Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Category: Analytic Philosophy Criticized

  • Technical Philosophy, Compartmentalization, and Worldview

    For many philosophers, their technical philosophical work bears little or no relation to the implicit or explicit set of action-guiding beliefs and values that constitutes their worldview.  Saul Kripke, for example, is an observant Jew who keeps the Sabbath and rejects naturalism and materialism.  But you would never know it from his technical work which has…

  • Intellectual Hygiene

    I am all for intellectual hygiene. But it can be taken to an extreme by a certain sort of analytic philosopher who is afraid to touch anything that might in the least be infected with the murk and messiness of life as she is lived. Such types remind me of neurotic hand-washers and those who,…

  • On Continental Philosophy: Response to a German Reader

    This is an edited re-post (re-entry?) from 21 February 2017 to satisfy current interest. Against my better judgment, I am allowing comments. …………………………. The following from a German sociologist (my comments are in blue): Perhaps you know the old joke: Analytic philosophers think that continental philosophy is not sufficiently clear; continental philosophers think that analytic philosophy is…

  • On Continental Philosophy: Response to a German Reader

    The following from a German sociologist (my comments are in blue): Perhaps you know the old joke: Analytic philosophers think that continental philosophy is not sufficiently clear; continental philosophers think that analytic philosophy is not sufficient. Having just reread the Kritik der reinen Vernunft, I don't see Kant as an analytic philosopher. Hegel and Nietzsche certainly belong…

  • Continental Philosophers I Respect and the ‘Continental-Analytic Divide’

    From the mail bag: I'm a new reader of your blog and about two years into my own layman's study of philosophy. By that I mean I'm just reading whatever strikes my fancy as best as I can and building up a sort of mental repertoire. It's equally exciting and frustrating. Are there any so-called…

  • Carnap and Clarity

    This entry is installment #2 in a Carnap versus Heidegger series.  Here is the first in the series.  It couldn't hurt to at least skim through it. Part of what I am up to is an exploration of the origin and nature of the analytic-Continental split. To quote from the first installment: If I were…

  • Heidegger, Carnap, Das Nichts, and the Analytic-Continental Schism

    One of the reasons I gave this weblog the title Maverick Philosopher is because I align neither with the analytic nor with the Continental camp.  Study everything, I say, and drink from every stream.  Reverting to the camp metaphor, when did the camps become two?  In dead earnest this occurred when Heidegger burst onto the…

  • Another Misrepresentation of Meinong

    This time from John Nolt in his SEP entry on Free Logic:  "Alexius Meinong is best known for his view that some objects that do not exist nevertheless have being." False for reasons already supplied.  See article below. It takes quite bit of chutzpah to shoot your mouth off about authors you never took the…

  • Peter Unger Introduces a Central Thesis of his New Book, Empty Ideas: A Critique of Analytic Philosophy

    Here, via Dave Lull.  The comments, as one ought to expect, are not very good.  Here as elsewhere, and to exaggerate a bit, the best arguments against an open combox are the contents of one. I have read large chunks of Unger's new book and I hope to provide a critical response to some of…

  • On Throwing Latin, and a Jab at the ‘Analysts’

    If you are going to throw Latin, then you ought to try to get it right.  One of my correspondents sent me an offprint of a paper of his which had been published in American Philosophical Quarterly, a very good philosophical journal.  The title read, Creation Ex Deus. The author's purpose was to develop a…

  • Nausea at Existence: A Continental Thick Theory

    A reader wants me to comment on the analytic-Continental split.  Perhaps I will do so in general terms later, but in this post I will consider one particular aspect of the divide that shows up in different approaches to existence.  Roughly, Continental philosophers espouse the thick theory, while analytic philosophers advocate the thin theory.  Of course there…