5 - Analytic and continental philosophy
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 March 2013
Summary
Introduction
Describing the state of philosophy in the late 1980s, Michael Dummett remarked:
It is obvious that philosophers will never reach agreement. It is a pity, however, if they can no longer talk to one another or understand one another. It is difficult to achieve such understanding, because if you think people are on the wrong track, you may have no great desire to talk with them or to take the trouble to criticise their views. But we have reached a point at which it’s as if we’re working in different subjects.
Dummett is referring to the split between so-called analytic and continental philosophy, a split he argues has widened continuously throughout the past century to the point at which ‘It’s no use now shouting across the gulf’. This in spite of the fact that the founders of the two traditions – according to Dummett: Frege and Husserl – were ‘remarkably close in orientation, despite some divergence of interests’. Consequently, Dummett can compare the development of analytical and continental philosophy with ‘the Rhine and the Danube, which rise quite close to one another and for a time pursue roughly parallel courses, only to diverge in utterly different directions and flow into different seas’.
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- Information
- An Introduction to Metaphilosophy , pp. 105 - 135Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2013