Gary Gutting on the analytic/continental divide

In The Stone in the NY Times, HERE.

As a newspaper article, it’s a useful overview of the analytic/continental divide. And it tries to be fairly balanced, until the concluding sentence appears:

“The continental-analytic gap will begin to be bridged only when seminal thinkers of the Continent begin to write more clearly.”

So, it’s all the continentals’ fault.

I would counter with “The continental-analytic gap will begin to be bridged only when seminal thinkers of Anglo-American philosophy begin to write more vividly.” Or “only when seminal thinkers of Anglo-American philosophy begin to write things that people outside their narrow professional clan are interested in reading.”

But that would be counter-productive, because I don’t see why everyone is so eager to bridge the gap in the first place.

It’s unlikely that the gap will ever be bridged (it is more likely to be surmounted by something completely distinct from both, not “bridged”). A few books on Heidegger by analytically trained thinkers and a few references to Davidson and Putnam here and there by continentally trained authors may increase some channels of communication. But the two cultures are completely different, and this is not merely a “sociological” fact, as Gutting quotes Leiter as saying.

Leiter’s view that there is no such thing as an analytic/continental divide should not be taken seriously, since the statement is merely self-serving on his part. He has established a niche as ranker and gatekeeper in one portion of the philosophical universe, another portion of that universe views him with scorn, and his reaction is simply to say that the best continental philosophy is being done in the departments he favors and that those who loathe his agenda are simply of low quality, not representatives of a different tradition.

The true difference between the analytic and continental traditions was foreshadowed by Brentano in the 1890’s in his lecture on the four phases of philosophy, and I believe his distinction remains accurate today. You can either view philosophy as a science, in which definite forward micro-progress is made over the decades through piecemeal collective labor. Or, you can view the history of philosophy in the manner of the history of art, in which progress is not incremental, but occurs in alternating periods of ripeness and decadence. Completely different group sociologies arise from the two differing presuppositions, as do two completely different models of writing (hence Gutting’s typical analytic assumption that “clear” writing is the important thing, as though unclarity were the main problem with writing rather than banality, flatness, and tedium).

Nor does Brentano provide a solution for this discrepancy, even though his analytic admirers are a bit quick to sweep the “art history” statement under the rug and claim Brentano as a full-fledged champion of “scientific” philosophy (though admittedly there are some passages in his works that invite this interpretation).

In any case, that’s the root of the difference, and it’s no use pretending it doesn’t exist. Either you think that it’s possible to read the latest professional journals and make progress in philosophy by adding nuances to recent arguments made by living peers. Or, you can take a more skeptical approach to the value of specialized argument and view philosophy as a matter of paradigm shifts rather than the collective incremental build-up of insights.

If the latter is the case as in the continental scenario), then there will be an upside and a downside just as with every choice in life. The upside is that you’re likely to take a longer historical perspective and not become bewitched by the transient, chiselling fashions of Leiter-ranked university departments, nor will you be so chipper and facile about hunting for “bad arguments” in authors such as Plato and Leibniz. The downside is that you’ll tend to view great works of philosophy as existing on a plane far above that of normal human Ph.D.’s, and as a result you may become depressed about your own ability to make a real contribution to the field, and thus you may begin to do purely historical work (which certainly has its place, but continental philosophy has often lost all sight of the distinction between historical and systematic work).

To put it in more familiar terms, you can view philosophy as a science or as an art.

If anyone wants to “bridge the gap” between the two traditions, that’s the problem with which they must grapple. And it’s a deeply philosophical problem, not a “sociological” one. Until it’s addressed as a philosophical problem, we’ll be running in circles, hearing the same things about the divide over and over again– either lamentations about the divide, or denials that it exists. The truth is: it does exist, but we should be happy for now that it does. Why? Because to solve the divide now would be premature. The true fault line separating the two camps has not been addressed on a philosophical level, but only on the level of mutual distaste.

That said, I think Gutting’s piece was basically a good pedagogical newspaper piece for the generally educated readership of the NY Times, though he displays as many biases in one direction as my friends and I would in the opposite direction.