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Overview
For more than seven decades there has been a broad gap between how philosophy is conceived and practiced. Two ill-defined but well-recognized traditions have developed—the "analytic" and "Continental" schools of philosophy. The former traces its roots to philosophers like Frege, Russell, Moore, Wittgenstein, and the logical positivists. The latter has been heavily influenced by Nietzsche, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Foucault, and Derrida, among others.
The aim of this collection is to reconsider the often facile characterization of major thinkers as belonging to either one or the other philosophical tradition. The contributors—philosophers from both sides of the divide working in different countries and contexts—all question the problematic conception that the two traditions are incommensurable. Each of their articles compares individual philosophers who have had a major influence on the analytic and Continental traditions with a view to clarifying their similarities and dissimilarities of approach.
What this collection of thoughtful articles clearly demonstrates is that regardless of approach and precedents, analytic and Continental philosophers are all doing philosophy, and there are many important points of contact between them.
The contributors are: Richard Rorty (Stanford University), whose thoughtful overview highlights the salient points in both traditions; Barry Allen (McMaster University); Babette E. Babich (Fordham University); David Cerbone (West Virginia University); Sharyn Clough (Rowan University); Jonathan Kaplan (University of Tennessee); Richard Matthews (Memorial University of Newfoundland); Carlos G. Prado (Queen's University); Bjorn Torgrim Ramberg (University of Oslo); Mike Sandbothe (Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena); Barry Stocker (Yeditepe University Istanbul); and Ed Witherspoon (Colgate University).
Synopsis
Most philosophy and philosophers are lumped under one or the other of the two labels mentioned in the title, but for Prado (philosophy, Queen's U., Canada) such a practice is too facile. He sees benefits in studying the similarities and dissimilarities among thinkers from the two traditions on key philosophical issues. Each of the 11 chapters he presents attempts to do just that, for example discussing the views of Heidegger and Quine on the relevance of logic; Searle and Foucault on correspondence, construction, and realism; and Davidson and Wittgenstein on knowledge, communication, and social justice. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR