analytic philosophy

philosophy

light bulb joke

continental philosophy

semantics

is a philosophical approach emphasizing clarity, rigor, argument, theory, truth not generally life, more like science than religion, more like mathematics than poetry.

Colin McGinn in The Making of a Philosopher: My Journey through Twentieth-Century Philosophy (2002), defines analytic philosophy as a 'tradition [that] emphasizes clarity, rigor, argument, theory, truth. It is not a tradition that aims primarily for inspiration or consolation or ideology. Nor is it particularly concerned with 'philosophy of life,' though parts of it are. This kind of philosophy is more like science than religion, more like mathematics than poetry -though it is neither science nor mathematics.

is a philosophical school that sets out to achieve maximal clarity about the content and basis of our intuition, while continental philosophy, by contrast, seeks to challenge our intuitions by the creation of new and (at first) highly counter-intuitive vocabularies.

Metaphilosophical Coda' to his book Pragmatic Liberalism and the Critique of Modernity . There he defines analytic philosophy as 'the effort to attain maximal clarity about the content and basis of our intuitions' (184) a description he says includes Husserl, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, and Habermas while continental philosophy (analytic philosophy's 'essential counterpart') seeks to challenge our intuitions 'by the creation of new and (at first) highly counter-intuitive vocabularies' (190). Here you can see why a doctrine might be evaluated not by its logical rigor, but by its intellectual imaginativeness. He approvingly quotes Deleuze, 'Philosophy is the art of forming, inventing and fabricating concepts,' and claims the mistake made by both analytic and continental philosophers (in the sense he means the terms) is to think what they are doing suffices for philosophical inquiry, when in fact both (and historical critique) are necessary. This last point aside, it helps to know that when Gutting is speaking of continental philosophy he has in mind philosophers like Heidegger, Foucault, Derrida and Deleuze and not philosophers like Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, and Habermas. (NET)

is a respectable science which uses specific techniques to tackle discrete problems with definite results.

Hans-Johann Glock remarks in The Rise of Analytic Philosophy that 'analytic philosophy is a respectable science or skill... it uses specific techniques to tackle discrete problems with definite results'.

is a variant of kantian philosophy that sees representation as a linguistic rather than a mental phenomenon.

Analytic' philosophy is one more varient of Kantian philosophy, a variant marked principally by thinking of representation as linguistic rather than mental, and of philosophy of language rather than 'transcendental critique,' or psychology, as the discipline which exhibits the 'foundations of knowledge.' (Rorty 1979: 8).

is concerned with 'getting something right, once and for all, just as natural scientist do.

sharing the ideal to 'get something right, once and for all, just as natural scientist do' (Rorty 2997: 123)

is concerned with analysis (i.e. Breaking things down into parts of thought, language, logic, knowledge, mind), where continental philosophers focuses on synthesis (i.e. Building things into large unities such as modernity with history, individuals with society).

The heart of the analytic/Continental opposition is most evident in methodology, that is, in a focus on analysis or on synthesis. Analytic philosophers typically try to solve fairly delineated philosophical problems by reducing them to their parts and to the relations in which these parts stand. Continental philosophers typically address large questions in a synthetic or integrative way, and consider particular issues to be 'parts of the larger unities' and as properly understood and dealt with only when fitted into those unities.' (p.10.)So analytic philosophy is concerned with analysis analysis of thought, language, logic, knowledge, mind, etc... whereas continental philosophy is concerned with synthesis synthesis of modernity with history, individuals with society, and speculation with application. (https://philosophynow.org/issues/74/Analytic versus Continental Philosophy)

is concerned with making things clearer, whereas continental philosophy aims to make things different, that is, to change not only your institution, but your sense of who you are.

Whereas Frege and Russell hoped to make things clearer, Hegel and Heidegger hoped to make things different . . . Hegel and Heidegger, and their admirers hope to change not only your institutions but your sense of who you are and your notion of what it is most important to think about' (Rorty 2003: 4). .

is grounded in a commitment to argument and justification as opposed to rhetoric.

Føllesdal defines analytic philosophy as a commitment to argument and justification as opposed to using rhetoric, and on this basis includes hermeneuticist and phenomenologist as analytic philosophers.

analytic philosophy, n.Definitions

analytic philosophy