Analytic or Continental philosophy | Christoph Schuringa, Genia Schönbaumsfeld, Babette Babich
Summary
This episode delves into the long-standing division between analytic and continental philosophy, questioning whether this divide is ending or merely transforming. The panelists explore the historical roots, methodological differences, and contemporary challenges facing both traditions.
Christoph Schuringa argues the divide persists, noting analytic philosophy’s ‘declaration of victory’ by co-opting continental figures, while continental philosophy shows fragmented but potential engagement with analytic thinkers like Wilfrid Sellars. He critiques the analytic claim to a monopoly on clarity and rigor, pointing to its reliance on unexamined ‘intuitions’ and jargon-laden, technical writing that can become politically disengaged.
Genia Schönbaumsfeld offers a nuanced view, acknowledging a merge driven by the analytic paradigm’s ascendancy in academia and high-impact journals. She values the commitment to clarity and rigor but warns against philosophy becoming a ‘second-rate science’ and laments the contemporary analytic rejection of Wittgensteinian lessons, which she links to a rise in jargon and a lack of methodological self-reflection.
Babette Babich presents a stark view, describing the analytic ascendancy as a form of ‘colonization,’ evident in the linguistic shift to English in European universities and the loss of deep philological training needed to read figures like Nietzsche or Aristotle in their original languages. She provocatively claims analytic philosophy is ‘boring’ and fails to excite students, leading to a crisis in philosophy education and the profession’s future being determined by analytic job holders by default.
The discussion broadens to consider the Enlightenment tradition’s threat from postmodern relativism and its contemporary political co-option by the right. All panelists express concern about philosophy’s disengagement from the world, whether through analytic technicality or continental hermeticism, and call for a reinvigorated, publicly engaged philosophy that reclaims the pursuit of truth.
Recommendations
Concepts
- Sapere Aude — Babette references Kant’s Enlightenment motto ‘dare to know,’ linking it etymologically to Nietzsche’s idea of ‘tasting’ and connecting it to Humean skepticism—the courage to question rather than assume possession of truth.
Philosophers
- Wilfrid Sellars — Christoph mentions him as an analytic figure of interest to continental thinkers like Ray Brassier, due to his deep engagement with the history of philosophy and Kantian fundamentals.
- Theodor Adorno — Babette advocates returning to Adorno (and Horkheimer’s ‘Dialectic of Enlightenment’) as a crucial, often-skipped link for understanding critiques of the Enlightenment and opening questions for psychoanalysis, before later post-structuralists.
- Ludwig Wittgenstein — Genia laments the contemporary ‘hatred’ of Wittgenstein in analytic philosophy, arguing his lessons are vital for combating jargon and fostering methodological reflection. Christoph notes the ironic tendency to project Wittgenstein out of the analytic tradition.
- Martin Heidegger — Discussed by Babette in the context of rigor, referencing his question ‘What is called thinking?’ and his claim that ‘science does not think,’ presenting a different standard of philosophical precision.
- Ray Brassier — Christoph cites Brassier as an example of a continental philosopher (from the speculative realism movement) productively engaging with core analytic figures like Sellars, representing a potential future for cross-tradition dialogue.
Topic Timeline
- 00:00:00 — Opening Clash: Is Analytic Philosophy Boring? — The episode opens with a provocative exchange. Babette Babich states ‘analytic philosophy is boring,’ critiquing its lack of excitement for students. Genia Schönbaumsfeld challenges this as a caricature, arguing good analytic philosophy tackling important questions is not boring. This sets the stage for a debate on the values and appeal of different philosophical approaches.
- 00:04:14 — Opening Pitches: Is the Divide Ending? — Each panelist gives their opening stance. Christoph Schuringa argues the divide is not over, describing analytic philosophy’s ‘friendly’ co-option of continental figures as a declaration of victory. Genia Schönbaumsfeld sees a nuanced merge, driven by the analytic paradigm’s ascendancy in academia, with both positive (clarity) and negative (scientism) aspects. Babette Babich frames the issue as a ‘colonization’ by analytic philosophy, leading to a linguistic and pedagogical takeover, questioning who is left to teach authentic continental thought.
- 00:13:15 — Debating Clarity, Rigor, and Methodology — The discussion focuses on the core virtues often claimed by analytic philosophy. Genia argues all philosophers should commit to clarity and rigor. Babette strongly disagrees, questioning ‘who’s judging’ these standards. Christoph critiques the analytic monopoly on these terms, highlighting its reliance on ‘intuitions’ and smuggled-in jargon. Genia agrees, noting the loss of Wittgensteinian influence and a lack of methodological self-reflection in contemporary analytic work.
- 00:24:33 — The Enlightenment Tradition Under Threat — The conversation turns to the Enlightenment’s legacy. Christoph views it as an incomplete project radicalized by Marx, now threatened by postmodern relativism from continental philosophy and a shallow liberalism from analytic philosophy. Genia agrees, linking postmodern ‘anything goes’ attitudes to societal issues like fake news and a stifling of intellectual courage. Babette suggests bypassing later figures like Derrida to return to Adorno and the fundamental question of ‘what is thinking?’ as posed by Heidegger.
- 00:39:12 — The Future of European Thought — The panel gives concluding, largely pessimistic outlooks. Babette states the future is analytic ‘by default,’ as analytic philosophers hold the jobs and shape the profession. Christoph’s pessimism stems from philosophy’s political impotence and disengagement, with both traditions risking irrelevance through technicality or hermeticism. Genia offers a sliver of hope, noting public appetite for philosophy and calling for philosophers to engage publicly to reclaim Enlightenment ideals from co-option by the right and combat relativistic narratives.
Episode Info
- Podcast: Philosophy For Our Times
- Author: IAI
- Category: Society & Culture Philosophy
- Published: 2025-12-09T00:00:00Z
- Duration: 00:49:07
References
- URL PocketCasts: https://pocketcasts.com/podcast/91d0f4a0-585b-0134-cf69-7b84bf375f4c/episode/bf61dcee-86e8-4b93-9e6c-0d25865b04ef/
- Episode UUID: bf61dcee-86e8-4b93-9e6c-0d25865b04ef
Podcast Info
- Name: Philosophy For Our Times
- Type: episodic
- Site: https://art19.com/shows/philosophy-for-our-times
- UUID: 91d0f4a0-585b-0134-cf69-7b84bf375f4c
Transcript
[00:00:00] But analytic philosophy is boring.
[00:00:04] Can I bring you back to, so the point that Genia raised was that philosophy should be
[00:00:09] committed to values of clarity and rigor, all philosophy across the different areas.
[00:00:14] Do you disagree with that?
[00:00:16] Yes, of course I disagree with that, because who’s judging?
[00:00:20] If you ask who judges, you’ve just said the most judgmental thing of all,
[00:00:24] namely that analytic philosophy is boring.
[00:00:30] Hello, and welcome to Philosophy for Our Times,
[00:00:35] bringing you the world’s leading thinkers on today’s biggest ideas.
[00:00:41] Today we have the future of European thought.
[00:00:46] In this episode, we’re going to get deep into the divide between
[00:00:50] analytic and continental philosophy.
[00:00:53] This is really one for you philosophy lovers out there.
[00:00:55] We love your comments and emails, and we know there’s a lot of you that will be
[00:00:59] suited to this topic.
[00:01:00] We’re super interested in getting into the nitty-gritty of this question.
[00:01:05] And there’s an incredible lineup of speakers.
[00:01:09] We’ve got Babette Babic, Genia Shoms-Bownfield, and Christoph Schrodinger,
[00:01:14] with Danielle Sands hosting.
[00:01:17] They’re going to get deep into the weeds of this divide in philosophy,
[00:01:23] and we can’t wait to hear your thoughts.
[00:01:25] So, without any further ado, we’re going to hand over to our host,
[00:01:29] Danielle Sands.
[00:01:39] Welcome, everybody.
[00:01:40] Welcome to the future of European thought.
[00:01:43] So, for more than a century, there’s been a divide in Western philosophy
[00:01:48] between two distinct approaches, often described as analytic and continental philosophy.
[00:01:55] Analytic philosophy is predominantly based in the English-speaking world,
[00:01:59] taking its name from Bertrand Russell’s philosophy of logical analysis
[00:02:03] that overthrew the grand Hegelian metaphysics of the 19th century.
[00:02:07] It did so in favor of a focus on logic and linguistic precision,
[00:02:12] with the assumption that science would do the serious work of uncovering the nature of reality.
[00:02:19] Continental philosophy, based primarily in France and Germany,
[00:02:23] has offered a broad range of outlooks on the nature of the human condition and the world.
[00:02:28] It’s been defined by the following.
[00:02:29] It’s been defined by its critics simply in opposition to analytic philosophy.
[00:02:34] Few thinkers have bridged the divide to be taken seriously by both camps.
[00:02:39] Yet, both traditions now have deep challenges.
[00:02:43] The original focus of analytic philosophy has become increasingly blurred,
[00:02:48] whilst in France, English-speaking philosophy is now in vogue.
[00:02:53] So, today we have three renowned philosophers exploring the key questions.
[00:02:58] What is the key question?
[00:02:59] What is the future of European thought?
[00:03:01] Are we seeing the end of the analytic and continental divide?
[00:03:05] Or is the Enlightenment tradition itself under threat,
[00:03:09] and with it, the influence and identity of European philosophy?
[00:03:13] So, let’s meet our speakers this morning.
[00:03:16] So, on my right, Christoph Schoringer,
[00:03:18] who is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Northeastern University.
[00:03:23] He’s the editor of the Hegel Bulletin,
[00:03:25] and he describes himself as a fierce critic of the apolitical,
[00:03:29] self-image of analytic philosophy.
[00:03:32] And on my left, Ginius Schönbaumsfeld,
[00:03:36] who is Professor of Philosophy at Southampton University.
[00:03:40] An expert on Wittgenstein and Kierkegaard,
[00:03:42] her work challenges the idea that belief in God
[00:03:45] should be treated like a scientific hypothesis.
[00:03:49] And last but not least, Babette Babich,
[00:03:51] who is Professor of Philosophy at Fordham University.
[00:03:55] She’s the editor of the journal New Nature Studies,
[00:03:57] and she’s published extensively,
[00:03:59] on aesthetics, philosophy of science, and technology.
[00:04:04] So, we start by giving our speakers each
[00:04:06] the very generous amount of time of three minutes,
[00:04:09] so they can give us their opening pitches.
[00:04:12] And we’ll start with you, Christoph.
[00:04:14] Are we seeing the end of the divide
[00:04:16] between analytic and continental philosophy?
[00:04:19] So, I think no.
[00:04:22] Done, that’s it.
[00:04:23] I don’t need three minutes, right?
[00:04:25] I don’t think we’ve seen the end of the divide,
[00:04:27] and I think it’s very interesting,
[00:04:29] actually, what the landscape is now,
[00:04:31] if we think about in what sense there is a divide.
[00:04:34] Because analytic philosophy,
[00:04:36] just looking at it from the side of analytic philosophy
[00:04:38] for a moment,
[00:04:39] has increasingly started to present itself
[00:04:43] as much more hospitable and much more friendly
[00:04:46] to continental philosophy.
[00:04:48] So, there’s a much reduced sort of harshness
[00:04:52] in the way in which analytic philosophers
[00:04:54] oppose themselves to continental philosophers.
[00:04:56] So, there was a time when the American philosopher John Searle,
[00:04:59] for example,
[00:04:59] could say, in response to the question,
[00:05:01] have you ever read any Derrida?
[00:05:03] He said, no, but I’ve trodden some.
[00:05:04] We don’t really hear that sort of thing anymore,
[00:05:06] so it looks much friendlier.
[00:05:08] But I think, actually, what we see from the analytic side
[00:05:11] is that the analytics are effectively able
[00:05:13] to declare victory in the conflict
[00:05:15] with continental philosophers.
[00:05:16] And we can see that because analytic philosophers
[00:05:19] now have their own versions
[00:05:20] of basically all continental philosophy.
[00:05:22] So, there was analytic Nietzsche,
[00:05:24] then there was analytic Heidegger,
[00:05:25] now there’s analytic Derrida.
[00:05:27] Basically, anything can be redone analytically.
[00:05:29] I think, on the continental side,
[00:05:33] sort of looking from the continental side,
[00:05:35] a really interesting set of developments recently
[00:05:38] has been that some of the people
[00:05:40] who came out of one of the most recent sort of movements
[00:05:43] that we might identify within continental philosophy,
[00:05:46] which is speculative realism,
[00:05:47] which includes people like Quentin Meursault in France
[00:05:49] and also people like Ray Brassier.
[00:05:52] We now see Brassier increasingly interested
[00:05:56] in specific bits of the analytic tradition,
[00:05:59] and the bits that they’re most interested in
[00:06:01] tend to be figures like, for example,
[00:06:03] the mid-20th century American philosopher Wilfred Sellers,
[00:06:06] who’s actually, he’s one of the founding figures
[00:06:08] of analytic philosophy in the States
[00:06:10] after the Second World War,
[00:06:12] but he’s also somebody who was extraordinarily deeply
[00:06:14] informed about the history of philosophy,
[00:06:15] and I think this is part of what’s motivating this interest
[00:06:18] in this particular analytic figure.
[00:06:20] So, there’s real potential, I think,
[00:06:22] from the continental side,
[00:06:23] although the continental scene’s very fragmented, I think.
[00:06:27] There’s real potential there for an engagement,
[00:06:29] with the analytic tradition,
[00:06:30] where what we’re getting at is really a renegotiation
[00:06:33] of the very idea of what philosophy is
[00:06:35] and what some of the really fundamental questions are
[00:06:37] that Sellers is latching onto,
[00:06:40] which actually go back to Kant
[00:06:41] and which go back to the situation of European philosophy
[00:06:44] back in the 18th century
[00:06:46] and ways in which Kant was really fundamentally thinking
[00:06:48] what the task of philosophy was.
[00:06:52] You’ve come in slightly under time, so thank you.
[00:06:55] Guinean, over to you.
[00:06:56] Just to remind you of the question,
[00:06:58] are we seeing the end of this divide?
[00:07:01] Okay, so my view is kind of a bit more nuanced.
[00:07:06] To some extent, I think we are seeing an end of the divide.
[00:07:11] I think there have been many people who, for a long time,
[00:07:15] have already been challenging this hard and fast distinction,
[00:07:20] and maybe contrary to what Christoph was intimating,
[00:07:25] I actually think it’s a good thing that
[00:07:27] so-called analytic philosophers have reclaimed
[00:07:31] or have claimed the so-called continentals
[00:07:35] like Kierkegaard and Nietzsche and so on.
[00:07:37] I think that’s a good thing.
[00:07:40] But one other reason, I think,
[00:07:43] which, depending on perspective, may or may not be so good,
[00:07:48] one other reason why they seem to be merging
[00:07:51] is because in many ways the analytic paradigm,
[00:07:53] I think, is in an ascendancy.
[00:07:57] Lots of European philosophy departments, for better or worse,
[00:08:01] are now adopting the analytic paradigm,
[00:08:04] because if they want to be international players,
[00:08:07] if they want to get their papers
[00:08:09] into the really high-ranked journals,
[00:08:11] then they have to start doing this analytic work.
[00:08:15] And I think that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
[00:08:17] It’s not a bad thing if it leads to more clarity and rigor
[00:08:21] in the presentation of arguments.
[00:08:22] I think all philosophers should be wedded
[00:08:25] and committed to that.
[00:08:26] However,
[00:08:27] I do think it’s a bad thing if it means
[00:08:29] that people who maybe challenge
[00:08:33] a particular scientific paradigm,
[00:08:35] so I think one danger with analytic philosophy
[00:08:38] is that it tends to be maybe too friendly
[00:08:42] to a kind of scientific way of thinking about philosophy.
[00:08:46] I mean, in my view, philosophy is not like science.
[00:08:49] It’s not an empirical subject.
[00:08:50] It shouldn’t be kind of competing with science.
[00:08:54] But many analytic philosophers think philosophy
[00:08:57] is ultimately a kind of competitor to science
[00:09:00] or even a kind of second-rate science,
[00:09:02] and I think that’s bad.
[00:09:05] So it depends on kind of which line you take.
[00:09:10] A merge is happening, and to some extent it’s a good thing,
[00:09:15] but I think it’s not always a good thing.
[00:09:18] Thank you.
[00:09:19] Over to you, Babette.
[00:09:20] Okay, well, I do think that the device
[00:09:27] that we’re talking about today is a kind of,
[00:09:30] and I think it’s a good thing,
[00:09:31] but I think it’s also,
[00:09:32] so I would agree, to a certain extent,
[00:09:35] with the question of ascendancy,
[00:09:38] and for me, the ascendancy of analytic philosophy
[00:09:42] that we’re claiming, which I think is very true,
[00:09:46] I think you’re quite right,
[00:09:48] is also a kind of colonization,
[00:09:52] and I came here just now from Heidelberg,
[00:09:55] and I know for a fact that you need, if you get it,
[00:09:56] and I came here just now from Heidelberg,
[00:09:57] if you get an American fellowship to study,
[00:10:00] to teach or visit Germany,
[00:10:02] you no longer need to learn German,
[00:10:04] and you don’t need to learn German,
[00:10:06] and I’ve taught at the Humboldt,
[00:10:08] and I old-fashionedly taught in German,
[00:10:10] and then I realized that my German colleagues
[00:10:12] were speaking bad English,
[00:10:13] and I said, well, I can do that a little better,
[00:10:16] so I switched.
[00:10:17] And so there is, I think, a linguistic ascendancy,
[00:10:21] and the ascendancy is definite.
[00:10:25] It’s completely accurate.
[00:10:26] It’s completely true.
[00:10:27] And Germans spend a lot of time trying to find out
[00:10:29] how they can get their work in English positions.
[00:10:33] I’ve also been visiting Germany since 1984,
[00:10:38] so that means for a very long time,
[00:10:40] and what I wanted to do was German philosophy of science,
[00:10:43] which I discovered when I arrived had not existed.
[00:10:47] It had already gone over to the analytic side.
[00:10:50] It was only analytic philosophy of science,
[00:10:52] and I said, well, if I could do that in England, better,
[00:10:56] or I could do that, that,
[00:10:57] in the United States.
[00:10:59] The problem for me, my teacher was someone named Gardamer,
[00:11:02] the problem for me, and the problem still is,
[00:11:05] where do you get your teachers?
[00:11:07] And one can assume, oh, yes, analytic philosophers
[00:11:10] can teach you how to read Nietzsche,
[00:11:13] but I would say they really can’t,
[00:11:14] because you cannot read,
[00:11:16] it’s just a logical problem of solecism,
[00:11:18] you cannot read Nietzsche in translation.
[00:11:21] You can, but you’ll be reading a lovely man,
[00:11:24] Reg Hollingdale.
[00:11:25] You will not be reading Nietzsche,
[00:11:27] or a not-so-nice man, Walter Kaufman.
[00:11:30] You will not, he earns his name, he’s a salesman.
[00:11:34] He sold Nietzsche to everyone as someone
[00:11:36] who was not really Nazi, so he’s very good,
[00:11:38] but that’s the problem.
[00:11:39] So for me, the distinction’s over,
[00:11:41] because everyone has died, so it’s a serious problem.
[00:11:44] Who are actual continental philosophers?
[00:11:47] You’re looking at one, but there are not a lot of them,
[00:11:50] and I’m not long for this world.
[00:11:52] So, and it makes all the difference that I had the teachers
[00:11:57] I had, I can’t invent myself,
[00:11:59] and analytic philosophers couldn’t have taught me how to read.
[00:12:04] Why was Gadamer so important?
[00:12:06] Not because he was Gadamer and wrote Truth and Method,
[00:12:08] he wrote that when he was 60,
[00:12:10] because he was a philologist,
[00:12:12] because I had studied Greek,
[00:12:13] because Nietzsche was a scholar of Greek,
[00:12:15] and that’s why Bernard Williams, for example,
[00:12:17] was so interested in Nietzsche,
[00:12:18] because Richard Betts, same thing,
[00:12:21] very analytic, Johns Hopkins,
[00:12:23] Nietzsche’s someone who read the Greeks in Greek.
[00:12:26] If you don’t read,
[00:12:27] Aristotle in Greek, you cannot understand his argument.
[00:12:30] If you don’t read Plato in Greek,
[00:12:32] you cannot understand his argument.
[00:12:34] If you translate it into English,
[00:12:35] someone somewhere along the line,
[00:12:37] except for the Cambridge edition, will vary the word,
[00:12:39] and then the argument falls apart,
[00:12:41] and it’s the same problem with Heidegger, with Nietzsche,
[00:12:44] and thank you, but that’s where I stand.
[00:12:45] We are over, by default, it’s the farewell concerto.
[00:12:50] They have left the building.
[00:12:51] Thank you.
[00:12:52] Thank you.
[00:12:53] Thank you.
[00:12:54] Thank you.
[00:12:55] Thank you.
[00:12:56] Thank you.
[00:12:57] Thank you.
[00:12:58] Thank you.
[00:12:59] Thank you.
[00:13:00] Thank you.
[00:13:01] I think you’ve made yourself clear, Barbara,
[00:13:02] thank you.
[00:13:03] So now we move to our first theme,
[00:13:04] and again, we’ll move to our speakers in turn.
[00:13:05] So our first theme is,
[00:13:06] is there value in having different schools of philosophical thought,
[00:13:09] or is philosophy necessarily all encompassing?
[00:13:12] And I’m going to turn to you first, Kinya.
[00:13:15] Yes, so in typical philosophical mode,
[00:13:18] I might ask,
[00:13:19] what does it mean for philosophy to be
[00:13:21] all-encompassing. But if that means there can only be one way of looking at things,
[00:13:28] I think that’s wrong. Philosophy is obviously the discipline that challenges just one way
[00:13:36] of doing things. It always comes up with new perspectives, new objections, things that you
[00:13:42] haven’t thought of before. So, I think a diversity of approaches is definitely a good thing. However,
[00:13:50] I do think that all philosophers either are or ought to be committed to values like rigour,
[00:13:58] clarity, originality, etc. So, I think a similar core in values, but not necessarily the same
[00:14:10] approach or the same methodology. Thank you, Babette. You’re making
[00:14:13] some quite distinct faces here. I think you’ve got a strong opinion.
[00:14:17] I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to react.
[00:14:20] It’s very hard not to because it’s such a persuasive, clear, and very well-organised
[00:14:24] position. So, that is, for me, overwhelming. Except, and I speak as a veteran of philosophy
[00:14:30] departments for a long time, we’ve hired analytic philosophers exclusively at Fordham University.
[00:14:35] Since I was hired, I think they hired me by accident. I certainly guaranteed that accident
[00:14:40] because I needed the job. But analytic philosophy is boring. So, this is the real problem with it.
[00:14:50] It is not exciting. I teach at a Jesuit university with the Jesuits because of theology. Require
[00:14:57] philosophy because of theology. Not anymore. We have just abolished the requirement. Thank you,
[00:15:01] analytic philosophy. And I agree with that. No one should be forced to take a course in analytic
[00:15:06] philosophy. It’s not necessary. You don’t need it. You can learn to reason from a mathematician,
[00:15:12] I hope you would, or a physicist, or a biologist. I was trained in biology. I don’t think philosophy
[00:15:17] has a monopoly on that. So, I think…
[00:15:20] We can get it from there. And the problem with the boring factor
[00:15:24] is how do you get… I studied at Stony Brook because of biology. If it weren’t continental,
[00:15:31] we wouldn’t have had a philosophy department. People took the classes because they wanted to,
[00:15:35] because they were exciting. That’s what you need. At Fordham, they’re forced. Not anymore.
[00:15:41] Will we still have…
[00:15:42] Babette, can I bring you back to… So, the point that Genia raised was that philosophy
[00:15:47] should be committed to values of clarity and rigour.
[00:15:50] Yes.
[00:15:50] So, if you’re talking about all philosophy across the different areas, do you disagree with that?
[00:15:55] Yes.
[00:15:55] Claim?
[00:15:55] Of course, I disagree with that, because who’s judging? Honestly, I mean, I can appreciate it,
[00:16:00] but it doesn’t mean I’m judging it. Would it be the rigour for my standards? Maybe not.
[00:16:05] I already said you need all that depth and all that history.
[00:16:07] Can I say something?
[00:16:08] Go for it.
[00:16:10] So, I mean, if you ask who judges, you’ve just said the most judgmental thing of all,
[00:16:16] namely that analytic philosophy is boring. So, I think that…
[00:16:19] I think that’s just a caricature of you. Some analytic philosophers might be boring,
[00:16:26] but good analytic philosophy is just good philosophy and, therefore,
[00:16:30] isn’t boring. And trying to figure out the solutions to important questions isn’t boring.
[00:16:35] I mean, you don’t have to write in Nietzsche aphorisms to be classed as not boring. And I
[00:16:41] admire Nietzsche, and I, myself, work on people like Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein,
[00:16:45] so it’s not like I’m this paradigmatic evil analytic…
[00:16:49] …philosopher. But, yeah. So, I think that statement can’t go unchallenged.
[00:16:59] Well, I was only thinking of the students.
[00:17:04] Well, the students, on the whole, like interesting philosophy of mind courses,
[00:17:10] for example. So, I think that’s not true either, I’m afraid.
[00:17:15] So, not all analytic philosophy is boring. That’s your bold claim here.
[00:17:19] Yes.
[00:17:19] Absolutely so controversial.
[00:17:23] Christoph, sitting comfortably here with your popcorn on the sidelines, do you want to jump in?
[00:17:28] Yeah, I wanted to pick up on the point about clarity and rigor, because I think it’s true
[00:17:35] that analytic philosophy has presented itself often as having a special commitment to clarity
[00:17:41] and rigor, as if almost they had some sort of monopoly on these virtues. And I just,
[00:17:48] I think we too easily…
[00:17:49] Yeah.
[00:17:50] …let them have this claim in the sense that there’s a great deal of analytic philosophy
[00:17:56] that’s actually not clear and that’s actually not rigorous. One way in which analytic philosophy is
[00:18:00] often not so rigorous as it claims to be is that the place where analytic philosophers often rest
[00:18:06] their arguments are what they themselves call their intuitions. So, they will sit in a seminar
[00:18:12] room and they will exchange with each other what their intuitive beliefs are about certain things.
[00:18:19] Sometimes you’re told that when people say intuitions, really they mean something like
[00:18:23] basic beliefs, which is fine as well as a term. You know, people’s basic beliefs which they
[00:18:30] essentially dogmatically then rest their arguments on. So, that’s a case where I think
[00:18:34] we should question whether there’s a rigor that we traditionally
[00:18:38] demand of the very idea of philosophy in analytic philosophy. And I think often actually
[00:18:46] we find that there are great communicators on the side of continental philosophy,
[00:18:49] So if you read the work, for example, of someone like Graham Harman, there’s a kind of display of these virtues of clear communication that are very difficult to find in the kind of standard papers that we now expect in analytic philosophy, where often so many qualifications are built into what the person is trying to say because of the pressures of academic publishing, where you have to say something that’s different from what any other person has ever said, which is quite difficult to do.
[00:19:19] Unless you model what you’re saying, basically, on what other people have said, and then you build in lots of little qualifications so that it’s actually very difficult.
[00:19:29] But it’s often, in my experience anyway, very difficult to know what’s actually being communicated.
[00:19:33] So I think that’s an area where it’s important not to let analytic philosophy just have these claims and let them be unexamined.
[00:19:42] And I think at its extreme, it can be a form of, to pick up on a word that Babette used earlier, colonialism or colonization.
[00:19:49] Because the future of the colonial mindset is that from within the colonial mindset, there is no outside.
[00:19:56] This is the way that things are done.
[00:19:58] Now, you can participate in that if you like, but there are certain conditions of entry.
[00:20:02] And the conditions of entry have to do with things like talking like us.
[00:20:07] And in the old days, there was much more in analytic philosophy of trying to make things straightforward and not using horrible jargon.
[00:20:15] And that’s a great thing, I think.
[00:20:18] But it’s not.
[00:20:19] It’s not.
[00:20:19] It’s just no longer really viable to say about the work that’s done in analytic philosophy on the whole that it avoids jargon.
[00:20:27] There’s just, there’s a great deal of it.
[00:20:31] And it’s presented in a certain way and very often in short sentences where the style is very repetitive and sort of reminiscent of scientific papers.
[00:20:41] But it doesn’t mean that jargon is actually not being used.
[00:20:43] It’s just being smuggled in, I think, often.
[00:20:45] Thank you.
[00:20:46] I wonder whether you want to come back on that.
[00:20:48] And I’m curious.
[00:20:48] I’m curious that both Babette and Christophe have used this idea of the colonisation that analytic philosophy may or may not be.
[00:20:56] Yeah.
[00:20:56] Yeah.
[00:20:56] So, I mean, I totally agree.
[00:20:59] It’s by no means true that just because you say you’re an analytic philosopher, therefore, you know how to do clarity and rigour.
[00:21:08] And I also completely agree that all this talk about intuitions is, to use a strong word, quite ridiculous.
[00:21:16] I always say when kind of.
[00:21:18] When PhD students talk about their intuitions, I kind of say, well, I’m not really interested in your intuitions or your feelings and give me an argument for why that’s a good view.
[00:21:28] So, yeah, I agree.
[00:21:31] And I think actually the worst problem with contemporary analytic philosophy, in my mind, is that they’ve forgotten all the brilliant Wittgensteinian lessons.
[00:21:43] And I think that’s also why all of the jargon has now kind of started to dominate.
[00:21:48] Because a lot of the stuff that, for example, went on in ordinary language philosophy in Oxford, although I want to stress, contrary to what people think, Wittgenstein was actually not an ordinary language philosopher.
[00:22:02] But obviously, that line of philosophy was very much influenced by Wittgenstein.
[00:22:08] But there’s now a positive hatred of Wittgenstein in the contemporary philosophical scene, in particular, in analytic philosophy.
[00:22:17] And I think that.
[00:22:18] Is partly to blame for the way in which things have gone.
[00:22:23] So I agree with Christoph that there’s no monopoly here and also no implication that, you know, if you work on continental stuff, you you can’t be clear and rigorous.
[00:22:35] But I do think one ought to kind of commit to those values and try to be clear and rigorous.
[00:22:41] But it certainly doesn’t go without saying that just because you’re an analytic philosopher, you can do that.
[00:22:46] You might end up churning out all sorts.
[00:22:48] Of nonsense.
[00:22:49] So, yeah.
[00:22:50] Could I just add something very brief about Wittgenstein?
[00:22:52] So it’s very interesting.
[00:22:53] You mentioned Wittgenstein and this Wittgenstein hatred, I think, is a fascinating phenomenon.
[00:22:58] And there are Italian scholars who’ve done empirical studies of how how people got their jobs in America and based on what PhDs they’d done.
[00:23:08] And the best thing that you could write your PhD on was themes from the philosophy of David Lewis.
[00:23:12] That’s not surprising.
[00:23:14] Most, most influential philosopher at Princeton in the 1970s.
[00:23:18] And the worst thing you could write your dissertation on by that time was Wittgenstein.
[00:23:23] And I think that’s yeah.
[00:23:25] And that tells us something very, very interesting, because, you know, as somebody who is not part of the kind of an academic industrial complex, you might think, well, one of the key figures of the analytic tradition is Wittgenstein.
[00:23:35] But this is not how it’s seen from within.
[00:23:39] And even there’s this tendency for analytic philosophers to sort of project Wittgenstein outwards from their tradition and call him a continental philosopher.
[00:23:48] Which is a very interesting thing.
[00:23:48] I mean, there are ways in which Wittgenstein’s thought, and you’ll know way more about this than I do, has its roots in particular Viennese culture.
[00:23:58] And so in that sense, it’s continental European in its influences in all sorts of ways.
[00:24:02] But if Wittgenstein is not a central figure in the analytic traditions of who is.
[00:24:10] Completely agree.
[00:24:12] I want to move us in a slightly different direction to think about, I guess, where we situate philosophy and sort of the.
[00:24:18] Broadest social and political structures and maybe the role that philosophy plays.
[00:24:23] So moving on to our second theme, which is, is the Enlightenment tradition itself under threat and with it the influence and identity of European philosophy?
[00:24:33] So, Christoph, turn to you first.
[00:24:35] Yeah, I find this a really interesting question because I suppose I have maybe a slightly unusual take on what the Enlightenment is.
[00:24:43] So let me just say, as I understand it, the Enlightenment, historically.
[00:24:48] Speaking was a kind of incomplete project.
[00:24:50] And what I mean by that is that we tend to think of the Enlightenment as sort of culminating in the late 18th century.
[00:24:55] We think of Immanuel Kant is one of the kind of late figures of the Enlightenment.
[00:24:58] We think of the French feels of who wrote the encyclopedia and so on in the 18th century is sort of among its prime sort of late figures.
[00:25:07] And the great event of this period is the French Revolution of 1789.
[00:25:13] And what the Enlightenment was all about was, you know, as Kant’s famous definition.
[00:25:18] Of the Enlightenment was that Enlightenment is the emergence of man with the human from their self-imposed immaturity.
[00:25:26] So there was this notion of equipping oneself with one’s own rational powers in face of arbitrary authority in the forms of the ruling class, the aristocracy, the monarchy, and so on, and also the church.
[00:25:39] And it’s an incomplete project in the sense that if you just say to people, look, you as a human subject are somehow spontaneously right to take charge of your society.
[00:25:45] You have to take charge of your society.
[00:25:46] You have to take charge of your society.
[00:25:47] You have to take charge of your society.
[00:25:48] You have to take charge of your society.
[00:25:48] And to take charge of society, that’s not going to get you very far.
[00:25:54] And in the French Revolution, as we know, there was a serious obstacle to how far this could go.
[00:25:59] And we know the direction that it turned in.
[00:26:03] And the Enlightenment in my view sort of awaits its completion in the work of and the thought of Karl Marx who realizes that actually to get,
[00:26:10] to get you the notion of the autonomous subject that is equipped with its own reason and that can throw off
[00:26:18] arbitrary authority and contest myth and ideology and so on, you need a theory and also an actual
[00:26:25] movement of history. You need a historical movement by which a class of people can actually
[00:26:30] take charge and throw off the people that are keeping them down, just telling them that
[00:26:36] they’re autonomous subjects and so on isn’t going to do it. And so in that sense,
[00:26:43] I mean, to go to the question, I think that the Enlightenment is under threat and part of the
[00:26:51] threat to the Enlightenment, both thought of as kind of the beginnings of it in the French
[00:26:56] Fugles of and in Kant and then sort of radicalized by Marx, has come from the side of
[00:27:04] continental philosophy and from a set of movements in continental philosophy that used to be very
[00:27:10] influential and whose authority is now much more contested. And so I think that the Enlightenment
[00:27:13] has kind of manifested, which are essentially the post-structuralist strands in continental
[00:27:18] philosophy, right? So people like Derrida and Foucault, I think, have been the most influential
[00:27:25] in the kind of wider culture. And they’re very much associated with a sort of relentless
[00:27:30] questioning of the Enlightenment. So I think from there, and this is sort of, I think,
[00:27:38] reflective of a wider culture as well as having influenced it.
[00:27:43] We have in our sort of wider culture a relativism and a sort of incredulity towards grand narratives
[00:27:53] and so on. That is, I think, as a matter of fact, that’s a threat to the Enlightenment
[00:28:00] project. So I’m perhaps slightly unusual in thinking that the future of European philosophy
[00:28:09] very much relies on our reconnecting with the Enlightenment project.
[00:28:13] But thinking of this Enlightenment project in a very radicalized sense. So in analytic
[00:28:17] philosophy, there’s a sense in which analytic philosophy is very comfortable with the Enlightenment
[00:28:22] project, but the kind of incomplete Enlightenment project, which is just a project of telling
[00:28:27] people, as liberalism does, which is the ideology of this, you know, everybody is autonomous
[00:28:33] and free and can do what they like and pursue their projects without actually looking at
[00:28:37] the juridical and economic structures and so on that shape us. So, you know, I think
[00:28:43] that analytic philosophy tends to produce this idea of a kind of a free space in which
[00:28:47] everyone can express themselves and explore their ideas, but it’s actually much more
[00:28:51] constricted and it’s sort of confined within this, you know, first phase of the Enlightenment
[00:28:56] that hasn’t yet radicalized itself.
[00:28:58] Yeah. I agree that continental philosophy hasn’t exactly been terribly helpful in this
[00:29:07] regard by kind of the postmodern way of thinking.
[00:29:12] It has basically given people the idea that there is no such thing as truth, that anything
[00:29:20] goes, that we should be relativists. I mean, obviously I’m possibly exaggerating, might
[00:29:26] not be quite as clear cut as that, but certainly there have been these tendencies and this
[00:29:31] has basically seeped into wider culture. And so now we’re seeing a lot of very worrying
[00:29:39] tendencies in society at large.
[00:29:41] Yeah.
[00:29:42] There’s a proliferation of fake news, of conspiracy theories. I’m obviously interested
[00:29:47] in this because I’m working on a large ELC project, trying to connect some of Kirchhoff’s
[00:29:53] thought with reasons for why people succumb to conspiracy theories. So I think getting
[00:30:02] people to think a bit more about, you know, in which channels are actually knowledge conducive
[00:30:12] and which channels are not.
[00:30:12] And to have more intellectual courage and to be more daring to actually, you know, be
[00:30:21] happy to nail your colors to a mast, for example, rather than to be worried about
[00:30:26] what your peers think. And I think certainly in the West, it’s become very difficult to
[00:30:32] have honest conversations about a lot of things because of these so-called safe spaces and
[00:30:37] so on. Many of these things are, of course, to an extent, a good thing, but it’s not a
[00:30:42] good thing. But I think there’s also a big danger in having something that ultimately
[00:30:50] kind of stifles critical exchange and intellectual courage.
[00:30:54] Thanks. Robert, I wonder whether you might want to defend the post-structuralists and
[00:30:59] or the post-modernists against the battering they’re getting on both sides of me.
[00:31:04] Well, it’s very hard because I’m not so sure that one needs to go to Derrida or Foucault.
[00:31:12] I think one is leapfrogging over Adorno. And I think that if you do that, you have left
[00:31:18] and that happens also in aesthetics. Roger Scruton, for example, couldn’t stand Adorno
[00:31:23] and he didn’t like his music. But I thought, you know, Adorno was a composer. And at the
[00:31:29] end of the day, that makes a huge difference. He really understood the logic, the theory
[00:31:33] of music in a way and also composing in a way that Roger Scruton, who was all for that,
[00:31:39] did not. So there is that other aspect.
[00:31:41] And he wrote with Max Horkheimer, The Dialectic of Enlightenment. And so going back to this
[00:31:47] question and how do you sapere, how do you dare, how do you this aude, this idea of risking
[00:31:53] what is sapere, what is knowledge? And Nietzsche said, let’s look at what sapere means. It
[00:31:58] means to taste. So it takes you right, right back to David Hume. It’s really very Scottish
[00:32:03] and it’s something that requires doubt, requires skepticism, requires asking a question as
[00:32:08] opposed to thinking that you know what the truth is.
[00:32:11] I said I was trained in the sciences. And that means that I think that the truth is
[00:32:15] something we might get to, not something we’ve got that we could sort of guard other people
[00:32:21] against taking over. So to me, Derrida and Foucault are in a certain sense, latecomers.
[00:32:28] I’ve actually suggested that Derrida ripped off Husserl’s sort of discussion as Adorno
[00:32:35] represents it because Adorno writes a book on Husserl and Derrida reads it in German,
[00:32:40] translates it into French.
[00:32:41] Here comes Derrida. Who would go back to Husserl to find that? Who would go back to Adorno
[00:32:46] to find that? No one but someone who reads and reads in languages, German and French.
[00:32:51] And by the time it gets into English, it’s utterly lost and it’s just exciting and we
[00:32:56] find him Derridian or we, and then we prefer Foucault, most people.
[00:33:00] So it’s a whole question. So I can’t really defend the post-structuralist to that side,
[00:33:05] except to say that if you go back to Adorno, you have a chance to open up questions.
[00:33:11] You have a chance to open up questions for psychoanalysis that Adorno was also doing.
[00:33:15] And I think that that becomes then maybe another side to bring things in. Because to me, the
[00:33:21] word rigor, every time you say rigor, I am reminded of Heidegger. Heidegger, because
[00:33:26] to do Heideggerian philosophy, you can only do this rigorously. But that does not mean
[00:33:31] according to analytic standards. It means according to Heidegger’s standards. It means
[00:33:35] you have to know how to think.
[00:33:41] And yeah, you look like you might be keen to come back to that.
[00:33:47] Yeah, it’s hard to know what to say in response to you need to know how to think. I mean,
[00:33:53] any philosopher would agree with that. So I don’t think that sets Heidegger apart from
[00:33:58] others. And I don’t think anyone would object either to the idea that we have to remain
[00:34:06] open to the possibility that we’re nowhere near having found the truth, and that this
[00:34:11] is a continuous quest. But I think what’s important is at least to recognize that there
[00:34:19] is such a thing as truth, and that you can arrive at the truth. Whereas a lot of sort
[00:34:24] of postmodernism and poststructuralism, you know, has kind of said things like, you know,
[00:34:29] that there is no truth, there are only narratives, etc. So I think these tendencies in the wrong
[00:34:35] hands can actually be quite dangerous. So for that reason, I’m not in favor.
[00:34:41] Just one clarification. It’s Heidegger who says that we’re still not thinking, and his
[00:34:47] claim is that science does not think. So it’s really, that’s the rigor. The rigor is the
[00:34:52] precision. You can’t just switch that over and say, oh, all philosophers think. I wish
[00:34:56] that were true. It is not entirely the case. And what Heidegger means by it scares me,
[00:35:02] because I don’t think it’s fully clear what Heidegger means. And he wrote a book about
[00:35:07] it, Was heißt denken? Which means, what is it to think? He’s actually asking that
[00:35:14] as a question. He was fond of questions. And I would say we still need to ask. And I would
[00:35:18] love a dialogue, because I think that’s something that would work. And we could maybe come
[00:35:22] to an agreement on that. But I don’t think we’re already there.
[00:35:27] Could I pick up on this question about what is thinking? And Heidegger’s sort of invocation
[00:35:34] of the idea that we should explore first what thinking is.
[00:35:35] Heidegger’s sort of invocation of the idea that we should explore first what thinking
[00:35:37] is, and discover what thinking is, and equip ourselves with the idea of thinking on the
[00:35:44] basis of ignorance, that we don’t yet know what thinking is, which he was saying right
[00:35:48] at the end of his career. And just juxtapose that with what analytic philosophy is like,
[00:35:57] and the way in which it operates, which is, I think, that there is a way in which analytic
[00:36:03] philosophers are not reflective on this question in a really striking way.
[00:36:07] And that has changed over time, because in the early 20th century, in the kind of movements
[00:36:11] that analytic philosophy came out of, which are actually a distinct set of movements.
[00:36:16] So there was logical positivism in Vienna. There was what people were doing in Cambridge.
[00:36:20] There were certain roots in the United States, in the pragmatist and realist traditions.
[00:36:24] And then there was Polish logic. And Polish logic, by the way, has a set of completely
[00:36:28] different philosophical views about the remit of philosophy from the other people that
[00:36:34] they then sort of get fused with when analytic philosophy becomes a reality. So I think,
[00:36:37] again, there’s this sort of monolithic entity. All of these movements are really thinking
[00:36:40] about what is philosophy? How does it work? What’s its relationship to science? These
[00:36:45] people are all very methodologically self-conscious. And what’s happened with analytic philosophy
[00:36:49] as it’s become the dominant paradigm and it’s become hegemonic is that it’s just assumed
[00:36:53] often that there are certain procedures that are to be followed. And you can see this in
[00:36:58] the sort of aims that people set themselves implicitly, which is to give what analytic
[00:37:03] philosophers often call accounts of things.
[00:37:05] So there’s, you know, big, small, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big,
[00:37:06] big, big, big, big, big, big. And there’s belief or there’s more specific sort of phenomena,
[00:37:12] sort of target phenomena to investigate. And the idea is, will you give an account of what
[00:37:15] this thing is? And you begin from intuitions, and then you build in bits of science and
[00:37:20] so on. But there’s relatively little reflection on what this activity actually is, what it
[00:37:26] is to come to determine how things are. I think we might have perhaps landed on a
[00:37:31] point of agreement. So you’re suggesting that, you know, current analytic philosophy is perhaps
[00:37:36] are less methodologically reflexive than it might or should be and i wonder whether this is a point
[00:37:43] on which guinea babette you might agree with christophe yeah i think i agree i think there
[00:37:48] isn’t enough self-reflection going on in analytic philosophy and um there’s maybe
[00:37:55] too much of an assumption as you say that you know if i can come up with some sort of even perhaps
[00:38:04] seemingly quite trite account of what something is that can be cashed out in one or two premises
[00:38:11] um i mean that’s that’s often very reductive and can’t possibly do justice to the complexity of
[00:38:18] the phenomena so so i think that there’s definitely a lot of that and and so engagement with people
[00:38:24] like wittgenstein or kirchhoff would be i think helpful but and more reflection on what account
[00:38:31] giving yes really is right what is it like i thought
[00:38:33] methodology is as well um and what their own methodology is because i i think the particular
[00:38:40] danger about um analytic philosophy is that they somehow think they actually have no methodology
[00:38:46] it’s it’s like methodology free it’s you know it’s it’s just basically stating what is the case
[00:38:52] um and and that’s obviously a fantasy so and it’s a great danger yeah to to think that you
[00:38:57] have no methodology it’s like it’s it’s somewhere hidden away yeah yeah i agree yeah
[00:39:03] yes perfect just what i needed um so we move to our final theme uh which is obviously the biggest
[00:39:12] and hardest question uh what is the future of european thought babette it’s in the hands of
[00:39:19] analytic philosophers because that is all you have if you look at the formation that is the phds
[00:39:25] as they were earned as those individuals who are teaching at premier uh tier one we would say uh
[00:39:31] here uh schools in germany
[00:39:33] france uh in hungary as well i just got an application from some from a colleague there
[00:39:39] wants to talk on heller uh but from an analytic perspective and in italy especially italy
[00:39:44] so i think that the future is analytic not because you might say so or for anyone else’s
[00:39:52] perspective any one of you might want to argue that but just by default i think that the future
[00:39:57] is in the hands of those who have jobs those who are at universities those who are
[00:40:03] regarded as good enough to get a job and they determine the profession and it is what they have
[00:40:11] made it as it is and they are responsible so to me that’s the future of europe now what about
[00:40:17] european philosophy in england i think cheddar’s parabus it also holds here i think that it’s also
[00:40:23] the same so uh it really depends on colleagues what call it what their openness is uh how they
[00:40:29] look at one another how they look at these questions so that’s to me uh the future the
[00:40:33] future is what we’ve got now gosh that’s quite pessimistic then the future of european thought
[00:40:40] is analytic yes christoph any any more chair from you well i have a different source of pessimism
[00:40:47] wonderful um which is that i mean i think there is a great need for philosophy in our time and
[00:40:56] it’s interesting also that we’re talking about european philosophy and we could talk about
[00:40:58] um ways in which in our time the i mean the
[00:41:03] very notion of european philosophy of course has been put under question by um you know no less
[00:41:09] figures than derrida and so on for for a very long time from from within european thought um
[00:41:15] but this question of you know what do the people that come out of this whole tradition now do um
[00:41:23] i think it’s become urgent because of the very quickly shifting political landscape
[00:41:31] that we’re in in which i think
[00:41:33] um it’s very easy i mean going back to the enlightenment which we were talking about
[00:41:38] it’s now very easy for people on the extreme right to claim the enlightenment for themselves
[00:41:43] by doing a kind of um sneaky um substitution which is the idea that well you know our opponents are
[00:41:51] these liberals and they’re all into post-modernism and for them it’s you know anything goes or
[00:41:57] whatever they think is the case is the case and this there’s something suspicious about that and
[00:42:02] the substitution is that’s all the people that come out of this whole tradition and they’re all
[00:42:03] that there is to anything that’s not on the right and so the right gets to be in this position
[00:42:09] of having a very easy time um diffusing any sort of radical um thought in in philosophy so i think
[00:42:18] it’s a time in which we’re really called upon in philosophy to kind of regroup and to get back to
[00:42:24] some of the really fundamental questions about what the role of philosophy is and to think about
[00:42:31] what thinking is and how we um how we think about it and how we think about it and how we think about it
[00:42:33] in a world um where our thought’s actually effective rather than ending up just confined
[00:42:40] to the academy in a way that’s um just reproduces the same impotence over and over and i think it’s
[00:42:48] really um the crucial question both on the analytic side and on the continental side and
[00:42:53] so far as a still distinctive continental side um because both are at risk of um pursuing
[00:43:00] philosophy in a way that’s um detached from the world of philosophy and i think it’s really
[00:43:03] that’s just sort of intellectually siphoned off from the world and interestingly sort of in both
[00:43:08] cases there’s a tendency for philosophy to collapse into a kind of linguistic self-examination
[00:43:14] or to become a kind of conceptual juggling so i think on the concept on the continental side
[00:43:19] and a real indicator of this for me is always the proliferation of um sort of abstract romance
[00:43:27] nouns that are that are nominalizations of verbs um or that are nominalizations of adjectives so
[00:43:33] one example of that is the um the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the
[00:43:33] the example of this is materiality we we hear a lot about materiality but we have relatively little
[00:43:39] about actual um the impulse to material change and how it’s how it’s to be brought about so
[00:43:46] their continental philosophy has this there’s a danger on the continental side of sort of
[00:43:50] collapsing into something which um you know the analytic tradition has been demonstrating in
[00:43:54] spades for many many decades which is that it renders itself more or less um irrelevant except
[00:44:01] as a kind of so you’re saying that we’re seeing the sort of same problem
[00:44:03] on both sides which is a kind of disengagement from the world i think certainly yeah there’s a
[00:44:08] threat on both sides of of that happening if if people are not vigilant about what they’re doing
[00:44:14] and i think there’s real potential in the ways in which some continental philosophers are sort of
[00:44:18] crossing over and thinking about um you know central figures in the analytic tradition like
[00:44:24] as i as i mentioned before the the work of ray brassier who’s um you know really getting back
[00:44:30] sort of philosophical fundamentals uh in a way where you can see sort of the
[00:44:33] nerve of the analytic tradition actually being engaged with in a way that’s productive
[00:44:37] um i think that’s a way in which um philosophy can i mean so just become more like philosophy again
[00:44:44] um and um less of a kind of professionalized um you know juggling around of of concepts where
[00:44:53] um you know on the analytic side there’s this sort of tendency to extreme technicality
[00:44:59] so that you can only really understand what’s being discussed if you understand all of the
[00:45:03] papers that are being referred to in a paper um but similarly on the continental side there’s a
[00:45:08] sort of tendency to hermeticism that comes from um you know you you can only operate with a set
[00:45:16] of thoughts if you have explored this whole complicated you’ve read the right thing yeah
[00:45:21] and this this is a complicated web of concepts that you have to be able to find your way around
[00:45:27] and because of having read you know and being able to get all the references um thank you okay
[00:45:33] so so different pessimism but still pessimism yes um genia looking to you for a little bit of
[00:45:41] lightness here perhaps uh what is the future of european thoughts can you give us any hope
[00:45:46] um maybe a tiny bit but um i certainly share um some of the concerns that both christophe and
[00:45:55] babette have raised so maybe starting with um the political point that christophe made i think
[00:46:01] it’s true that um
[00:46:03] what we’re seeing at the moment is that um right-wing politics is kind of reclaiming the
[00:46:12] enlightenment for themselves when in the past this used to be um something that that the left
[00:46:19] was particularly keen on but for the reasons that we’ve already discussed all of this kind
[00:46:25] of relativism and post-structuralism etc has led to an abandonment of the thought that we’re
[00:46:33] we you know can say something that is actually true and that isn’t just biased and colonial
[00:46:39] and whatever the the various isms are that are currently in vogue um and and i think there’s
[00:46:47] obviously the danger that um far-right politicians can use philosophical thought um for their own ends
[00:46:55] to kind of persuade people they are actually upholding these ideals and so i actually think
[00:47:02] there is an important role now in the world of political thought and i think that there is an
[00:47:03] important role now for philosophy to try and counteract that but i think there is a problem
[00:47:09] in academia and certainly in europe that it’s still the case that there is this default
[00:47:14] assumption if you are an academic and particularly a philosopher you have to be left-wing you can’t
[00:47:22] possibly be anything else and and i think that that leads to philosophers not actually wanting
[00:47:29] to challenge um you know these
[00:47:33] equations that are currently happening so i think there would also be an opportunity for philosophers
[00:47:40] to um try and reignite the good debate about the enlightenment ideals and i think
[00:47:47] one thing that the crises that we’re constantly witnessing shows is that people do have an
[00:47:55] appetite for philosophy they do actually want more philosophy in their lives so yeah um what i think
[00:48:03] philosophers ought to do nowadays is you know to engage more um with the general public and to try
[00:48:12] and undermine this narrative that there is no such thing as the truth and if you um think there is
[00:48:20] then you have to be someone um you know who’d be hospitable to to kind of right-wing thought
[00:48:27] thank you so much to our speakers thank you for coming thank you to the firm for european philosophy
[00:48:33] thanks for listening to philosophy for our times what did you think about this debate do you think
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