Continental philosophy is a term used to describe some philosophers and philosophical traditions that do not fall under the umbrella of
analytic philosophy
Analytic philosophy is a branch and tradition of philosophy using analysis, popular in the Western world and particularly the Anglosphere, which began around the turn of the 20th century in the contemporary era in the United Kingdom, United Sta ...
. However, there is no academic consensus on the definition of continental philosophy. Prior to the twentieth century, the term "continental" was used broadly to refer to philosophy from continental Europe. A different use of the term originated among English-speaking philosophers in the second half of the 20th century, who used it to refer to a range of thinkers and traditions outside the
analytic movement. Continental philosophy includes
German idealism,
phenomenology,
existentialism (and its antecedents, such as the thought of
Kierkegaard and
Nietzsche),
hermeneutics,
structuralism
In sociology, anthropology, archaeology, history, philosophy, and linguistics, structuralism is a general theory of culture and methodology that implies that elements of human culture must be understood by way of their relationship to a broader ...
,
post-structuralism,
deconstruction
The term deconstruction refers to approaches to understanding the relationship between text and meaning. It was introduced by the philosopher Jacques Derrida, who defined it as a turn away from Platonism's ideas of "true" forms and essences w ...
,
French feminism,
psychoanalytic theory
Psychoanalytic theory is the theory of personality organization and the dynamics of personality development that guides psychoanalysis, a clinical method for treating psychopathology. First laid out by Sigmund Freud in the late 19th century, psyc ...
, and the
critical theory
A critical theory is any approach to social philosophy that focuses on society and culture to reveal, critique and challenge power structures. With roots in sociology and literary criticism, it argues that social problems stem more from soci ...
of the
Frankfurt School as well as branches of
Freudian,
Hegelian and
Western Marxist
Western Marxism is a current of Marxist theory that arose from Western and Central Europe in the aftermath of the 1917 October Revolution in Russia and the ascent of Leninism. The term denotes a loose collection of theorists who advanced an i ...
views.
The term ''continental philosophy'' lacks clear definition and may mark merely a
family resemblance across disparate philosophical views.
Simon Glendinning has suggested that the term was originally more pejorative than descriptive, functioning as a label for types of western philosophy rejected or disliked by analytic philosophers.
[.] Nonetheless,
Michael E. Rosen
Michael Eric Rosen (born 11 May 1952) is a British political philosopher active in the traditions of analytic philosophy and continental European intellectual thought. He is best known for his work on Hegel and the Frankfurt School. He is curre ...
has ventured to identify common themes that typically characterize continental philosophy.
[ Rosen, Michael E. "Continental Philosophy from Hegel." In ''Philosophy 2: Further through the Subject'', edited by ]A. C. Grayling
Anthony Clifford Grayling (; born 3 April 1949) is a British philosopher and author. He was born in Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) and spent most of his childhood there and in Nyasaland (now Malawi). In 2011 he founded and became the first Mast ...
. p. 665. Ultimately, the foregoing themes derive from a broadly
Kantian thesis that knowledge, experience, and reality are bound and shaped by conditions best understood through philosophical reflection rather than exclusively empirical inquiry.
[Continental philosophers usually identify such conditions with the transcendental subject or self: , "It is with Kant that philosophical claims about the self attain new and remarkable proportions. The self becomes not just the focus of attention but the entire subject-matter of philosophy. The self is not just another entity in the world, but in an important sense it creates the world, and the reflecting self does not just know itself, but in knowing itself knows all selves, and the structure of any and every possible self."]
Definition
The term ''continental philosophy'', in the above sense, was first widely used by English-speaking philosophers to describe university courses in the 1970s, emerging as a collective name for the philosophies then widespread in France and Germany, such as phenomenology, existentialism, structuralism, and post-structuralism.
However, the term (and its approximate sense) can be found at least as early as 1840, in
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill (20 May 1806 – 7 May 1873) was an English philosopher, political economist, Member of Parliament (MP) and civil servant. One of the most influential thinkers in the history of classical liberalism, he contributed widely to ...
's 1840 essay on
Coleridge, where Mill contrasts the
Kantian-influenced thought of "Continental philosophy" and "Continental philosophers" with the English empiricism of
Bentham and the 18th century generally. This notion gained prominence in the early 20th century as figures such as
Bertrand Russell and
G. E. Moore advanced a vision of philosophy closely allied with natural science, progressing through logical analysis. This tradition, which has come to be known broadly as ''analytic philosophy'', became dominant in Britain and the United States from roughly 1930 onward. Russell and Moore made a dismissal of
Hegelianism
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (; ; 27 August 1770 – 14 November 1831) was a German philosopher. He is one of the most important figures in German idealism and one of the founding figures of modern Western philosophy. His influence extends a ...
and its philosophical relatives a distinctive part of their new movement. Commenting on the history of the distinction in 1945, Russell distinguished "two schools of philosophy, which may be broadly distinguished as the Continental and the British respectively," a division he saw as operative "from the time of Locke;" Russell proposes the following broad points of distinction between Continental and British types of philosophy:
# in
method,
deductive system-building vs. piecemeal
induction;
# in
metaphysics,
rationalist theology vs. metaphysical agnosticism;
# in
ethics, non-naturalist
deontology vs. naturalist
hedonism
Hedonism refers to a family of theories, all of which have in common that pleasure plays a central role in them. ''Psychological'' or ''motivational hedonism'' claims that human behavior is determined by desires to increase pleasure and to decr ...
; and
# in
politics,
authoritarianism vs.
liberalism.
Since the 1970s, however, many philosophers in the United States and Britain have taken interest in continental philosophers since Kant, and the philosophical traditions in many European countries have similarly incorporated many aspects of the "analytic" movement. Self-described analytic philosophy flourishes in France, including philosophers such as
Jules Vuillemin,
Vincent Descombes,
Gilles Gaston Granger
Gilles-Gaston Granger (; ; 28 January 1920 – 24 August 2016) was a French philosopher.
Work
His works discuss the philosophy of logic, mathematics, human and social sciences, Aristotle, Jean Cavaillès, and Ludwig Wittgenstein.
He produced t ...
,
François Recanati
François Recanati (born 1952) is a French analytic philosopher and research fellow at the College de France, and at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique. Many of his works focus on the philosophy of language and mind.
Biography
He ...
, and
Pascal Engel. Likewise, self-described "continental philosophers" can be found in philosophy departments in the United Kingdom, North America, and Australia., "Continental philosophy" is thus defined in terms of a family of philosophical traditions and influences rather than a geographic distinction. The issue of geographical specificity has been raised again more recently in post-colonial and decolonial approaches to "continental philosophy," which critically examine the ways that European imperial and colonial projects have influenced academic knowledge production. For this reason, some scholars have advocated for "post-continental philosophy" as an outgrowth of continental philosophy.
Characteristics
The term ''continental philosophy'', like ''analytic philosophy'', lacks a clear definition and may mark merely a
family resemblance across disparate philosophical views.
Simon Glendinning has suggested that the term was originally more pejorative than descriptive, functioning as a label for types of western philosophy rejected or disliked by analytic philosophers.
Nonetheless,
Michael E. Rosen
Michael Eric Rosen (born 11 May 1952) is a British political philosopher active in the traditions of analytic philosophy and continental European intellectual thought. He is best known for his work on Hegel and the Frankfurt School. He is curre ...
has ventured to identify common themes that typically characterize continental philosophy:
#Continental philosophers generally reject the view that the
natural science
Natural science is one of the branches of science concerned with the description, understanding and prediction of natural phenomena, based on empirical evidence from observation and experimentation. Mechanisms such as peer review and repeatab ...
s are the only or most accurate way of understanding
natural phenomena. This contrasts with many analytic philosophers who consider their inquiries as continuous with, or subordinate to, those of the natural sciences. Continental philosophers often argue that science depends upon a "pre-theoretical substrate of experience" (a version of
Kantian conditions of possible experience or the phenomenological "
lifeworld") and that scientific methods are inadequate to fully understand such conditions of intelligibility.
#Continental philosophy usually considers these conditions of possible experience as variable: determined at least partly by factors such as context, space and time, language, culture, or history. Thus continental philosophy tends toward
historicism (or
historicity). Where analytic philosophy tends to treat philosophy in terms of discrete problems, capable of being analyzed apart from their historical origins (much as scientists consider the history of science inessential to scientific inquiry), continental philosophy typically suggests that "philosophical argument cannot be divorced from the textual and contextual conditions of its historical emergence."
#Continental philosophy typically holds that
human agency can change these conditions of possible experience: "if human experience is a contingent creation, then it can be recreated in other ways." Thus continental philosophers tend to take a strong interest in the unity of theory and practice, and often see their philosophical inquiries as closely related to personal, moral, or political transformation. This tendency is very clear in the Marxist tradition ("
philosophers have only ''interpreted'' the world, in various ways; the point, however, is to ''change'' it"), but is also central in existentialism and
post-structuralism.
#A final characteristic trait of continental philosophy is an emphasis on
metaphilosophy. In the wake of the development and success of the natural sciences, continental philosophers have often sought to redefine the method and nature of philosophy. In some cases (such as German idealism or phenomenology), this manifests as a renovation of the traditional view that philosophy is the first, foundational, ''a priori'' science. In other cases (such as hermeneutics, critical theory, or structuralism), it is held that philosophy investigates a domain that is irreducibly cultural or practical. And some continental philosophers (such as Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, or the later
Heidegger) doubt whether any conception of philosophy can coherently achieve its stated goals.
Ultimately, the foregoing themes derive from a broadly Kantian thesis that
knowledge,
experience, and
reality are bound and shaped by conditions best understood through
philosophical reflection rather than exclusively
empirical inquiry
A case study is an in-depth, detailed examination of a particular case (or cases) within a real-world context. For example, case studies in medicine may focus on an individual patient or ailment; case studies in business might cover a particular fi ...
.
History
The history of continental philosophy (taken in the narrower sense of "
late modern/
contemporary continental philosophy") is usually thought to begin with
German idealism.
[ and date the origins of continental philosophy a generation earlier, to the work of Jean-Jacques Rousseau] Led by figures like
Fichte,
Schelling, and later
Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (; ; 27 August 1770 – 14 November 1831) was a German philosopher. He is one of the most important figures in German idealism and one of the founding figures of modern Western philosophy. His influence extends a ...
, German idealism developed out of the work of
Immanuel Kant in the 1780s and 1790s and was closely linked with
romanticism and the revolutionary politics of the
Enlightenment
Enlightenment or enlighten may refer to:
Age of Enlightenment
* Age of Enlightenment, period in Western intellectual history from the late 17th to late 18th century, centered in France but also encompassing (alphabetically by country or culture): ...
. Besides the central figures listed above, important contributors to German idealism also included
Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi,
Gottlob Ernst Schulze,
Karl Leonhard Reinhold, and
Friedrich Schleiermacher
Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher (; 21 November 1768 – 12 February 1834) was a German Reformed theologian, philosopher, and biblical scholar known for his attempt to reconcile the criticisms of the Enlightenment with traditional P ...
.
As the institutional roots of "continental philosophy" in many cases directly descend from those of phenomenology,
[E.g., the largest academic organization devoted to furthering the study of continental philosophy is the Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy.] Edmund Husserl has always been a canonical figure in continental philosophy. Nonetheless, Husserl is also a respected subject of study in the analytic tradition. Husserl's notion of a
noema, the non-psychological content of thought, his correspondence with
Gottlob Frege, and his investigations into the nature of logic continue to generate interest among analytic philosophers.
J. G. Merquior
''J. The Jewish News of Northern California'', formerly known as ''Jweekly'', is a weekly print newspaper in Northern California, with its online edition updated daily. It is owned and operated by San Francisco Jewish Community Publications In ...
argued that a distinction between analytic and continental philosophies can be first clearly identified with
Henri Bergson
Henri-Louis Bergson (; 18 October 1859 – 4 January 1941) was a French philosopherHenri Bergson. 2014. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Retrieved 13 August 2014, from https://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/61856/Henri-Bergson (1859–1941), whose wariness of science and elevation of
intuition paved the way for
existentialism.
[ Merquior, J. G. 1987. ''Foucault'', Fontana Modern Masters series. University of California Press. .] Merquior wrote: "the most prestigious philosophizing in France took a very dissimilar path
rom the Anglo-Germanic analytic schools
Rom, or ROM may refer to:
Biomechanics and medicine
* Risk of mortality, a medical classification to estimate the likelihood of death for a patient
* Rupture of membranes, a term used during pregnancy to describe a rupture of the amniotic sac
* R ...
One might say it all began with Henri Bergson."
An illustration of some important differences between ''analytic'' and ''continental'' styles of philosophy can be found in
Rudolf Carnap
Rudolf Carnap (; ; 18 May 1891 – 14 September 1970) was a German-language philosopher who was active in Europe before 1935 and in the United States thereafter. He was a major member of the Vienna Circle and an advocate of logical positivism. He ...
's "Elimination of Metaphysics through Logical Analysis of Language" (1932; "Überwindung der Metaphysik durch Logische Analyse der Sprache"), a paper some observers have described as particularly
polemical. Carnap's paper argues that Heidegger's lecture "What Is Metaphysics?" violates logical syntax to create nonsensical pseudo-statements. Moreover, Carnap claimed that many German metaphysicians of the era were similar to Heidegger in writing statements that were syntactically meaningless.
With the rise of
Nazism, many of Germany's philosophers, especially those of Jewish descent or leftist or liberal political sympathies (such as many in the
Vienna Circle and the
Frankfurt School), fled to the English-speaking world. Those philosophers who remained—if they remained in academia at all—had to reconcile themselves to
Nazi control of the universities. Others, such as
Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger (; ; 26 September 188926 May 1976) was a German philosopher who is best known for contributions to phenomenology, hermeneutics, and existentialism. He is among the most important and influential philosophers of the 20th centur ...
, among the most prominent German philosophers to stay in Germany,
aligned themselves with Nazism when it came to power.
20th-century French philosophy
Both before and after
World War II there was a growth of interest in
German philosophy in
France. A new interest in
communism translated into an interest in Marx and Hegel, who became for the first time studied extensively in the politically conservative French university system of the
Third Republic. At the same time the phenomenological philosophy of Husserl and Heidegger became increasingly influential, perhaps owing to its resonances with French philosophies which placed great stock in the first-person perspective (an idea found in divergent forms such as
Cartesianism,
spiritualism, and
Bergsonism
Henri-Louis Bergson (; 18 October 1859 – 4 January 1941) was a French philosopherHenri Bergson. 2014. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Retrieved 13 August 2014, from https://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/61856/Henri-Bergson ). Most important in this popularization of phenomenology was the author and philosopher
Jean-Paul Sartre, who called his philosophy ''
existentialism''.
Another major strain of continental thought is
structuralism
In sociology, anthropology, archaeology, history, philosophy, and linguistics, structuralism is a general theory of culture and methodology that implies that elements of human culture must be understood by way of their relationship to a broader ...
/
post-structuralism. Influenced by the
structural linguistics
Structural linguistics, or structuralism, in linguistics, denotes schools or theories in which language is conceived as a self-contained, self-regulating Semiotics, semiotic system whose elements are defined by their relationship to other element ...
of
Ferdinand de Saussure
Ferdinand de Saussure (; ; 26 November 1857 – 22 February 1913) was a Swiss linguist, semiotician and philosopher. His ideas laid a foundation for many significant developments in both linguistics and semiotics in the 20th century. He is widel ...
, French anthropologists such as
Claude Lévi-Strauss began to apply the structural paradigm to the humanities. In the 1960s and '70s, post-structuralists developed various critiques of structuralism. Post-structuralist thinkers include
Jacques Derrida
Jacques Derrida (; ; born Jackie Élie Derrida; See also . 15 July 1930 – 9 October 2004) was an Algerian-born French philosopher. He developed the philosophy of deconstruction, which he utilized in numerous texts, and which was developed t ...
and
Gilles Deleuze
Gilles Louis René Deleuze ( , ; 18 January 1925 – 4 November 1995) was a French philosopher who, from the early 1950s until his death in 1995, wrote on philosophy, literature, film, and fine art. His most popular works were the two volu ...
. After this wave, most of the late 20th century, the tradition has been carried into the 21st century by
Quentin Meillassoux,
Tristan Garcia,
Francois Laruelle, and others.
Recent Anglo-American developments
From the early 20th century until the 1960s, continental philosophers were only intermittently discussed in British and American universities, despite an influx of continental philosophers, particularly
German Jewish students of Nietzsche and Heidegger, to the United States on account of the persecution of the Jews and later
World War II;
Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt (, , ; 14 October 1906 – 4 December 1975) was a political philosopher, author, and Holocaust survivor. She is widely considered to be one of the most influential political theorists of the 20th century.
Arendt was born ...
,
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse (; ; July 19, 1898 – July 29, 1979) was a German-American philosopher, social critic, and political theorist, associated with the Frankfurt School of critical theory. Born in Berlin, Marcuse studied at the Humboldt University ...
,
Leo Strauss
Leo Strauss (, ; September 20, 1899 – October 18, 1973) was a German-American political philosopher who specialized in classical political philosophy. Born in Germany to Jewish parents, Strauss later emigrated from Germany to the United States. ...
,
Theodor W. Adorno, and
Walter Kaufmann are probably the most notable of this wave, arriving in the late 1930s and early 1940s. However, philosophy departments began offering courses in continental philosophy in the late 1960s and 1970s.
Continental Philosophy features prominently in a number of British and Irish Philosophy departments, for instance at the
University of Essex,
Warwick,
Newcastle,
Sussex
Sussex (), from the Old English (), is a historic county in South East England that was formerly an independent medieval Anglo-Saxon kingdom. It is bounded to the west by Hampshire, north by Surrey, northeast by Kent, south by the English ...
,
Dundee
Dundee (; sco, Dundee; gd, Dùn Dè or ) is Scotland's fourth-largest city and the 51st-most-populous built-up area in the United Kingdom. The mid-year population estimate for 2016 was , giving Dundee a population density of 2,478/km2 or ...
,
Aberdeen (Centre for Modern Thought), and
University College Dublin; as well as
Manchester Metropolitan
Manchester Metropolitan University is located in the centre of Manchester, England. The university has over 40,000 students and over 4,000 members of staff. It is home to four faculties (Arts and Humanities, Business and Law, Health and Educat ...
,
Kingston
Kingston may refer to:
Places
* List of places called Kingston, including the five most populated:
** Kingston, Jamaica
** Kingston upon Hull, England
** City of Kingston, Victoria, Australia
** Kingston, Ontario, Canada
** Kingston upon Thames, ...
,
Staffordshire
Staffordshire (; postal abbreviation Staffs.) is a landlocked county in the West Midlands region of England. It borders Cheshire to the northwest, Derbyshire and Leicestershire to the east, Warwickshire to the southeast, the West Midlands Cou ...
(postgraduate only), and the
Open University.
American university departments in
literature, the
fine arts
In European academic traditions, fine art is developed primarily for aesthetics or creative expression, distinguishing it from decorative art or applied art, which also has to serve some practical function, such as pottery or most metalwork ...
,
film
A film also called a movie, motion picture, moving picture, picture, photoplay or (slang) flick is a work of visual art that simulates experiences and otherwise communicates ideas, stories, perceptions, feelings, beauty, or atmosphere ...
,
sociology, and
political theory
Political philosophy or political theory is the philosophical study of government, addressing questions about the nature, scope, and legitimacy of public agents and institutions and the relationships between them. Its topics include politics, l ...
have increasingly incorporated ideas and arguments from continental philosophers into their curricula and research. North American Philosophy departments offering courses in Continental Philosophy include the
University of Hawai'i at Mānoa,
Boston College
Boston College (BC) is a private Jesuit research university in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts. Founded in 1863, the university has more than 9,300 full-time undergraduates and nearly 5,000 graduate students. Although Boston College is classifie ...
,
Stony Brook University (SUNY),
Vanderbilt University,
DePaul University,
Villanova University, the
University of Guelph,
The New School,
Pennsylvania State University
The Pennsylvania State University (Penn State or PSU) is a Public university, public Commonwealth System of Higher Education, state-related Land-grant university, land-grant research university with campuses and facilities throughout Pennsylvan ...
,
University of Oregon,
Emory University,
University of Pittsburgh,
Duquesne University, the
University of Memphis,
University of King's College, and
Loyola University Chicago
Loyola University Chicago (Loyola or LUC) is a private Jesuit research university in Chicago, Illinois. Founded in 1870 by the Society of Jesus, Loyola is one of the largest Catholic
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Cathol ...
. The most prominent organization for continental philosophy in the United States is the
Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy (SPEP).
Significant works
See also
*
Index of continental philosophy articles
References
Notes
Citations
Sources
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Continental Philosophy
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Contemporary philosophy
Critical theory
History of philosophy
Intellectual history
Philosophical movements
Philosophical schools and traditions
Philosophical traditions
Post-structuralism
Postmodernism
Western culture
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