Contemporary philosophy is the present period in the history of
Western philosophyWestern philosophy is the philosophical thought and work of the Western or Occidental world, as distinct from Eastern or Oriental philosophies and the varieties of indigenous philosophies....
beginning at the end of the nineteenth century with the rise of
analyticAnalytic philosophy is a generic term for a style of philosophy that came to dominate English-speaking countries in the 20th century...
and
continentalContinental philosophy, in contemporary usage, refers to a set of traditions of 19th and 20th century philosophy from mainland Europe. This sense of the term originated among English-speaking philosophers in the second half of the 20th century, who found it useful for referring to a range of...
philosophy. Continental philosophy began with the work of
BrentanoThere are some famous people named Brentano or von Brentano:* Antonie Brentano* August Brentano, bookseller* Bernard von Brentano, novelist* Christian Brentano* Clemens Brentano, poet and novelist, brother of Bettina von Arnim There are some famous people named Brentano or von Brentano:* Antonie...
, Husserl, and
ReinachAdolf Bernhard Philipp Reinach , German philosopher, phenomenologist and law theorist.-Life and Works:...
on the development of the philosophical method of phenomenology. This development was roughly contemporaneous with work by
Gottlob FregeFriedrich Ludwig Gottlob Frege was a German mathematician who became a logician and philosopher. He was one of the founders of modern logic, and made major contributions to the foundations of mathematics. As a philosopher, he is generally considered to be the father of analytic philosophy, for his...
and
Bertrand RussellBertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, OM, FRS was an English philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, and social critic. Although he spent the majority of his life in England, he was born in Wales, where he also died.Russell led the British "revolt against idealism" in the...
inaugurating a new philosophical method based on the analysis of language via modern logic (hence the term "analytic philosophy").
Contemporary philosophy is the present period in the history of
Western philosophyWestern philosophy is the philosophical thought and work of the Western or Occidental world, as distinct from Eastern or Oriental philosophies and the varieties of indigenous philosophies....
beginning at the end of the nineteenth century with the rise of
analyticAnalytic philosophy is a generic term for a style of philosophy that came to dominate English-speaking countries in the 20th century...
and
continentalContinental philosophy, in contemporary usage, refers to a set of traditions of 19th and 20th century philosophy from mainland Europe. This sense of the term originated among English-speaking philosophers in the second half of the 20th century, who found it useful for referring to a range of...
philosophy. Continental philosophy began with the work of
BrentanoThere are some famous people named Brentano or von Brentano:* Antonie Brentano* August Brentano, bookseller* Bernard von Brentano, novelist* Christian Brentano* Clemens Brentano, poet and novelist, brother of Bettina von Arnim There are some famous people named Brentano or von Brentano:* Antonie...
, Husserl, and
ReinachAdolf Bernhard Philipp Reinach , German philosopher, phenomenologist and law theorist.-Life and Works:...
on the development of the philosophical method of phenomenology. This development was roughly contemporaneous with work by
Gottlob FregeFriedrich Ludwig Gottlob Frege was a German mathematician who became a logician and philosopher. He was one of the founders of modern logic, and made major contributions to the foundations of mathematics. As a philosopher, he is generally considered to be the father of analytic philosophy, for his...
and
Bertrand RussellBertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, OM, FRS was an English philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, and social critic. Although he spent the majority of his life in England, he was born in Wales, where he also died.Russell led the British "revolt against idealism" in the...
inaugurating a new philosophical method based on the analysis of language via modern logic (hence the term "analytic philosophy"). The relationship between philosophers who label themselves "analytic" and those who label themselves "continental" is often a hostile one, but there are some contemporary philosophers who have argued that this division is harmful to philosophy and attempt a combined approach (e.g.
Richard RortyRichard McKay Rorty was an American philosopher. He had a long and diverse career in Philosophy, Humanities, and Literature departments...
).
Analytic and continental philosophy share a common Western philosophical tradition up to
Immanuel KantImmanuel Kant was an 18th-century German philosopher from the Prussian city of Königsberg...
. Afterwards, analytic and continental philosophers differ on the importance and influence of subsequent philosophers on their respective traditions. The German idealism school which developed out of the work of Kant in the 1780s and 1790s and culminated in
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich HegelGeorg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was a German philosopher, one of the creators of German Idealism, and along with Immanuel Kant, one of the most influential philosophers of the Age of Enlightenment....
is an important development in philosophy's history by many continental philosophers, but was repudiated by Russell, Moore, and many analytic philosophers.
The phrase "contemporary philosophy" is often confused with
modern philosophyModern philosophy is philosophy practiced in Europe and North America between the 17th and early 20th centuries. It is not a specific doctrine or school, although there are certain assumptions common to much of it, which helps to distinguish it from earlier philosophy.The 17th and early 20th...
(which refers to an earlier period in Western philosophy), postmodern philosophy (which is a term associated specifically with continental philosophy), and with a non-technical use of the phrase referring to any recent philosophic work. However, the phrase "contemporary philosophy" is a piece of
technical terminologyTechnical terminology is the specialized vocabulary of a field, the nomenclature. These terms have specific definitions within the field, which is not necessarily the same as their meaning in common use...
in philosophy that refers to a specific period in the history of Western philosophy.
Analytic philosophy
The analytic program in philosophy is ordinarily dated to the work of
EnglishEngland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the North Sea to the east, with the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
philosophers
Bertrand RussellBertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, OM, FRS was an English philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, and social critic. Although he spent the majority of his life in England, he was born in Wales, where he also died.Russell led the British "revolt against idealism" in the...
and G. E. Moore in the early 20th century. They turned away from then-dominant forms of
HegelianismHegelianism is a collective term for schools of thought following or referring to G. W. F. Hegel's philosophy which can be summed up by the dictum that "the rational alone is real," which means that all reality is capable of being expressed in rational categories...
(objecting in particular to its
idealismIdealism is the philosophical theory that maintains that the ultimate nature of reality is based on mind or ideas. It holds that the so-called external or "real world" is inseparable from mind, consciousness, or perception...
and purported obscurity) and began to develop a new sort of conceptual analysis based on recent developments in logic. The most prominent example of this new method of conceptual analysis is Russell's 1905 paper "
On Denoting"On Denoting", written by Bertrand Russell, is one of the most significant and influential philosophical essays of the 20th century. It was published in the philosophy journal Mind in 1905; then reprinted, in both a special 2005 anniversary issue of the same journal and in Russell's Logic and...
", a paper that widely seen to be the paradigm of the analytic program in philosophy.
Although contemporary philosophers who self-identify as "analytic" have widely divergent interests, assumptions, and methods--and have often rejected the fundamental premises that defined the analytic movement between 1900 and 1960--analytic philosophy, in its contemporary state, is usually taken to be defined by a particular style characterized by precision and thoroughness about a narrow topic, and resistance to "imprecise or cavalier discussions of broad topics."
Some analytic philosophers at the end of the 20th century, such as
Richard RortyRichard McKay Rorty was an American philosopher. He had a long and diverse career in Philosophy, Humanities, and Literature departments...
, have called for a major overhaul of the analytic philosophic tradition. In particular, Rorty has argued that analytic philosophers must learn important lessons from the work of continental philosophers. While others, such as
Timothy WilliamsonTimothy Williamson is a distinguished British philosopher whose main research interests are in philosophical logic, philosophy of language, epistemology and metaphysics....
, have called for even stricter adherence to the methodological ideals of analytic philosophy:
The “crude stereotypes” that Williamson refers to in the above passage are these: that analytic philosophers produce carefully argued and rigorous analyses of trivially small philosophic puzzles, while continental philosophers produce profound and substantial results but only by deducing them from broad philosophical systems which themselves lack supporting arguments or clarity in their expression. Williamson himself seems to here distance himself from these stereotypes, but does accuse analytic philosophers of too often fitting the critical stereotype of continental philosophers by moving "too fast" to reach substantial results via poor arguments.
Continental philosophy
The history of continental philosophy is taken to begin in the early 1900's because its institutional roots descend directly from those of phenomenology, As a result,
Edmund HusserlEdmund Gustav Albrecht Husserl was a philosopher who is deemed the founder of phenomenology...
has often been credited as the founding figure in continental philosophy.
The term "continental philosophy", like "analytic philosophy", marks a broad range of philosophical views and approaches not easily captured in a definition. Scholar Simon Glendinning has even suggested that the term may be more pejorative than descriptive, functioning as a label for types of western philosophy rejected or disliked by analytic philosophers. Nonetheless, certain common themes have been seen to typically characterize continental philosophy:
- First, continental philosophers generally reject scientism
The term scientism is used to describe the view that natural science has authority over all other interpretations of life, such as philosophical, religious, mythical, spiritual, or humanistic explanations, and over other fields of inquiry, such as the social sciences...
, the view that the natural scienceIn Science, the term natural science refers to a naturalistic approach to the study of the universe, which is understood as obeying rules or laws of natural origin...
s are the best or most accurate way of understanding all phenomena.
- Second, continental philosophy usually considers experience as determined at least partly by factors such as context, space and time, language, culture, or history. Thus continental philosophy tends toward historicism
Historicism refers to philosophical theories that include one or both of two claims:# that there is an organic succession of developments, a notion also known as historism , and/or;...
. Where analytic philosophy tends to treat philosophy in terms of discrete problems, capable of being analyzed apart from their historical origins.
- Third, continental philosophers tend to take a strong interest in the unity of theory and practice, and tend to see their philosophical inquiries as closely related to personal, moral, or political transformation.
- Fourth, continental philosophy has an emphasis on metaphilosophy
Metaphilosophy, derived from Greek word meta μετά and philosophía φιλοσοφία , is the study of the nature, aims, and methods of philosophy...
(i.e. the study of the nature, aims, and methods of philosophy). This emphasis can also be found in analytic philosophy, but with starkly different results.
Continental philosophy is also often characterized by its critics as lacking the rigor of analytic philosophy. A common response to this criticism is that it may reflect a misunderstanding of the point or nature of continental projects. For instance, the two camps can be seen as operating within fundamentally different frameworks (cf. language-games), which in turn call for distinct sets of rules. One might also argue that the rigidity characteristic of analytic approaches is necessarily grounded in certain basic assumptions (e.g., on the nature of truth, language, or propositions) that cannot even be questioned within the rigid framework that already assumes them.
See also
- 20th-century philosophy
The 20th century brought with it upheavals that produced a series of conflicting developments within philosophy over the basis of knowledge and the validity of various absolutes...
- Analytic philosophy
Analytic philosophy is a generic term for a style of philosophy that came to dominate English-speaking countries in the 20th century...
- Experimental philosophy
Experimental philosophy is an emerging field of philosophical inquiry that makes use of empirical data—often gathered through surveys which probe the intuitions of ordinary people—in order to inform research on philosophical questions...
- An emerging field of philosophical inquiry that makes use of empirical data—often gathered through surveys which probe the intuitions of ordinary people—in order to inform research on long-standing and unsettled philosophical questions.
- Logical positivism
Logical positivism is a school of philosophy that combines empiricism, the idea that observational evidence is indispensable for knowledge of the world, with a version of rationalism incorporating mathematical and logico-linguistic constructs and deductions in epistemology.[See, e.g., : ...]
- The first and dominate school in analytic philosophy for the first half of the 20th-century.
- Ordinary language philosophy
Ordinary language philosophy or linguistic philosophy is a philosophical school that approaches traditional philosophical problems as rooted in misunderstandings philosophers develop by distorting or forgetting what words actually mean....
- The dominate school in analytic philosophy in the middle of 20th-century.
- Postanalytic philosophy
Postanalytic philosophy describes a detachment from the mainstream philosophical movement of analytic philosophy, which is the predominant school of thought in English-speaking countries. Postanalytic philosophy derives mainly from contemporary American thought, especially from the works of...
- Postanalytic philosophy describes a detachment and challenge to mainstream analytic philosophy by philosophers like Richard Rorty.
- Continental philosophy
Continental philosophy, in contemporary usage, refers to a set of traditions of 19th and 20th century philosophy from mainland Europe. This sense of the term originated among English-speaking philosophers in the second half of the 20th century, who found it useful for referring to a range of...
- Deconstruction
Deconstruction is the name given by French philosopher Jacques Derrida to an approach which rigorously pursues the meaning of a text to the point of undoing the oppositions on which it is apparently founded, and to the point of showing that those foundations are irreducibly complex, unstable or ...
- An approach (whether in philosophy, literary analysis, or in other fields) where one conducts textual readings with a view to demonstrate that the text is not a discrete whole, instead containing several irreconcilable, contradictory meanings.
- Existentialism
Like “rationalism” and “empiricism,” “existentialism” is a term that belongs to intellectual history. Its definition is thus to some extent one of historical convenience...
- Existential philosophy is the "explicit conceptual manifestation of an existential attitude" that begins with a sense of disorientation and confusion in the face of an apparently meaningless or absurd world.
- Phenomenology - Phenomenology is primarily concerned with making the structures of consciousness, and the phenomena which appear in acts of consciousness, objects of systematic reflection and analysis.
- Poststructuralism - Structuralism
Structuralism is an approach to the human sciences that attempts to analyze a specific field as a complex system of interrelated parts. It began in linguistics with the work of Ferdinand de Saussure...
was a fashionable movement in France in the 1950s and 1960s, that studied the underlying structures inherent in cultural products (such as texts), post-structuralism derive from critique of structuralist premises. Specifically, post-structuralism holds that the study of underlying structures is itself culturally conditioned and therefore subject to myriad biases and misinterpretations.
- Postmodern philosophy
Postmodern philosophy is a philosophical direction which is critical of the foundational assumptions and structures of philosophy. Beginning as a critique of Continental philosophy, it was heavily influenced by phenomenology, structuralism and existentialism, including writings of Georg Wilhelm...
- Postmodern philosophy is skeptical or nihilistic toward many of the values and assumptions of philosophy that derive from modernity, such as humanity having an essence which distinguishes humans from animals, or the assumption that one form of government is demonstrably better than another.
- Social constructionism
Social constructionism and social constructivism are sociological theories of knowledge that consider how social phenomena develop in social contexts...
- A central concept in continental philosophy, a social construction is a concept or practice that is the creation (or artifact) of a particular group.
- Critical theory
Critical theory is the examination and critique of society and culture, drawing from knowledge across the social sciences and humanities. The term has two quite different meanings with different origins and histories, one originating in social theory and the other in literary criticism...
- Critical theory is the examination and critique of society and culture, drawing from knowledge across the social sciences and humanities.
- Frankfurt School
The Frankfurt School refers to a school of neo-Marxist sociology and philosophy in the tradition of critical theory, which was associated with the early Institute for Social Research at the University of Frankfurt am Main...
- The term "Frankfurt School" is an informal term used to designate the thinkers affiliated with the Institute for Social ResearchThe Institute for Social Research is a research organization covering topics such as sociology and continental philosophy, best known as the institutional home of the Frankfurt School....
or who were influenced by it.
- Western philosophy
Western philosophy is the philosophical thought and work of the Western or Occidental world, as distinct from Eastern or Oriental philosophies and the varieties of indigenous philosophies....
Further reading
- Andrew Cutrofello, Continental Philosophy: A Contemporary Introduction. Routledge (2005)
- Dummett, Michael
Sir Michael Anthony Eardley Dummett FBA D.Litt is a leading British philosopher. He has both written on the history of analytic philosophy, and made original contributions to the subject, particularly in the areas of philosophy of mathematics, philosophy of logic, philosophy of language and...
Origins of Analytical Philosophy. Harvard University Press (1996)
- Floyd, Juliet Future Pasts: The Analytic Tradition in Twentieth-Century Philosoph Oxford University Press (2001)
- Glendinning, Simon The Idea of Continental Philosophy Edinburgh University Press (2006)
- Glock, Hans-Johann What is Analytic Philosophy?. Cambridge University Press (2008)
- Prado, C. G. A House Divided: Comparing Analytic and Continental Philosophy Humanity Books (2003)
- Martinich, A. P. Analytic Philosophy: An Anthology (Blackwell Philosophy Anthologies). Wiley-Blackwell (2001)
- Martinich, A. P. A Companion to Analytic Philosophy (Blackwell Companions to Philosophy). Wiley-Blackwell (2005)
- Simon Critchley
Simon Critchley is an English philosopher currently teaching at New York's New School for Social Research. He works in continental philosophy, the history of philosophy, literature, ethics and politics....
, Continental Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press (2001) ISBN 0-19-285359-7
- Soames, Scott
Scott Soames is a professor of philosophy at the University of Southern California. He specializes in the philosophy of language and the history of analytic philosophy...
, Philosophical Analysis in the Twentieth Century, Volume 1: The Dawn of Analysis. Princeton University Press (2005)
- Soames, Scott
Scott Soames is a professor of philosophy at the University of Southern California. He specializes in the philosophy of language and the history of analytic philosophy...
, Philosophical Analysis in the Twentieth Century, Volume 2: The Age of Meaning. Princeton University Press (2005)
- Stroll, Avrum Twentieth-Century Analytic Philosophy. Columbia University Press (2001)
- Williamson, Timothy
Timothy Williamson is a distinguished British philosopher whose main research interests are in philosophical logic, philosophy of language, epistemology and metaphysics....
The Philosophy of Philosophy (The Blackwell / Brown Lectures in Philosophy). Wiley-Blackwell (2008)
External links