Continental Philosophy Criticized – Maverick Philosopher

Kimball on Kolakowski on Marxism as a Bogus Form of Religion

I have argued time and again that Marxism is not a religion. But many have a burning need so to misunderstand it. What the great Kolakowski says below reinforces me in the correctness of my opinion. As for Fredric Jameson, whom Roger Kimball discusses in his Guilt of the Intellectuals, I haven't read him and never will. Theodor Adorno, on the other hand, I have read with care. I rate him higher than Roger Kimball does, who is more of a public intellectual (a very good one!) than a philosopher. (PhilPapers lists only seven works of his.) I consider Adorno worth reading and evaluating, as I do in Contra Adorno: A Preliminary Plea for Omphaloscopy.

Kimball:

Whatever Professor Jameson’s personal commitment to Marxist doctrine, there can be little doubt that his habits of thought were deeply tinged by the gnostic contempt for everyday experience and faith in a secular apocalypse that has characterized Marxism from the beginning. As the philosopher Leszek Kolakowski noted in the third volume of his magisterial study Main Currents of Marxism, this is the ultimate source of Marxism’s Utopian dreams and its great seductiveness for suitably disposed intellectuals. “The influence that Marxism has achieved,” Kolakowski wrote,

far from being the result or proof of its scientific character, is almost entirely due to its prophetic, fantastic, and irrational elements. Marxism is a doctrine of blind confidence that a paradise of universal satisfaction is awaiting us just around the corner. Almost all the prophecies of Marx and his followers have already proved to be false, but this does not disturb the spiritual certainty of the faithful, any more than it did in the case of chiliastic sects. … In this sense Marxism performs the function of a religion, and its efficacy is of a religious character. But it is a caricature and a bogus form of religion, since it presents its temporal eschatology as a scientific system, which religious mythologies do not purport to be.

That the Marxist apocalypse is declared to be the inevitable result of inscrutable “scientific” laws only means that its partisans are potentially as dangerous as they are mystifying: the revolutionary is one whose possession of “the truth” is impervious to experience. For him, “History” speaks with a voice beyond contradiction or appeal.

By the way, 'magisterial' is exactly the word to describe Kolakowski's Main Currents of Marxism. It is the work of a master, a magister. But would it have killed Kimball to provide a page reference? If he had, the editors would probably have deleted it. Why do you think that is?

Bad Stuff: Badiou

Top o' the Stack.

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On 03/03/2023 17:29, William F. Vallicella from Philosophy in Progress wrote:

And I say this as someone who has read practically all of Nietzsche, Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, Gadamer, a crapload of Derrida (who, according to John Searle, gives bullshit a bad name) and plenty of others besides. I know Continental philosophy from the inside.

Dear Bill,

thanks for giving me a laugh-out-loud moment on a Friday evening! Maybe Searle is too concretist and therefore dismissive of everything that even smells wrong, but he's the world's great reality check . . . .

Reading through that list again, it seems that the chronological order of those philosophers (I think they are in order either of birthdate or of major works) corresponds to the declining coherence of their thinking and its connection to reality?

Thomas Beale
Health IT blog | Culture blog | The Objective Stance | ORC-ID

Thank you, Thomas. May all be well with you. I made use of your note, with attribution. If you don't want me to mention you by name, just say so, and I won't.

It's Saturday. Tonight I shall have me a shot of Jaegermeister. Ever try this stuff?

Yes, the philosophers are listed in order of birth and of major works. And yes, the later Continentals can't hold a candle to the earlier ones. As for Searle, he is a brilliant critic of other philosophers' views, but his own views — I am thinking primarily of his philosophy of mind — are rather less impressive.

There is plenty of interesting material about the man and his thought in my Searle category. His outsized ego and unrestrained concupiscence landed him in some hot water.

All fine by me.

I had forgotten about the fall of JS … possibly I skimmed it on your blog back when you noted it, but not all the details. It is interesting how even some of the greatest minds lack what others would consider the most basic self-awareness. Still, I like much of his writing since he cuts through crap in a similar way to Scruton (Searle has a wrecking ball, Scruton arguably a flamethrower, which can be aimed with more precision, also funnier), and so saves one some time. I doubt very much if every single thing he designates as crap really is crap (and that's before we get to atheism – e.g. phenomenology), but then that's why we have you!

Jaegermeister is a bit too sweet for my liking so only very occasionally. I am more of wine-drinker + occasional whiskey and even sometimes Grappa, a drink that makes no sense, except when it does.

If you know what Grappa is, then you probably know what Aperol is. Try mixing the latter with tequila, say, 2/3 tequila + 1/3 Aperol. The combo is delicious in my humble opinion and an excellent synaptic lubricant.

I will try it. I have some tequila lurking in the den of iniquity (= top of wine fridge).

BTW was just scanning your various entries on Husserl, who does interest me a lot (and more to the point, pro philosophers in my field, medical informatics). I've read some original (well, in English) matierial, pretty readable, even despite the 'continental' flavour. Anyway, your various dissections are very nice. I need to spend more time on them. I may be back with some discussion points . . . .

Fire away, when you are ready!

Scruton on Foucault

Although linkage does not entail endorsement, I do endorse the following from Powerline:

Roger Scruton’s charming and invaluable memoir, Gentle Regrets: Thoughts from a Life, includes a chapter explaining how he first started turning in a conservative direction (he wasn’t raised one—his father was a devoted semi-socialist Labourite), when he witnessed first-hand the student revolt in Paris in May 1968. He was repelled by the spectacle, and concluded that ‘whatever these people are for, I’m against.’

But what were the student protestors for? He recounts arguing with a radical acquaintance on the scene over the question:

What, I asked, do you propose to put in place of this “bourgeoisie” whom you so despise, and to whom your owe your freedom and prosperity that enable you to play on your toy barricades? . . .

She replied with a book: Foucault’s Les mots et les choses [The Order of Things], the bible of the soixante-huitards [“sixty-eighters,” as the May protestors are still known], the text that seemed to justify every form of transgression, by showing that obedience is merely defeat. It is an artful book, composed with a satanic mendacity, selectively appropriating facts in order to show that culture and knowledge are nothing but the “discourses” of power. The book is not a work of philosophy but an exercise in rhetoric. Its goal is subversion, not truth, and it is careful to argue—by the old nominalist sleight of hand that was surely invented by the Father of Lies—that “truth” requires inverted commas, that it changes from epoch to epoch, and is tied to the form of consciousness, the epistime, imposed by the class that profits from its propagation. The revolutionary spirit, which searches the world for things to hate, has found in Foucault a new literary formula. [Emphasis added.]

Style, Substance, and Michel Henry

Some philosophers write so obscurely that the problems they purport to discuss are occluded by the problems they cause the reader. One has to waste time figuring out what the author is saying, time that ought to be spent on assessing whether what is being said is true. The French are prime offenders, allergic as they are to plain talk and clarity of expression with their pseudo-literary pirouettes and their overuse of universal quantifiers. The French Continental style draws attention away from the substance so much so that one wonders whether there is any substance beneath the stylistic flummery. And yet I sense that Michel Henry has something interesting to say about Husserl and Heidegger and so I will continue to plough through the turgid prose of Material Phenomenology.

Worse than obscurantism in the French style, however, is the attitude of a certain sort of analytic philosopher who dismisses as meaningless what does not instantly make sense to his shallow pate. And among these benighted souls, the nadir is reached in a positivist like David Stove.

I coined a name for people like him: 'philosophistine.' A philistine out of his depth among real philosophers.

The maverick philosopher, avoiding both camps, strives for clarity with content with a fidelity to reality that tolerates such obscurity as is unavoidable.

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.

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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 to the continental tradition. And none of the philosophers of the 20th century, who really matter to me, can be called an analytic philosopher. Doesn't "analytic" simply mean after Wittgenstein and in his tradition?

BV: As I see it, there was no analytic-Continental split before the 20th century. So classifying Kant, Hegel, and Nietzsche in terms of that split is only marginally meaningful. But it is safe to say that Kant is more congenial to analytic philosophers than Hegel and Nietzsche are.

When did the split come about and what is it about?

If I were were to select two writings that best epitomize the depth of the Continental-analytic clash near the time of its outbreak, they would be Heidegger's 1929 What is Metaphysics? and Carnap's 1932 response, "On the Overcoming of Metaphysics Through the Logical Analysis of Language." In fairness to Carnap, let us note that his Erkenntnis piece is more than a response to Heidegger inasmuch as it calls into question the meaningfulness of all metaphysics. And in fairness to Heidegger, we should note that he thinks he is doing something more radical than metaphysics. Metaphysics for Heidegger is onto-theology. Metaphysics thinks Being (das Sein) but always in reference to beings (das Seiende); it does not think Being in its difference from beings. The latter is Heidegger's project.

The following are widely regarded as Continental philosophers: Franz Brentano, Alexius von Meinong, Kasimir Twardowski, Edmund Husserl, Adolf Reinach, Dietrich von Hildebrand, Edith Stein, Roman Ingarden, Max Scheler, Martin Heidegger, Nicolai Hartmann, Gabriel Marcel, Ortega y Gasset, Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus. And of course there are others that are so regarded.

Note that the above are all Europeans. But being European is not what makes them 'Continental.' Otherwise Gottlob Frege, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Rudolf Carnap would have to be lumped in with them. And of course there are Continental philosophers who do not hail from Europe. So what makes the above authors 'Continental' as opposed to 'analytic'?

It is not easy to say, which fact supplies a reason to not take too seriously talk of 'Continental' versus 'analytic.'

Note that all of the Continentals I mentioned engage in analysis, some in very close, very careful analysis. (Ever read Husserl's Logical Investigations?) And please don't say that they don't analyze language. Ever read Brentano? Gustav Bergmann accurately describes Brentano as "the first linguistic philosopher." (Realism, 234) Roderick Chisholm's paraphrastic approach was influenced significantly by Brentano. No one would lump Chisholm in with the Continentals.

Will you say that the Continentals mentioned didn't pay close attention to logic? That's spectacularly false. Even for Heidegger! Ever read his dissertation on psychologism in logic?

Perhaps you could say that the Continentals mentioned did not engage significantly with the ground-breaking work of Frege, widely regarded as the greatest logician since Aristotle. I think that would be true. But does this difference suffice to distinguish between Continental and analytic? I don't think so: there are plenty of philosophers who write in a decidedly analytic style who do not engage with Frege, and some of them oppose Frege. Take Fred Sommers. You wouldn't call him a Continental philosopher. And while he engages the ideas of Frege, he vigorously opposes them in his very impressive attempt at resurrecting traditional formal logic. And yet he would be classified as analytic.

A Matter of Style or of Substance?

According to Michael Dummett,

What distinguishes analytical philosophy, in its diverse manifestations, from other schools is the belief, first, that a philosophical account of thought can be attained through a philosophical account of language, and, secondly, that a comprehensive account can only be so attained.

[. . .]

On my characterisation, therefore, [Gareth] Evans was no longer an analytical philosopher. He was, indeed, squarely in the analytical tradition: the three pillars on which his book [The Varieties of Reference, Oxford, 1982] rests are Russell, Moore and Frege. Yet it is only as belonging to the tradition — as adopting a certain philosophical style and as appealing to certain writers rather than to others — that he remains a member of the analytical school. (Origins of Analytical Philosophy, Harvard UP, 1993)

For Dummett, then, what make a philosopher analytic is not the style in which he writes: clear, precise, careful, explicitly logical with premises and inferences clearly specified, free of literary pretentiousness, name-dropping, rhetorical questions, and generally the sort of bullshitting that one finds in writers like John Caputo and Alain Badiou. Nor is it the topics he writes about or the authorities he cites. What makes the analytic philosopher are the twin axioms above mentioned.

The trouble with Dummett's criterion is that it is intolerably stipulative if what we are after is a more or less lexical definition of how 'analytic' and 'Continental' are actually used. An approach that rules out Gareth Evans and Roderick Chisholm and Gustav Bergmann and Reinhardt Grossmann and so many others cuts no ice in my book. (How's that for a mixed metaphor?)

A Matter of Politics?

I don't think so. Look again at my list. Sartre was a decided leftist, a Stalinist in his later phase. And Camus was on the Left. But everyone else on my list was either apolitical or on the Right. Heidegger was a National Socialist. Latter-day Continentals, though, definitely slouch Leftward.

A Matter of Academic Politics?

This may be what the Continental versus analytic split comes down to more than anything else. As Blaise Pascal says, with some exaggeration, "All men naturally hate one another." To which I add, with some exaggeration: and are always looking for ways to maintain and increase the enmity. If you are entranced with Heidegger you are going to hate the Carnapian analytic bigot who refuses to read Heidegger but mocks him anyway. Especially when the bigot stands in the way of career success. Although so many Continentals are slopheads, there is no asshole like an analytic asshole. That's been my experience.

A Matter of Religion?

No, there are both theists and atheists on my list. And of course there are plenty of analytic philosophers who are theists. Most of them, however, are not.

A Matter of Attitude toward Science?

This has something to do with the split. You can be a Continental philosopher and a traditional theist (von Hildebrand, Edith Stein, et al.) and you can be a Continental philosopher and a conservative (Ortega y Gasset), but is there any case of a Continental philosopher who is a logical positivist or who genuflects before the natural sciences in the scientistic manner? I don't think so. I am, however, open to correction.

Interim Conclusion

Talk of 'analytic' and 'Continental' philosophy is not particularly useful. It would be better to speak of good and bad philosophy. But what are the marks of good philosophy? That's a post for another occasion.

Back to my correspondent:

I see philosophy more in terms of art than in terms of science. This is not saying that some arguments are not better than others or that one cannot distinguish different degrees of plausibility. But the overall conception (what Heidegger calls "Seinsverständnis) is more – and something essentially different – than the sum of of plausibilities or the logic consistency of the argumentation. There is, or so it appears to me, a 'channelling' of truth that resembles more the mystical experience than the scientific recognition. Of course I've read Wittgenstein, but why should I spend precious life time reading, say, Gilbert Ryle or Saul Kripke, when I can read Hegel's Wissenschaft der Logik?

BV: As I am sure my reader knows, Hegel's Wissenschaft der Logik (Science of Logic) has been dismissed as Begriffsdichtung, conceptual poetry. So I am not surprised that he sees philosophy more in terms of art than in terms of science. His attitude is defensible: why read Kripke who is of interest only to specialists in logic and the philosophy of language and who has no influence on anything beyond those narrow precincts when you can read Hegel and come thereby to understand the dialectical thinking which, via Marx and Lenin, transformed the world?

There is also the problem that the various attempts to bring philosophy onto the "sure path of science" (Kant) have all failed miserably despite the Herculean efforts of thinkers such as Edmund Husserl. He attempted to make of philosophy strenge Wissenschaft, but he could not get even one of his brilliant students to follow him into his transcendental phenomenology. (I don't consider Eugen Fink to be a counterexample.) There is no reason to think that philosophy will ever enter upon the sure path of science. This is a reason to content oneself with the broader, looser, fuzzier approach of the Continentals.

Only if philosophy could be transformed into strenge Wissenschaft would we perhaps be justified in putting all our efforts into this project and eschewing the satisfaction of our needs for an overarching and spiritually satisfying Weltanschauung; we have no good reason to think philosophy will ever be so transformed; ergo, etc.

When [Theodor Wiesengrund] Adorno was in Oxford, he wrote in a letter home: "Here it's always just about arguments." Most of his colleagues there did not even understand what he was missing. And that's the divide!

BV: That is indeed a good part of what the divide is all about.

Well, of course this ignorance of the analytic tradition has in my case also to do with cultural nationalism. The philosophical departments here are more and more forgetting about the great German tradition. Thinkers like Hegel or Schelling, let alone Heidegger, are hardly taught anymore. I'm against this, I'm Deutsch and proud of it. Actually I want – and for me that's another reason to be against illegal immigration – Germany to become again a hotspot of art and philosophy!

BV: I agree! When as a young man I spent a year in Freiburg im Breisgau, I was there to study Kant and Hegel, Husserl and Heidegger. To my romantic young self Germany was, in the words of Heinrich Heine, das Land von Dichter und Denker, the land of poets and thinkers. You Germans can be justifiably proud of your great tradition. Without a doubt, Kant belongs in the philosophical pantheon along with Plato and Aristotle. It is indeed a shame that the analysts are suppressing your great tradition.

As for illegal immigration, if looks from here as if Angela Merkel is a disaster for Germany. Language, borders, and culture are three things every nation has a right to protect and preserve. There is nothing xenophobic or racist about it.

More on the French and their Pretentious Preciosity and Lack of Rigor

Cyrus contributes,

Your correspondent, M. Boisson, writes:

The French used to be praised for their clarity of expression. They are now known for their pretentious preciosity and complete lack of rigor.

Could he please provide us with an example of a clear French philosopher other than the very impressive and exceptional M. Descartes? In fact, given his first sentence, I would like at least five or six such examples. (I would prefer a dozen.) Early French philosophy writing is heavily influenced by Montaigne, and Montaigne is hardly a paradigm of clarity and philosophical rigour. He also provides an early example of quasi-literature, quasi-philosophy. (He's clearer than Deleuze, but to say so in reply is to miss my point.)

Please keep in mind that I'm writing as someone fluent in French (i.e. natively bilingual) and familiar with the French philosophical tradition (including the impressive skeptical one that most Frenchmen have forgotten).

I don't see how anybody can blame the Germans* for lack of rigour in philosophy. Germany gave birth to the existentialist tradition, but it also gave birth to the analytic one. It can't fairly be blamed for the one without being complimented for the other. (Indeed, it gave birth to all the major contemporary philosophical traditions. Man spricht Deutsch.)

Best,

Cyrus

*I'm using "Germans" to refer to all people who are culturally German. (That is, from the area that used to be called the Holy Roman Empire of Germany.) So, Austrian, too.

Deleuze and his Chiasmus

This excellent missive just over the transom from a long-time correspondent, the erudite Claude Boisson. He is responding to yesterday's On Gilles Deleuze.

Many French philosophers can surely be infuriating. They are to me too, even though I am French. In fact *because* I am French and I remember that there was a time when the French philosophers were not infatuated with Heidegger and did not try to ape his silly mannerisms. Why I mention Heidegger is explained below.

The French used to be praised for their clarity of expression. They are now known for their pretentious preciosity and complete lack of rigor.

I agree entirely.

The empty chiasmus structure that you found in Deleuze (the A of B and the B of A) has indeed become fashionable in French academic writing, particularly in the literature departments.

Where does this fad come from? It is a fact that there has long been a rather strong rhetorical tradition in the French schools and universities. We have all been taught to write cleverly, as if we were all aspiring Voltaires. And this may conceal a lack of substance at times.

But in the case of Deleuze, I suspect there may be another explanation. The post-war philosophical scene in France saw the rise of Hegel, Heidegger and Marx. And Heidegger was particularly influential in the so-called « khâgnes », which are preparations for the prestigious Ecole normale supérieure, which, de facto, does the piloting or philosophical studies in my highly centralised country. I won’t go into this extremely exotic system.

So Heidegger may bear some responsibility for the love of chiasmus, at least that is my hunch.

See for instance (italics in the original, as Heidegger seems to be quite pleased with himself for the profundity of his ‘thought’):

« Wahrheit bedeutet lichtendes Bergen als Grundzug des Seyns. Die Frage nach dem Wesen der Wahrheit findet ihre Antwort in dem Satz: das Wesen der Wahrheit ist die Wahrheit des Wesens »

(Vom Wesen der Wahrheit, 1930, Gesamtausgabe Band 9, Anmerkung, page 201).

The reference checks out! I just now re-read the Anmerkung in question. I have a whole shelf of Heidegger's Gesamtausgabe in my personal library which I will defend with my AR-15 and Remington 870 should any Antifa/BLM thugs attempt to de-colonize or de-nazify it. (Heidegger was a member of the the Nazi Party for a time. Does that shock you? Then it should shock you that the later Sartre was a Stalinist.)

German post-Hegelian bullshit, if you want my opinion.

I am now writing an amateurish monograph on Heidegger, and I have numerous passages devoted to Heidegger’s infamous sophistical tricks. Heidegger sure asks big questions, but he never answers them, so, instead, he keeps writing nonsense. On four-dimensional Zetilichkeit, Beyng, Lichtung, Ereignis, Geviert, das Nichts (Das Nichts ist das abgründig Verschiedene vom Seyn als Nichtung und deshalb? – seines Wesens), the whole lot, and more.

Und deshalb !!!

While I sympathize with Professor Boisson's animadversions, I myself do not consider Heidegger's work to be bullshit. Portentous, yes, and perhaps needlessly obscure in places; but he raises legitimate questions. But to be able to follow him, you have to have done your 'homework' in Aristotle, the scholastics, Kant, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, Wilhelm Dilthey, Franz Brentano and Edmund Husserl. Sein und Zeit (1927), for example, blends transcendental philosophy, phenomenology, Lebensphilosophie, and existentialism in an assault on the being question raised by Aristotle as this question was transmitted to Heidegger by the dissertation Brentano wrote on Aristotle and the several senses of 'being' under Trendelenburg. There is a lot going on, just as in the preceding sentence, but both make sense to those who are willing to put in the time.

Now the typical analytic philosopher simply won't do that. He will seize upon a passage taken out of context and proceed to mock and deride. What is not instantly comprehensible to them, they dismiss as meaningless. I expand upon this theme, with clarity and rigor, in Heidegger, Carnap, Das Nichts, and the Analytic-Continental Schism.

Germans are too serious and dour to be bullshitters in philosophy; I can't think of a well-known German philosopher who bullshits. The French, on the other hand . . . . Amiel:

The thirst for truth is not a French passion. In everything, what appears is more relished than what is, the outside than the inside, the style than the stuff, the glittering than the useful, opinion than conscience. . . .

From Henri Frederic Amiel on the French Mind.

On Gilles Deleuze

Reader Hector C. poses a question:

What do you think of Gilles Deleuze? I have recently been reading Gabriel Marcel and it seems such a shame to me that such a brilliant writer should be nearly forgotten when the work of a poseur (as he seems to me) like Deleuze has become the basis of an academic industry.

I'll take Marcel over Deleuze any day, although both display that typically French flabbiness of thought and expression that I find exasperating. Here are some thoughts, perhaps a bit churlish, from about 15 years ago (27 May 2005, to be exact) that I just now found on an earlier version of this weblog.

The Trouble with Continental Philosophy #2

Today’s example of objectionable Continental verbiage is taken from Gilles Deleuze, Nietzsche and Philosophy (tr. H. Tomlinson, 1983, first appeared in French in 1962). Before I begin, I want to say that this is a book worth reading. I read it fifteen years ago, and am re-reading parts of it now. A sympathetic reader will garner some insights and suggestions from it despite the Continental slovenliness.

On p. 2, we find:

[1] Genealogy means both the value of origin and the origin of values. [2] Genealogy is as opposed to absolute values as it is to relative or utilitarian ones. [3] Genealogy signifies the differential element of values from which their value itself derives. [4] Genealogy thus means origin or birth, but also difference or distance in the origin. [5] Genealogy means nobility and baseness, nobility and vulgarity, nobility and decadence in the origin. (Numbers in brackets my interpolation.)

Ad 1. Notice the superficially clever transposition, "value of origin and origin of values." That’s typically French. The attempt to achieve a clever or showy style drives the thought. The French writer aims at literary effect first, and worries whether a coherent thought has been expressed only later, if at all. (Are there exceptions to this? Of course.) It is true that Nietzschean genealogy is concerned to uncover the origin of values. But the origin of values, as Deleuze himself says on the preceding page, is in acts of evaluation which "are not values but ways of being, modes of existence, of those who judge and evaluate…" (p. 1) So the phrase "value of origin" comes close to contradicting Deleuze’s own point on the preceding page. But whether there is a contradiction or not, there is unclarity. In philosophy, however, "clarity is courtesy" as Ortega y Gasset says somewhere. And you will notice how these writers never give concrete examples or show how any of this is supposed to work in detail.

Ad 2. It is clear that genealogy is opposed to absolute values. But in his concern to be ‘radical’ and to say something ‘shocking,’ Deleuze exaggerates and says something that is incoherent, namely, that genealogy is opposed to relative values. This is false: if values derive from acts of evaluation that are modes of existence of the evaluators, and as such expressive of the nobility or baseness, health or sickness, etc., of these evaluators, then it is obvious that values are precisely relative to these evaluating beings. The equating of relative with utilitarian values is deeply obscure, probably confused, and the context doesn’t help.

Ad 3. This is not particularly clear, but one can figure out what is meant, namely, that the difference between ascending and descending life, between noble and base modes of existence, etc., determines which values are posited.

Ad 4. The way these French writers use ‘means’ and ‘signifies’ is annoying and sloppy, but one sees what Deleuze is getting at. Strictly speaking, however, there is nothing in the meaning of ‘genealogy’ to require any particular theory of genealogical derivation such as Nietzsche’s.

Ad 5. What a miserable sentence! Strictly speaking, ‘genealogy’ means no such thing. I often get the impression with French philosophers that they cannot decide whether they want to be philosophers or literary writers. Unable to commit themselves one way or the other, they evolve an unholy and sloppy blend of verbiage that teases and frustrates more than it enlightens. There are exceptions of course such as Descartes and Jean-Paul Sartre. The early Sartre, up to and including Being and Nothingness, is well worth the effort.

If I could pull Deleuze up out of his grave by his lapels, I would say to him: Be clear! Say something definite! Give an argument with discernible premises and conclusion! Stop your silly-ass posturing and name dropping! Say something that can be evaluated as either true or false! But of course, these literary poseurs do not believe in truth. Their 'truth' is that there is no truth . . . .

Related: Is Life Good?

Are Gender Studies Garbage?

If they are, they have not been proven to be by the Conceptual Penis as Social Construct 'Son of Sokal' Hoax. If you care to 'bone up' on this, this Reason article has the links for you.

Alain Badiou

Like Neven Sesardić , I too take a dim view of Badiou. Teaser quotation:

Here is what I would say to Badiou et al. Define your terms. Make an assertion and defend it. Tell us what your thesis is. Say something definite. Try to be clear. Philosophy is hard enough even when one is clear. Avoid name dropping, that mark of the pseudo-intellectual. Go easy on the rhetorical questions. If you ever find something definite to say, employ the indicative mood.

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.

When did the split come about and what is it about?

It is not easy to say, which fact supplies a reason to not take too seriously talk of 'Continental' versus 'analytic.'

Will you say that the Continentals mentioned didn't pay close attention to logic? That's spectacularly false. Even for Heidegger! Ever read his dissertation on psychologism in logic?

Perhaps you could say that the Continentals mentioned did not engage significantly with the ground-breaking work of Frege, widely regarded as the greatest logician since Aristotle. I think that would be true. But does this diffeence suffice to distinguish between Continental and analytic? I don't think so: there are plenty of philosophers who write in a decidedly analytic style who do not engage with Frege, and some of them oppose Frege. Take Fred Sommers. You wouldn't call him a Continental philosopher. And while he engages the ideas of Frege, he vigorously opposes them in his very impressive attempt at resurrecting traditional formal logic. And yet he would be classified as analytic.

A Matter of Style or of Substance?

According to Michael Dummett,

What distinguishes analytical philosophy, in its diverse manifestations, from other schools is the belief, first, that a philosophical account of thought can be attained through a philosophical account of language, and, secondly, that a comprehensive account can only be so attained.

[. . .]

On my characterisation, therefore [Gareth] Evans was no longer an analytical philosopher. He was, indeed, squarely in the analytical tradition: the three pillars on which his book [The Varieties of Reference, Oxford, 1982] rests are Russell, Moore and Frege. Yet it is only as belonging to the tradition — as adopting a certain philosophical style and as appealing to certain writers rather than to others — that he remains a member of the analytical school. (Origins of Analytical Philosophy, Harvard UP, 1993)

For Dummett, then, what make a philosopher analytic is not the style in which he writes: clear, precise, careful, explicitly logical with premises and inferences clearly specified, free of literary pretentiousness, name-dropping, rhetorical questions, and generally the sort of bullshitting that one finds in writers like Caputo and Badiou. Nor is it the topics he writes about or the authorities he cites. What makes the analytic philosopher are the twin axioms above mentioned.

A Matter of Politics?

A Matter of Academic Politics?

This may be what the Continental versus analytic split comes down to more than anything else. As Blaise Pacal says, with some exaggeration, "All men naturally hate one another." To which I add, with some exaggeration: and are always looking for ways to maintain and increase the enmity. If you are entranced with Heidegger you are going to hate the Carnapian analytic bigot who refuses to read Heidegger but mocks him anyway. Especially when the bigot stands in the way of career success. Although so many Continentals are slopheads, there is no asshole like an analytic asshole.

A Matter of Religion?

No, there are both theists and atheists on my list. And of course there are plenty of analytic philosophers who are theists.

A Matter of Attitude toward Science?

Interim Conclusion

Back to my correspondent:

I see philosophy more in terms of art than in terms of science. This is not saying that some arguments are not better than others or that one cannot distinguish different degrees of plausibility. But the overall conception (what Heidegger calls "Seinsverständnis) is more – and something essentially different – than the sum of of plausibilities or the logic consistency of the argumentation. There is, or so it appears to me, a 'chanelling' of truth that resembles more the mystical experience than the scientific recognition. Of course I've read Wittgenstein, but why should I spend precious life time reading, say, Gilbert Ryle or Saul Kripke, when I can read Hegel's Wissenschaft der Logik?

There is also the problem that attempts to bring philosophy onto the "sure path of science" (Kant) have all failed miserably despite the Herculean efforts of thinkers such as Edmund Husserl. He attempted to make of philosophy strenge Wissenschaft, but he could not get even one of his brilliant students to follow him into his transcendental phenomenology. (I don't consider Eugen Fink to be a counterexample.) There is no reason to think that philosophy will ever enter upon the sure path of science. This is a reason to content oneself with the broader, looser, fuzzier approach of the Continentals.

When Adorno was in Oxford, he wrote in a letter home: "Here it's always just about arguments." Most of his colleagues there did not even understand what he was missing. And that's the divide!

BV: That is indeed a good part of what the divide is all about.

BV: I agree! When as a young man I spent a year in Freiburg im Breisgau, I was there to study Kant and Hegel, Husserl and Heidegger. To my romantic young self Germany was, in the words of Heinrich Heine, das Land von Dichter und Denker, the land of poets and thinkers. You Germans can be justifiably proud of your tradition. Without a doubt, Kant belongs in the philosophical pantheon along with Plato and Aristotle. It is indeed a shame that the analysts are suppressing your great tradition.

What is Continental Philosophy?

I am afraid much of it fits the following 'definition':

What is continental philosophy? Continental philosophy is thinking, it is questioning, elaborating questions, making them more comprehensive, deeper, making them worse, proliferating these same questions and adding more and other associated questions. It includes reflection, musing, quandaries, provocations, sometimes it includes comparisons, say, but this was a joke after all, connecting M&E — analytic metaphysics and epistemology — to M&M’s. And this range of different things has been true for quite some time going back to the beginnings of analytic philosophy with the Vienna Circle and logical ‘analysis,’ whereby any time one mentions Vienna it makes a difference to note that one should not forget Freud but one does.

See here to verify that the above is no parody.

Further thoughts in my Continental Philosophy Criticized category. Dip in, and see how nuanced my maverick position is.

How Responsible is Sartre for the Decline of Continental Philosophy?

A London philosopher sends the following along which I take to be a quotation from Jasbir Puar:

One, I examine discourses of queerness where problematic conceptualizations of queer corporealities, especially via Muslim sexualities, are reproduced in the service of discourses of U.S. exceptionalisms. Two, I rearticulate a terrorist body, in this case the suicide bomber, as a queer assemblage that resists queerness as sexual identity (or anti-identity)—in other words, intersectional and identitarian paradigms—in favor of spatial, temporal, and corporeal convergences, implosions, and rearrangements. Queerness as an assemblage moves away from excavation work, deprivileges a binary opposition between queer and not-queer subjects, and, instead of retaining queerness exclusively as dissenting, resistant, and alternative (all of which queerness importantly is and does), it underscores contingency and complicity with dominant formations.

The London friend then comments:

Bill, to me this reads like a parody of Continental Philosophy. What are ‘corporealities’? ‘Identitarian’? ‘Deprivileges a binary opposition’?? What other kinds of opposition are there?

Sartre has a lot to answer for.

A lot of recent Continental 'philosophy' is gibberish, and the above passage reads almost like a parody of it. So my London friend and I agree that the above is rubbish, and as such, beneath critique. How would one even begin to criticize writing like this?

What is Puar trying to tell us in the first sentence? Continentals are big on verbal inflation. So Puar can't just write bodies, she must write corporealities. It sounds impressive to the unlettered. She wants to give the impression that she is engaging is some really deep theorizing here. Referring to a body as a corporeality is like referring to a method as a methodology or a truth as a verity.

It makes some sense to say that the bodies of homosexuals have been "problematically conceptualized," to use another pretentious phrase. To supply my own politically incorrect example, you would be 'problematically conceptualizing' the dick of a homosexual male if you maintained that it was but a social construct. But for a body to be problematically conceptualized via Muslim sexualities makes no sense at all. Is she trying to say that the bodies of homosexuals have been dubiously understood or perhaps wrongly understood by Muslims? But then how do sexualities come into it?

Puar has a thing for the plurals of abstract substantives: corporealities, sexualities, exceptionalisms. But we are only half-way through her meaningless opening sentence. We are told that dubious theories about homosexual bodies somehow support U. S. exceptionalisms. Who would have thought? What does it even mean?

It only gets worse, so enough of this.

Now if this junk were merely the scribblings of some crackpot on her personal blog, we could ignore it. But she is an associate professor at Rutgers University. File this under Decline of the West.

As for Jean-Paul Sartre, I would say say that my insular friend is not being quite fair. A lot of important work has been done by Continental philosophers up to an including the Sartre of Being and Nothingness. (I confess to not having studied Critique of Dialectical Reason.) Here is a list of (some) Continental philosophers who are well-worth close study: Franz Brentano, Alexius von Meinong, Kasimir Twardowski, Edmund Husserl, Adolf Reinach, Dietrich von Hildebrand, Edith Stein, Roman Ingarden, Max Scheler, Martin Heidegger, Nicolai Hartmann, Gabriel Marcel, Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus.

I would point out to my London correspondent, who is interested in medieval philosophy and logic, that Paul Vincent Spade, no slouch of a scholar, has a lively interest in the early Sartre. See here.

So I don't think too much can be laid at Sartre's door step. The rot sets in in good earnest later with characters like Derrida who, according to John Searle, "gives bullshit a bad name."

John D. Caputo is another Continental 'philosopher' that I criticize in a number of entries. He is not as bad as Puar, however. But he is very bad!

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 20th century Continental philosophers you like?

Although some commentators would consider some of the following philosophers to belong to the 19th century, they and their influence extend into the 20th. Here then is my list of (some) 20th century Continental philosophers who are well-worth close study.

Franz Brentano, Alexius von Meinong, Kasimir Twardowski, Edmund Husserl, Adolf Reinach, Dietrich von Hildebrand, Edith Stein, Roman Ingarden, Max Scheler, Martin Heidegger, Nicolai Hartmann, Gabriel Marcel, Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus.

What is a Continental Philosopher Anyway?

Note that the above are all Europeans. But that is not what makes them 'Continental.' Otherwise Gottlob Frege, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Rudolf Carnap would have to be lumped in with them. And of course there are Continental philosophers who do not hail from Europe. So what makes the above authors 'Continental' as opposed to 'analytic'?

It is not easy to say, which fact supplies a reason to not take too seriously talk of 'Continental' versus 'analytic.'

Will you say that the Continentals mentioned didn't pay close attention to logic? That's spectacularly false. Even for Heidegger! Ever read his dissertation on psychologism in logic?

Perhaps you could say that the Continentals did not engage significantly with the ground-breaking work of Frege, undoubtedly the greatest logician since Aristotle. I think that would be true. But does it suffice to distinguish between Continental and analytic? I don't think so: there are plenty of philosophers who write in a decidedly analytic style who do not engage with Frege, and some of them oppose Frege. Take Fred Sommers. You wouldn't call him a Continental philosopher. And while he engages the ideas of Frege, he vigorously opposes them in his very impressive attempt at resurrecting traditional formal logic. And yet he would be classified as analytic.

A Matter of Style or a Matter of Substance?

According to Michael Dummett,

What distinguishes analytical philosophy, in its diverse manifestations, from other schools is the belief, first, that a philosophical account of thought can be attained through a philosophical account of language, and, secondly, that a comprehensive account can only be so attained.

[. . .]

On my characterisation, therefore [Gareth] Evans was no longer an analytical philosopher. He was, indeed, squarely in the analytical tradition: the three pillars on which his book [The Varieties of Reference, Oxford, 1982] rests are Russell, Moore and Frege. Yet it is only as belonging to the tradition — as adopting a certain philosophical style and as appealing to certain writers rather than to others — that he remains a member of the analytical school. (Origins of Analytical Philosophy, Harvard UP, 1993)

For Dummett, then, what make a philosopher analytic is not the style in which he writes: clear, precise, careful, explicitly logical with premises and inferences clearly specified, free of literary pretentiousness, name-dropping, rhetorical questions, and generally the sort of bullshitting that one finds in writers like Caputo and Badiou. Nor is it the topics he writes about or the authorities he cites. What makes the analytic philosopher are the twin axioms above mentioned.

A Matter of Politics?

I don't think so. Look again at my list. Sartre is a decided leftist, a Stalinist in his later phase. And Camus is on the Left. But everyone else on my list is either apolitical or on the Right. Latter-day Continentals, though, definitely slouch Leftward.

A Matter of Academic Politics?

A Matter of Religion?

No, there are both theists and atheists on my list. And of course there are plenty of analytic philosophers who are theists.

A Matter of Attitude toward Science?

Interim Conclusion

John D. Caputo’s Truth Problem

As I said last Friday, the last time I read anything by John D. Caputo was at the end of the '70s. His articles and books struck me as worth reading at the time. His recent work, however, appears to be incompetent rubbish. One could say of the latter-day Caputo what Searle of Derrida: he gives bullshit a bad name. The following from a review by Alan Worsnip:

This confusion recurs again and again. For example, Caputo treats the question of whether there is one god or many (or none) as a version of the question of whether there is “one truth or many.” But it is not. If there were to be two mayors of London instead of one, that would require a political rethinking but not a rethinking of the theory of truth. Likewise, if there were to be two gods instead of one, that would require a religious rethinking but not a rethinking of the theory of truth. Sometimes it feels like Truth is just Caputo’s vehicle to discuss the subject that really animates him—religion, and his own expansive, almost nontheistic account of it.

Caputo also persistently runs together the questions of truth with questions of knowledge of truth. For example, he complains that absolutism—the view that there are absolute truths—“confuses us [i.e. human beings] with God,” a being that can know every truth. Yet the claim that there is an (absolute) truth about some matter is entirely compatible with the claim that we may often be deeply ignorant about it. Presumably there is a true fact of the matter as to whether the number of blades of grass in the UK was either odd or even at the moment of New Year in 1972. But we will never know which it is. Indeed, it is precisely the areas in which it is appropriate to speak of ignorance that it is least plausible to claim that truth is relative to us or our perspective: being ignorant of a truth involves the capacity to be wrong about it, which means that there is some fact about it independently of what one thinks.

If the Left would cease to exist without its double standards, contemporary Continental philosophy would cease to exist without its trademark confusion of the ontological with the epistemological. I am exaggerating, of course, but in the direction of a truth which I will leave my astute readers to reformulate in more temperate terms if they care to.

I have gone over this ground many times, but apparently one cannot say it too often. The claim that truth is absolute, and cannot be relative to individuals or groups or historical epochs or races, or anything else, is a claim about the nature of truth. It is a claim about what truth is. One who insists on this obvious point is not laying claim to any absolute or god-like knowledge. I can know that truth is absolute without knowing which propositions are true. It is not polite to say it, but say it we must: the failure to grasp such a simple point is a mark of stupidity in someone like Caputo who has had plenty of time and opportunity to learn something about philosophy. He's committing a rookie blunder, a sophomoric mistake.

What is the difference between analytic and Continental philosophy?

In the standard story about academic philosophy—a story which nearly everyone acknowledges to be overly reductive, yet nearly everyone continues to repeat—there are two kinds of philosophy. On one hand there is “analytic philosophy”—according to its opponents, a kind of pedantic bean-counting that alienates philosophy from its project of understanding the deep questions of life, existence and the human condition, replacing them with self-satisfied distinctions such as that between three different uses of the word “so.” On the other hand, there is “continental philosophy”—according to its opponents, a vague and pretentious approach, expressed in unclear prose which conceals a mixture of banalities and blatant falsehoods. Think of it this way: whilst continental philosophy gets better as you get drunker, analytic philosophy gets worse.

I say avoid both. Go maverick!