realizing "analyzing epistemological commitments" is a dead end in itself

metaphysics precedes epistemology

>>17203963
Hume is self-refuting

>>17202581
philosophy doesn't have closure. there is no perfect synthesis. this is a very crude split but yeah there is some truth in it. analytic philosophy tends to a kind of removed-from-life meta-logic and continental philosophy tends towards word-salads that ultimately lack meaning or have banal meaning. there are two strands of philosophy one that seems to favor the analytic side, the other the living existential side, both with their problems. i imagine the future era will be continental philosophy but with less word salads and dead ends, Greeks basically. analytic philosophy simply fails to make a serious account of the person as person, being as being, and for that reason will never amount to more than a peculiarity.

>>17210212
basically man is not a syllogism, but he isn't historical materialism either. the text's meanings aren't just predicates, but they're not esoteric hidden meanings or forever determined by epistemes or forever inaccessible through some kind of difference between the writer and the reader or forever full of ideological pre-suppositions. i think the reason why people push so hard into these directions is because of the mass scale professionalization of philosophy, you have to be radical and a champion of a philosophical cause for anyone to take note of you, to get funds, to get positions and to have your books published. nobody wants to read "boring" philosophy. everybody wants a "everyone until now got it wrong, except for me. here is a radical new version of what this is *really* about" philosopher. so you get all of this weird shit.

>>17210261
in fact I have become a pessimist in that I believe even hard scientists let alone other academics have become too pre-occupied by the conditions of academic success. how many of these people still wake up and truly say to themselves "I'm really interested in truth and knowledge" these days? I think it's very easy to conflate what you think or want to be true with career and financial priented motivations. then there is also the ego. when you see two academics squabbling, one hardly gets the impression that either one of them cares about truth. so in fact Nietzsche was probably right at least in one sense, the modernity intellectual arena is perhaps more than ever pure will to power. some of the more honest practitioners are probably buried in obscurity. not that this wouldn't be the case historically, but with this verision of pay-to-play academia probably moreso than ever.

>>17202581
Read Husserl

>>17210310
whatever innocence there might have been in pursuit for knowledge and wisdom in antiquity is certainly almost completely gone now. the era of innocent inquiry is over because we are all now Nietzscheans, the metaphysical bedrock as an approach to the world we have abandoned long ago, now it is simply a competition of wills, whose will, will determine reality and what goes. we still pretend its about truth and knowledge, but we know that is only in an oblique way in today's world. the real question is how can assert their version of reality over society. i think this is the big problem, whether something is true or false is besides the point in a world that implicitly accepts radical skepticism, relativism, voluntarism and rejects metaphysics. now even the process of inquiry itself is simply a byproduct of will to power. everything else is completely relative, we know that whoever "wins" gets to define everything else, so whether everything else is patently false is beside the point. truth as truth in our world doesn't exist anymore. we're all skeptics about truth, so nobody needs to be under the conditions of anykind of honest inquiry or intellectual honesty, we're way past that.

>>17210356
i will only conclude with my advice: if you are a career-ist, whatever you do, don't take the middle road described. this is the only road that will cause both sides to attack you. if you are only into it for the career, simply pick one side. then you will be attacked by one side, but have the support of the other. but academia hates nothing more than someone whom they cannot put into a box, you will see that both sides will then attack you and you will have the help of noone.

>>17210356
Last Man take and a misreading of Nietzsche's Will to Power. Do you have the power to let power go? -- Kanye West

>>17202714
Should be the opposite, analytical philosophy can't prove that Aristotle name is Aristotle

>>17210393
Nietzsche's Will to Power ends in total skepticism, nihilism and relativism. Whether he himself recognized this is irrelevant.

>>17202581
>It's the philosophical equivalent of watching Warhol film a toilet for 4 hours.
and hence, based

>>17210428
no u

>>17210441
This

>>17207847
Pseud detected, you never read Kant, Hegel, Heidegger, Husserl and it shows

>>17210502
>Hegel