Synopses & Reviews
For more than seven decades there has been a broad gap between how philosophy is conceived and practiced. Two ill-defined but well-recognized traditions have developed—the "analytic" and "Continental" schools of philosophy. The former traces its roots to philosophers like Frege, Russell, Moore, Wittgenstein, and the logical positivists. The latter has been heavily influenced by Nietzsche, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Foucault, and Derrida, among others.
The aim of this collection is to reconsider the often facile characterization of major thinkers as belonging to either one or the other philosophical tradition. The contributors—philosophers from both sides of the divide working in different countries and contexts—all question the problematic conception that the two traditions are incommensurable. Each of their articles compares individual philosophers who have had a major influence on the analytic and Continental traditions with a view to clarifying their similarities and dissimilarities of approach.
What this collection of thoughtful articles clearly demonstrates is that regardless of approach and precedents, analytic and Continental philosophers are all doing philosophy, and there are many important points of contact between them.
The contributors are: Richard Rorty (Stanford University), whose thoughtful overview highlights the salient points in both traditions; Barry Allen (McMaster University); Babette E. Babich (Fordham University); David Cerbone (West Virginia University); Sharyn Clough (Rowan University); Jonathan Kaplan (University of Tennessee); Richard Matthews (Memorial University of Newfoundland); Carlos G. Prado (Queen's University); Bjorn Torgrim Ramberg (University of Oslo); Mike Sandbothe (Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena); Barry Stocker (Yeditepe University Istanbul); and Ed Witherspoon (Colgate University).
About the Author
C. G. Prado (Kingston, Ontario, Canada) is professor emeritus of philosophy at Queen's University and the author of Starting with Foucault: An Introduction to Genealogy; Descartes and Foucault; The Limits of Pragmatism; and many other books and articles.
Table of Contents
Analytic and conversational philosophy / Richard Rorty -- Carnap's contexts : Comte, Heidegger, Nietzsche / Barry Allen -- On the analytic-continental divide in philosophy : Nietzsche's lying truth, Heidegger's speaking language, and philosophy / Babette E. Babich -- Phenomenology : straight and Hetero / David R. Cerbone -- Davidson and Wittgenstein on knowledge, communication and social justice / Sharyn Clough and Jonathan Kaplan -- Heidegger and Quine on the (ir)relevance of logic for philosophy / Richard Matthews -- Correspondence, construction, and realism : the case of Searle and Foucault / C.G. Prado -- Illuminating language : interpretation and understanding in Gadamer and Davidson / Bj²rn Torgrim Ramberg -- Davidson and Rorty on truth : reshaping analytic philosophy for a transcontinental conversation / Mike Sandbothe -- Time, synthesis, and the end of metaphysics : Heidegger and Strawson on Kant / Barry Stocker -- Much ado about the nothing : Carnap and Heidegger on logic and metaphysics / Edward Witherspoon.