The Great Divide: Analytic and Continental Philosophy

What is specific about the divide?

Considerable sources:

• A good summary: https://philosophynow.org/issues/74/Analytic_versus_Continental_Philosophy

Content

Is the divide only stylistic?

In A House Divided, C.G. Prado begins to point out the difference between Continental and Analytic Philosophy with respect to methodology. He says:

“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.) (Source has to be controlled)

Given this interpretation Analytic Philosophy goes down the path to atomism, while Continental Philosophy is interested in the broader structure, and is thus more interested in systems.

This oversimplification, however, might not hold true anymore.

A sketch of the divide

1. Kant distinguishes Noumenon and Phenomenon
2. Hegel: objects to the division between known and knower

Foucault, nevertheless, describes Hegel here as a totalizer:

"Well, perhaps one could say this: philosophy from Hegel to Sartre has essentially been a totalizing enterprise, if not of the world or of knowledge [savoir], at least of human experience." according Thomas, F. (2010) Sartre, Foucault, and Historical Reason, Volume Two: A Poststructuralist Mapping of History. University of Chicago Press, p. 18)