As everyone knows, there is supposed to be a large
difference between analytic philosophy and continental philosophy. The problem
is of course that nobody has any clear idea of what analytic philosophy and
continental philosophy are. We’re all very good at spotting clear instances of
analytic philosophy (e.g. anything by David Lewis) and continental philosophy
(e.g. anything by Lacan). But it’s very hard to spot any distinction of content
between analytic and continental philosophy. For almost every doctrine espoused
by continental philosophers, there is some analytic philosopher who has given mind-numbingly
dull step-by-step arguments for that conclusion.
Two examples from the most recent literature in philosophy
are pragmatic encroachment into knowledge
and relativism about truth. According
to advocates of pragmatic encroachment (such as myself, John Hawthorne, and
Jeremy Fantl and Matthew McGrath), what distinguishes knowledge from true
belief is not just a matter of traditionally epistemic factors. One needs to
take into account the putative knower’s practical situation as well; I think a
similar thesis is true about other epistemic notions. The idea that
ordinary epistemic notions are “impure” in this way does not seem like a
traditionally analytic conclusion. According to relativists about truth, two
people can disagree, and both be correct, since the truth of certain kinds of claims is
relative to an evaluator. Both of these theses are ones that are usually
associated with figures in the continental tradition (the former perhaps
somewhat more Germanic, and the latter somewhat more French). An example from classic literature is skepticism about
meaning facts. Different arguments for skepticism about determinate
meaning-facts are central to both traditions (e.g. compare Derrida’s Of
Grammatology with Chapter 2 of Quine’s Word and Object).
So if the conclusions
don’t distinguish clear instances of analytic philosophy from clear instances
of continental philosophy, what does? I am certainly no scholar of continental philosophy. But one hypothesis worth entertaining is that it’s the style in which the philosophy is done which distinguishes it from analytic philosophy,
or more precisely, the kind of considerations that are provided (often for very
similar conclusions). While an analytic philosopher might give certain
arguments for relativism about truth, or the social dimension of rationality,
she will do so in such a way as to make vivid her commitment to an
inter-subjective standard of rationality or truth according to which her
arguments can be judged. In contrast, perhaps continental philosophers (as Marcus
suggested to me last night) intend the literary style in which they make their
arguments to underscore their view that there is only a spurious distinction
between allegedly epistemically pure, truth-tracking disciplines, on the one
hand, and literature, on the other.
-Jason
