Brentano and the analytic/continental distinction

A few weeks ago on this blog, I was discussing Brentano’s wonderfully audacious lecture “The Four Phases of Philosophy and its Current State.” If you want it in English, you can’t look for it under Brentano’s name, because it’s quite short and in English is really just the appendix to a BOOK BY BALÁZS M. MEZEI AND BARRY SMITH. And $45 is a bit pricey for this short a paperback, so you’re better off with interlibrary loan.

One passage early in Brentano’s lecture does much to shed light, both simple and clear, on the endless analytic/continental rift in philosophy (and by the way, I think stories of the end of this rift are premature to say the least; more on that some other time).

The passage in question is from the fourth or fifth page of Brentano’s lecture, though it’s found on page 85 of Mezei/Smith:

“The history of philosophy is a history of scientific efforts, and it is thus similar in some respects to the history of the other sciences. On the other hand, it is different from the latter and seems rather to be analogous to the history of the fine arts. Other sciences, as long as scientists pursue them, show a constant development which may sometimes be interrupted by periods of stagnation. Philosophy, however, like the history of the fine arts, has always had periods of ascending development and, on the other hand, periods of decadence.”

I think it’s no exaggeration to say that the entire analytic/continental rift is foreshadowed and explained in this passage, which was written just as the rift was within a few years of beginning (the lecture was delivered in 1894).

The difference between the two currents, in other words, isn’t so much one of content as of professional mission and self-understanding. Analytic philosophy is deeply committed to the idea that philosophy is a cumulative enterprise, and that the adding up of small discoveries will lead to a general professional advance. Everything else follows from this presupposition: the analytic admiration for the natural sciences as a model… the great respect for philosophical specialization… the idea that one person’s argument is as good as anyone else’s, which has the upside of democracy (in principle, even a grad student with “good arguments” could get away with ripping analytic superstars to their face in public, whereas in continental circles this could be viewed as a gigantic affront)… The lack of a sense of awe in the face of the history of philosophy, which has the upside of self-confidence and the downside of glib dismissals of the “weak arguments” of the likes of Plato… Also, the notion that any idea worth having can be stated clearly in a fully formulated and polished manner… And correspondingly, given that the mission of language is seen to be clarity as opposed to muddled fuzziness, almost no attention is paid to literary style in the analytic current (I still laugh out loud whenever I reread Fodor claiming that analytic philosophers are “better writers” than the likes of Kierkegaard; doesn’t pass the straight face test– avoiding fuzziness does not make you a good writer, and in fact the opposite is even sometimes true).

By contrast, it seems pretty clear that continental philosophy follows the “fine arts” model of the history of philosophy… The progress of philosophy is made not of cumulative argumentation but by the vision of towering geniuses, which has the upside of promoting patient labor to understand those towering figures subtly, and the downside of creating a tribe of insecure people who don’t feel they can add to Heidegger or Hegel’s insights and so will merely clarify and comment upon them… The history of philosophy is not seen as cumulative, but as filled with great and declining periods, with everyone mourning not having been present in Jena or Paris or Athens at just the right moments… An instinctive dislike of the natural sciences as “mere calculation,” in many cases… Anyway, most of my readers know what continental philosophy is like, so I probably don’t need to say much more about the virtues and vices of its culture.

First, I want to point out that the “cumulative” model of truth is only “scientific” if you view science in the manner of Kuhn’s “normal science.” There is a widespread tendency to identify his “paradigm shifts” model as a sociological one in which non-scientific factors simply cause paradigm shifts for whatever reason. I read Kuhn differently. I read normal science as being a matter of measuring and exploring the properties of scientific objects, and paradigm shifts by contrast as marking those moments when new objects are struck, like new veins of gold or pockets of oil (the latter metaphor might not sound appealing to Louisianans at the moment, I realize), rather than a mere shuffling of known and unknown qualities. In short, I read paradigm shifts as being an instance of what I call “allure” in Guerrilla Metaphysics. I felt this vaguely the first time I read Kuhn (which was rather late, for some reason) but after a couple more readings of his famous book was finally able to put it clearly to myself.

Back to the topic… I’ve learned much from Barry Smith’s work and admire him greatly, but his and Mezei’s account of the Brentano passage above is not very even-handed. At first they sort of ignore the “fine arts” side of it. Then they mention it briefly before quickly insinuating (without basis in the text) that the “fine arts” rhythm of the history of philosophy happened only because philosophy wasn’t fully scientific in olden days, whereas starting with Brentano it is. The other problem with their reading of the lecture is that it mostly just gloats over the decadence of continental philosophy (not only is Heidegger decadent in their eyes: the later Husserl already is, and Levinas and Derrida practically reek with the stench of advanced decay). By contrast, they don’t seem to think analytic philosophy has much to learn from Brentano’s warning, and is pretty much on the right “scientific” track.

I’m not entirely neutral either, of course. I happen to think that the “fine arts” model is true not only of philosophy, but even of science; I see accumulation in knowledge as derivative of rises and declines. That’s a topic for another time. But it should be clear why these two views of the history of philosophy are so completely incompatible in their present forms, and why rumors of their unification are greatly eaggerated.

My own theory is that the supposed “bridge building” between analytic and continental is not going to happen, is a waste of time anyway, and that what will and should happen instead is the downfall of both in favor of something rather different. But it’s a big theme, and when possible I try to be harsh to both models. No one hated the various SPEP hegemonies from the inside more than I did (that’s why I quit going after my third try in 1993). But I do think there are many healthy continental tendencies that are rudely exterminated on the analytic side of the aisle.