Continental Philosophy?

Question

What are the chief characteristics of
continental philosophy? Where does continental
philosophy fit into your understanding of philosophy?
When considering the nature of continental philosophy,
is it necessary to draw a distinction between science
and philosophy, between the activity of theorizing and
the activity of philosophical analysis? Is continental
philosophy really *philosophy* as you understand it? Do
the continental philosophers most resemble Socrates? The
pre-Socratic philosophers? The Sophists?

Answer 1

"Continental" is just another word for a: Kantian, Hegelian, Freudian, Marxist, Nietzschean, Heideggerian, Derridean, a Critical Theorist; someone who takes up the challenge of SOME european philosophers who aren't readily accepted by "Analytic" philosophy-- which is the stylistic step-child of logical positivism -- which oddly enough, began in Vienna.... "Continental" is mostly a pejorative claim, it boxes those kinds of philosophers who aren't naive realists, who don't directly contribute to philosophy of science, who are far too lost in discourse, metaphysics, and their own literary styles to be useful.

You can find platonism, relativism, nominalism, anti-realism on either side of the quasi-divide. Nobody escapes sophistry. "Sophistry" is AS invalid a category as Continental or Analytic philosophy. Was Socrates not a sophist? All of Plato's positive theories are by metaphor, analogy, allegory! The illogical spiritualism of Plato hardly escapes, it's even weaker, than someone with an argument-- namely a 'sophist'. An analytic philosopher is just as much someone with an opinion, who if you question endlessly will end up saying things like 'that's unintuitive' 'that defies common sense' 'that isn't how we use the word' 'that's not real'.

Is Carnap, Frege, Godel, Peano, Balzano continental? If early Wittgenstein was a logical positivist, is he a continental philosopher after? Is Habermas Continental because he's a Neo-Kantian? Why are people debating Kant in Analytic philosophy-- because the analytic/synthetic distinction influenced Frege, who crafted our Predicate logic. Is Mao continental because he needed Marx who needed Hegel? These divisions are ludicrous, and serve an ideological function. The analytic exclusion of continental, of everything unrelated to Russell's enterprise, brackets all philosophy that falls outside common sense.

Continental philosophy is far more broad than analytic—the whole category is made up from the negation of analytic philosophy. Before it was Rationalism and Empiricism, now it’s this. The opposition is so stupid and reified, as if Descartes didn’t start empiricism, as if Kant didn’t start positivism, as if Nietzsche didn’t start pragmatism.

“The linguistic turn” happened on the continent to the same degree that it happened in England. The anglos have philosophy of language—and what, the continent has nothing? ….No, structural and post-structural semiotics continues to be not only studied widely, but its use extends beyond the restricted scope of natural languages.

Is Husserlian phenomenology any different from John Searle’s work on Intentionality? Does Merleau-Ponty have no place in Analytic philosophy today? Or such a wacky rationalist as Leibniz? What about politics—are we supposed to debate only Hobbes and Locke in modern Analytic philosophy? Such a poverty of scope is incommensurable with anything potentially productive.

“The continent” is a poor subset, a total farce of philosophical demarcation. Whereas, at once, it is ‘the best’ (?) of the continents – Europe, the most civilized – it is also only one of many. “The continent” is a moniker for that solipsism of a particular region, a regional body of thought, whereas “Analysis” has no restricted boundary, no decadent culture that determines its merits. This containment of tremendously variegated philosophic movements, all in a sense a response to Kant, into one category that is located in one location, which isn’t in the same liberal bourgeois spirit, which cannot decide on the vocabulary we take for granted: identity, subjects and objects, representation, existence, causality, time, freedom: this perversion of common sense is the burden of us universalists, us scientists, who are already convinced what the world really is, and seek through carefully disguised tautologies to prove it.

Answer 2

Check out Edmund Husserl's "The Crisis in European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology" on this. And a good reading of Locke's "An Essay Concerning Human Understanding" might be good to remind you that the more recent Anglo-American tradition has in many cases takes a far stroll from the roots of Empiricism.
Some Continental Philosophers, in plunging headlong into subjectivism, end up with a de facto embracing of the sophist claim that the value of philosophy was to learn how to win arguments. If there's no such thing as truth (other than that lame notion of "personal truth"), then what besides political wrangling can be the point of discourse? For a modern exemplar, think Nancy Pelosi.

Answer 3

Continental philosophy represents a great number of movements and ideas that originated and were developped, and continue to be developped, for the most part, in continental Europe (hence its name). One generally talks of continental philosophy in opposition to anglo-american philosophy, which is understood to comprise philosophy of language and which was, and is, mostly practiced in Britain and the United States.
Continental philosophers break away from the tradition of reason that lead philosophers of the enlightment to interest themselves mostly in questions of epistemology. Taking much of their inspiration from such thinkers as Nietzsche, they contend that the sort of certainty which science seeks to achieve is impossible in matters of philosophy. Some go as far as to say that systems are incapable of adequately representing reality anyway (deconstructionism). Others (Hegel, Heidegger) advocate a return to classical methaphysics in spite of Kant's objections. Still others, (Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus) regard philosophy as a mostly personal endeavour that makes little sense outside of a discourse on man's direct experience of life (existentialism).
In my understanding, existentialism responds to abuses of the rationalist movement, which sought to exclude certain thoughts entirelly from discourse, with little real justification. (The fact that a thought is subjective doesn't make that thought invalid, one can argue that modelling philosophy after the natural sciences is completely arbitrary, that there is an historical and cultural explanation for such leanings, etc...). To most continental philosophers, science and philosophy are certainly distinct. The seed of this was already to be found in Kant (Practical versus Pure reason), but the continental philosophers took it further by doubting pure reason's ability to regulate itself.
Philosophy is an attempt to uinderstand ourselves and the world. So of course, continental philosophy is really philosophy. Just because some thinkers (especially those attached to their role within the university system) may not like some of the conclusions arrived at, it doesn't, per se, make an endeavour invalid. Philosophy does not get refuted in the same way as science does - that's why we're still studying Plato and Aristotle.
Continental philosophy is certainly a return to the pre-socratic in many ways, and to sophism as well. The continentals, as the pre-socratic and the sophists, do not necessarily see the justification of regulating discourse, of marking a clear distinction between rhetoric and valid discourse. Also, all have a vaster definition of understanding, so that mere logic does not define human thought entirelly to them (More things get included in discourse).

Answer 4

To categorize philosophy delimits it. Philosophic activity is synoptic. Let me state again for emphasis: Philosophic activity is synoptic. It can and should exist apart from movements, schools, and the ramblings of the sophists. Socrates himself made sure he could clearly be distinguished from the sophists by not taking pay for his company.

The following recommendation burns with the energy of one thousand exploding stars.

Forget about continental philosophy for now. Your immediate task is to THINK ABOUT THINKING.

Answer 5

DO YOUR HOMEWORK YOURSELF!