Analytic vs. Continental Philosophy — the Schism in Modern Philosophy

The Analytic Philosophy vs Continental Philosophy divide is a faultline running through modern philosophy. In this episode we explore the origins of this divide and why these two paths diverged when their founders were in close contact. Edmund Husserl and Gottlob Frege were the two men that gave rise to Continental Philosophy and Analytic Philosophy respectively and surprisingly they were in close contact — critiquing each other’s work.
But despite this closeness, there is a historical backdrop to their concerns that invites us to reconsider this difference. Much like the Empiricism/Rationalist divide of the two centuries before Frege and Husserl, the Continental/Analytic divide ran along the line of the English Channel and seems to have been as much a divide of temperament as of philosophy. The British empiricists and the Anglo-American Analytic tradition are concerned more with a non-human standpoint — what reality is out there and how we can gain purest access to it. On the other the Rationalists and Continentals are more concerned with the human element — what it’s structure is like and what that tells us about the structure and nature of reality. This difference in focus on the human and non-human element widened into a irreparable chasm by the time of Martin Heidegger and Bertrand Russell.
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🎶 Music Used:
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3. Evening Fall Harp — Kevin MacLeod
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⌛ Timestamps:
0:00 Introduction
1:14 A Tale of Two Schools
3:28 The Continental Arising
7:18 The Analytic Tradition
9:12 A Metaphilosophical Problem?
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#analyticphilosophy #thelivingphilosophy #continentalphilosophy #philosophy #husserl #heidegger #russell #frege

[TheLivingPhilosophy]

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⌛ Timestamps:
0:00 Introduction
1:14 A Tale of Two Schools
3:28 The Continental Arising
7:18 The Analytic Tradition
9:12 A Metaphilosophical Problem?

[Eternalised]

Magnificent. I really needed a video distinguishing both these currents of philosophy. Brilliantly explained friend!

[TheCaelanB]

Absolutely cracking video! As a philosopher trained in the analytic tradition, this has really helped me appreciate the presuppositions of continental philosophy. Can't wait to get started reading some properly 😁

Also, tiny nit pick, but at one stage (7:55) you say that Frege attempted to reduce mathematics to logic. This isn't quite true, he only attempted to reduce arithmetic to logic. Other fields of maths like geometry, whilst governed by logical laws, aren't ultimately reducible to logic in his view.

An analogy to the natural sciences might help to understand Frege's view. In the material world we have matter (atoms, quarks, etc...) and the laws that govern the behaviour of that matter (the laws of physics). Similarly, it might be supposed that mathematics has matter and laws that govern the behaviour of the matter. Now, on Frege's view, the governing laws of mathematics are always the laws of logic, irrespective of the field in which you are working. So, both geometry and arithmetic are governed by logic. However, the "matter" of these fields is different in each case. In geometry, the matter is spacial intuiton. In arithmetic, the matter is logic. This conviction of Frege's is why he believes that arithmetic can be reduced to logic, but other fields, like geometry, cannot. This comes out in the first few sections of the Grundlagen, which is a great read by the way.

Again, this is a nitpick, but after a hard and lonely year (thanks covid....) studying Frege, it's nice to be able to share what I've learnt with others so that hopefully they can learn too. So yeah, woe is me, and again, brilliant video.

[hypergraphic]

Great video. While philosophy is not religion, this divide reminds me of text-focused and experienced-focused religious groups. I think there is a very strong cultural reason why we are drawn towards one way of pursuing these things.

[stephencarroll]

Very good. I recently discovered that I was in the “alternative track” when I studied philosophy at University because my professors were a renowned Kant scholar and a student of Jaspers. I never studied “analytic philosophy” apart from basic logic from a professor who graduated from MIT and had a life size portrait of Russell in her office. Thanks!

[EldafoMadrengo]

Just wondering if you are thinking of doing a video on how Kant manages to synthesize the two schools? Or maybe any tips on where to look to read up on it? Felt like a bit of a cliffhanger at the end which has got me itching to find out more.

[coniferviveur]

Excellent overview of the intellectual chasm. This kind of content can be really valuable to those just starting out with philosophy as it provides an informative orientation in presenting the forest as a prelude to examining its trees.

[ArtiDesignHD]

You have miscontrued Husserl. Edmund Husserl was a PhD mathematican that worked alongside one of the most promimant modern mathematicians as well (Karl Weierstrass). Only afterwards did he turn his interest towards Philosophy (after being exposed to some lectures by Brentano). As someone mentioned below, Husserl opposed psychologism together with the scientific attitude (the natural attitude so to speak). He aimed to find the objective (he would have said "essential") structures of human consciousness, which is not to be equivocated with subjectivism (or psychologism) as they are phenomenological corollaries of those essential structures. He had no affinity with the scientific method and any sort of reliance on empiricism as he regarded them as not rigorous enough and guilty of presupposing too much. Lastly, you may have misread Heidegger (which is not rare even in academia circles, so to speak) in so far as he does not really diverge from Husserl all that much in methodology and rather than working in opposition, in a lot of ways he deepens his analysis (this is relevant because it indicates that the Heideggerian postmodern turn in continetal philosophy is not really arbitrary).

[johnpauljames]

Awesome! I couldn't imagine that I would quickly come up to speed with Analytical and Continental Philosophy, but this tutorial amended my thinking.

[drjaydeepchakrabarty]

Thank you for such precise presentation of a huge topic like this. Especially helpful for people like me who do not have any disciplinary training in philosophy, yet need to know certain basic issues for our own fields.

[charleswofford]

This is a fascinating video, and I agree with some of the concluding remarks that analytic philosophy is more empiricist while continental philosophies tend to be more rationalist. It may be a necessary evil of a short video, but it does seem problematic (I hate that word) to reduce both tendencies to the work of two particular men, in this case Frege and Husserl. You mentioned Bertrand Russell, Nietzsche, and a few others in passing, but really the whole Cambridge School could have been brought up. As I see it, analytic philosophy was formally born with Russell, Ayer, Moore, and the others at Cambridge.

You mention that there are many philosophies which fall under the "continental" heading, but proceed to reduce all of them to the phenomenology of Husserl and Heidegger. But this ignores other traditions such as the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory, which was both anti positivist (i.e. not so science-centric in their thought) and anti-Heideggerian. Confusingly, there were also analytic-continentals! The Vienna Circle was a group of continental philosophers that included Einstein and Wittgenstein, and they were just as zealous in their pursuit of logic and a mathematical basis for philosophy as Russel et al.

I also think it might be misleading to characterize the analytics as modern and the continentals as postmodern. Obviously postmodernism is a continental philosophy, but most continental philosophies are still working in the tradition of Hegel and Kant. Reducing all continental philosophy to postmodernism is like reducing all analytic philosophy to logical positivism.

That Kantian-Hegelian tradition also raises the issue that perhaps the analytics were born as a reaction to the continentals rather than vice-versa, as this video portrays. The philosophers on the continent continued their work as Hegelians, Marxists, Kantians, etc. when the analytic revolution was happening in England. It is the analytics who actually think they were starting something new. The continentals just went along their merry way, as they continue to do to this day.

Anyway, I enjoyed the video very much! Thanks for posting it.

[robertkrieter]

This is a very nice video. I would like to add that a central distinction between analytic and continental schools is their writing styles. I believe it is fair to say that continental is much more akin to literature as it often uses niche terminology personally created by authors and can be poetic in nature. Analytic on the other hand, dogmatically demands clear and intelligible prose that uses well defined and accepted terms to articulate their points of view. For the object of conveying a point, I tend to prefer the latter, but this by no means constitutes a valid argument against the brilliant writings of Deleuze, Heidegger and Derrida, for example, (whoms I have been reading profusely of late with frustration at times, while marveling in their ideas nonetheless).

[timadamson]

Key terms you appear to conflate here on the Continental side: Husserl’s science of consciousness and science as a method apart from philosophy; psychology and subjectivity. 1. Husserl’s science of subjectivity is fully philosophical and precedes any scientific knowledge, just as Kant’s investigation into a priori knowledge identifies philosophical truths that precede all possible knowledge, including science. 2. Investigating subjectivity is not psychological if it reveals the conditions and factors responsible for all psychological realities. Husserl sough to identify the objective, I.e., essential, principles of subjectivity. These pertain prior to psychological methods or knowledge.

[deyanirasaez]

You make the difficult easy, this ability is only possible with great intelligence and a large amount of knowledge. thank you so much.

[Al-himathy]

This as a chart of progression would be immensely beneficial and useful, chat do your thing

[billyscenic]

Great video. I spent most of my time reading Asian philosophy and was completely unaware of these two schools in western thought. A good primer to start from!

[godlindaffodil]

There is no doubt this video is a great help for students in their studies. But maybe we should take a moment to appreciate the majestic voice behind the screen, 👏👏👍

[yqafree]

Thanks for this concise and thorough comparison. So much wealth in your video here.

[HxHDRA]

Thank you for this and the empiricism vs rationalism video, I can finally get my thoughts in order on these schools thanks to you!

[grounded]

Best explanation of 'modern' philosophy ever. Empirically valid but also rational! Subjectively satisfying but objectively defensible. Kant win.