Bridging the Analytic-Continental Divide

By GARY GUTTING

Many philosophers at leading American departments are specialists in metaphysics: the study of
the most general aspects of reality such as being and time. The major work of one of the most
prominent philosophers of the 20th century, Martin Heidegger, is Being and Time, a profound
study of these two topics. Nonetheless, hardly any of these American metaphysicians have paid
serious attention to Heideggers book.

The standard explanation for this oddity is that the metaphysicians are analytic philosophers,
whereas Heidegger is a continental philosopher. Although the two sorts of philosophers seldom
read one anothers work, when they do, the results can be ugly. A famous debate between
Jacques Derrida (continental) and John Searle (analytic) ended with Searle denouncing Derridas
obscurantism and Derrida mocking Searles superficiality.

The distinction between analytic and continental philosophers seems odd, first of all, because it
contrasts a geographical characterization (philosophy done on the European continent,
particularly Germany and France) with a methodological one (philosophy done by analyzing
concepts). Its like, as Bernard Williams pointed out, dividing cars into four-wheel-drive and
made-in-Japan. It becomes even odder when we realize that some of the founders of analytic
philosophy (like Frege and Carnap) were Europeans, that many of the leading centers of
continental philosophy are at American universities, and that many analytic philosophers
have no interest in analyzing concepts.
 Leif Parsons

Some attention to history helps make sense of the distinction. In the early 20th century,
philosophers in England (Russell, Moore, Wittgenstein) and in Germany and Austria (Carnap,
Reichenbach, Hempel all of whom, with the rise of the Nazis, emigrated to the United States)
developed what they saw as a radically new approach to philosophy, based on the new
techniques of symbolic logic developed by Frege and Russell.

The basic idea was that philosophical problems could be solved (or dissolved) by logically
analyzing key terms, concepts or propositions. (Russells analysis of definite descriptions of
what does not exist e.g., The present King of France remains a model of such an
approach.) Over the years, there were various forms of logical, linguistic and conceptual
analysis, all directed toward resolving confusions in previous philosophical thought and
presented as examples of analytic philosophy. Eventually, some philosophers, especially Quine,
questioned the very idea of analysis as a distinctive philosophical method. But the goals of
clarity, precision, and logical rigor remained, and continue to define the standards for a type of
philosophy that calls itself analytic and is dominant in English-speaking countries.

At roughly the same time that analytic philosophy was emerging, Edmund Husserl was
developing his phenomenological approach to philosophy. He too emphasized high standards
of clarity and precision, and had some fruitful engagements with analytic philosophers such as
Frege. Husserl, however, sought clarity and precision more in the rigorous description of our
immediate experience (the phenomena) than in the logical analysis of concepts or language. He
saw his phenomenology as operating at the fundamental level of knowledge on which any truths
of conceptual or linguistic analysis would have to be based. In Being and Time Husserls
student, Heidegger, turned phenomenology toward existential questions about freedom,
anguish and death. Later, French thinkers influenced by Husserl and Heidegger, especially
Sartre and Merleau-Ponty, developed their own versions of phenomenologically based
existentialism.

The term continental philosophy was, as Simon Critchley and Simon Glendinning have
emphasized, to an important extent the invention of analytic philosophers of the mid-20th
century who wanted to distinguish themselves from the phenomenologists and existentialists of
continental Europe. These analytic philosophers (Gilbert Ryle was a leading figure) regarded the
continental appeal to immediate experience as a source of subjectivity and obscurity that was
counter to their own ideals of logical objectivity and clarity. The analytic-continental division
was institutionalized in 1962, when American proponents of continental philosophy set up their
own professional organization, The Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy
(SPEP), as an alternative to the predominantly (but by no means exclusively) analytic American
Philosophical Association (APA).

The claim that working in the analytic mode restricts the range of our philosophical inquiry no
longer has any basis.

Over the last 50 years, the term continental philosophy has been extended to many other
European movements, such as Hegelian idealism, Marxism, hermeneutics and, especially,
poststructuralism and deconstruction. These are often in opposition to phenomenology and
existentialism, but analytic philosophers still see them as falling far short of standards or clarity
and rigor. As a result, as Brian Leiter has emphasized, continental philosophy today designates
a series of partly overlapping traditions in philosophy, some of whose figures have almost
nothing in common with [each] other.

The scope of analytic philosophy has likewise broadened over the years. In the 1950s, it
typically took the form of either logical positivism or ordinary-language philosophy, each of
which involved commitment to a specific mode of analysis (roughly, following either Carnap or
Wittgenstein) as well as substantive philosophical views. These views involved a rejection of
much traditional philosophy (especially metaphysics and ethics) as essentially meaningless.
There was, in particular, no room for religious belief or objective ethical norms. Today, analytic
philosophers use a much wider range of methods (including quasi-scientific inference to the best
explanation and their own versions of phenomenological description). Also, there are analytic
cases being made for the full range of traditional philosophical positions, including the existence
of God, mind-body dualism, and objective ethical norms.

Various forms of empiricism and naturalism are still majority views, but any philosophical
position can be profitably developed using the tools of analytic philosophy. There are Thomists
and Hegelians who are analytic philosophers, and there is even a significant literature devoted to
expositions of major continental philosophers in analytic terms. The claim that working in the
analytic mode restricts the range of our philosophical inquiry no longer has any basis.

This development refutes the claim that analytic philosophers, as Santiago Zabala recently put it,
do not discuss the fundamental questions that have troubled philosophers for millennia. This
was true in the days of positivism, but no more. Zabalas claim that analytic philosophers have
not produced deep historical research is similarly outdated. It was true back when the
popularity of Russells A History of Western Philosophy signaled the analytic disdain for
serious history. Now, however, even though many analytic philosophers still have little interest
in history, many of the best current historians of philosophy employ the conceptual and
argumentative methods of analytic philosophy.

Because of such developments, Leiter has argued that there are no longer substantive
philosophical differences between analytic and continental philosophy, although there are
sometimes important differences of style. He has also suggested that the only gap in principle
between the two camps is sociological, that (these are my examples) philosophers in one camp
discount the work of those in the other simply because of their personal distaste for symbolic
logic or for elaborate literary and historical discussions.

Some continental approaches claim to access a privileged domain of experience.

I agree with much of what Leiter says, but think there are still important general philosophical
differences between analytic philosophy and continental philosophy, in all their current varieties.
These differences concern their conceptions of experience and of reason as standards of
evaluation. Typically, analytic philosophy appeals to experience understood as common-sense
intuitions (as well as their developments and transformations by science) and to reason
understood as the standard rules of logical inference. A number of continental approaches claim
to access a privileged domain of experience that penetrates beneath the veneer of common sense
and science experience. For example, phenomenologists, such as Husserl, the early Heidegger,
Sartre and Merleau-Ponty try to describe the concretely lived experience from which common-
sense/scientific experience is a pale and distorted abstraction, like the mathematical frequencies
that optics substitutes for the colors we perceive in the world. Similarly, various versions of neo-
Kantianism and idealism point to a transcendental or absolute consciousness that provides
the fuller significance of our ordinary experiences.

Other versions of continental thought regard the essential activity of reason not as the logical
regimentation of thought but as the creative exercise of intellectual imagination. This view is
characteristic of most important French philosophers since the 1960s, beginning with Foucault,
Derrida and Deleuze. They maintain that the standard logic analytic philosophers use can merely
explicate what is implicit in the concepts with which we happen to begin; such logic is useless
for the essential philosophical task, which they maintain is learning to think beyond these
concepts.

Continental philosophies of experience try to probe beneath the concepts of everyday experience
to discover the meanings that underlie them, to think the conditions for the possibility of our
concepts. By contrast, continental philosophies of imagination try to think beyond those
concepts, to, in some sense, think what is impossible.

Philosophies of experience and philosophies of imagination are in tension, since the intuitive
certainties of experience work as limits to creative intellectual imagination, which in turn
challenges those alleged limits. Michel Foucault nicely expressed the tension when he spoke of
the competing philosophical projects of critique in the sense of knowing what limits knowledge
has to renounce transgressing and of a practical critique that takes the form of a possible
transgression. However, a number of recent French philosophers (e.g., Levinas, Ricoeur,
Badiou and Marion) can be understood as developing philosophies that try to reconcile
phenomenological experience and deconstructive creativity.

In view of their substantive philosophical differences, its obvious that analytic and continental
philosophers would profit by greater familiarity with one anothers work, and discussions across
the divide would make for a better philosophical world. Here, however, there is a serious lack of
symmetry between analytic and continental thought. This is due to the relative clarity of most
analytic writing in contrast to the obscurity of much continental work.

Because of its commitment to clarity, analytic philosophy functions as an effective lingua franca
for any philosophical ideas. (Even the most difficult writers, such as Sellars and Davidson, find
disciples who write clarifying commentaries.) There is, moreover, a continuing demand for
analytic expositions of major continental figures. Its obvious why there is no corresponding
market for, say, expositions of Quine, Rawls or Kripke in the idioms of Heidegger, Derrida or
Deleuze. With all due appreciation for the limits of what cannot be said with full clarity, training
in analytic philosophy would greatly improve the writing of most continental philosophers.

Of course, analytic philosophers could often profit from exposure to continental ideas.
Epistemologists, for example, could learn a great deal from the phenomenological analyses of
Husserl and Merleau-Ponty, and metaphysicians could profit from the historical reflections of
Heidegger and Derrida. But in view of the unnecessary difficulty of much continental writing,
most analytic philosophers will do better to rely on a second-hand acquaintance through reliable
and much more accessible secondary sources.

It may be that the most strikingly obscure continental writing (e.g., of the later Heidegger and of
most major French philosophers since the 1960s) is a form of literary expression, producing a
kind of abstract poetry from its creative transformations of philosophical concepts. This would
explain the move of academic interest in such work toward English and other language
departments. But it is hard to see that there is much of serious philosophical value lost in the
clarity of analytic commentaries on Heidegger, Derrida, et al.

There are some encouraging recent signs of philosophers following philosophical problems
wherever they are interestingly discussed, regardless of the authors methodology, orientation or
style. But the primary texts of leading continental philosophers are still unnecessary challenges
to anyone trying to come to terms with them. The continental-analytic gap will begin to be
bridged only when seminal thinkers of the Continent begin to write more clearly.
Gary Gutting is a professor of philosophy at the University of Notre Dame, and an editor of
Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. He is the author of, most recently, Thinking the
Impossible: French Philosophy since 1960, and writes regularly for The Stone.