Continental philosophy Cato Sluyts
CONTINENTAL PHILOSOPHY
Professor T. Grohmann
Assessment
- Final written exam
o On lectures and seminars
- 4 written assignments
o 10% of final grade
o On seminar readings
2-4 questions; written by hand
à very precise and a critical/reflective/comparative one
Know the authors, text, theoretical framework, key words, vocabulary
à seminars and lectures
Respond as technical as possible
Core of the course are the authors and philosophical material; not the intro to
continental philosophy
Course content
- Section 1: Philosophy in the 20th century; Is it a theory or practice? Is the concept
of truth still important?
o Marx & Engels, Nietzsche, Freud, Heidegger
- Section 2: What is modernity and our relation to it? What is post-modernism?
Horkheimer & Adorno, Foucault, Lyotard
- Section 3: What is language and is there a non-linguistic world?
o Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, Wittgenstein, de Saussure
- Section 4: What is alterity? What is the Other? What is the philosophical
importance of the Other in 20 century philosophy?
o Levi-Strauss, Todorov, Lacan
- Section 5: Criticisms of capitalism.
o Marx & Engels, Althusser, Deleuze & Guattari
- Section 6: What is gender identity? What is desire and is it male? How to become
a woman?
o Freud, Beauvoir, Butler
1
,Continental philosophy Cato Sluyts
LECTURE 1 – 12/02
Section 1: Philosophy in the 20th century; Is it a theory or practice? Is the concept of
truth still important?
- What is continental philosophy?
- What is contemporary philosophy?
- Marx & Engels, Nietzsche, Freud, Heidegger
The continental/analytical divide
- Label of ‘continental’ philosophy: invented by Anglo-Saxon thinkers after WWII
o ››› to distinguish a logical interpretation of language from other currents
(Existentialism, Phenomenology, Hermeneutics, Philosophy of Life,
German Idealism, etc.)
o Pejorative undertone, polemical
- Origins of the divide: Wiener Kreis, circle of Vienna
o Rudolf Carnap, ӆberwindung der Metaphysik durch logische Analyse der
Sprache” (Overcoming metaphysics through logical analysis of
language),1931
à critiqued Heidegger as nonsense
The continental/analytical divide
- Carnap: ‘metaphysical’ statements (Heidegger, Hegel, …) are obscure and
unverifiable ‘pseudo-statements’, like: “das nichts nichtet (the nothing nihilates)
o Pseudeo-statements: appear meaningful and often satisfy grammatical
rules; logical analysis can show their emptyness
o “Nothing” = the logical operator of negation, not a subject-term
à S (subjects) est P (predicate)
- What does ‘analytical’ philosophy? Philosophical analysis of language
o =“analysis” (untying, loosening, decomposing)
- Language = overall medium of thinking, cognition, and understanding
o ››› the most fundamental object of philosophical inquiry
The continental/analytical divide
- Restriction of philosophy to what is “meaningful”:
o Rejecting that what cannot be said (the “unspeakable”, the “irrational”,
the “un-logical”).
- Restriction to what can be empirically verified:
o Rejecting the non-empirical (the transcendental)
- Analytic philosophy: excludes from Philosophy the ”unspeakable”:
o Unconscious, pre-verbal experience; limit phenomena of human
existence (suicide, psychosis, trauma, death, etc.)
Currents of continental philosophy
- Philosophy of life: Nietzsche, Bergson, Maine de Biran, Eucken
- Critical Theory: Adorno, Horkheimer, Habermas, Benjamin
- German & French phenomenology: Husserl, Heidegger (1889-1976), Merleau-
Ponty (1908-1961), Derrida
2
,Continental philosophy Cato Sluyts
- Existentialism: Kierkegaard, Jaspers, Sartre (1905-1980), Camus (1913- 1960)
- ”Structuralism”, “Post-structuralism”: Levi-Strauss, Lacan, Foucault, Deleuze,
Derrida
- Neo-Kantism: Rickert, Natorp, Windelband, Dilthey, Cassirer
- Hermeneutics: Gadamer, Ricoeur, Greisch
- Feminism: Beauvoir, Bordo, Kristeva, Nussbaum
- Cultural Studies, Race Studies, Gender Studies, Decolonial/Postcolonial
Studies…
Continental philosophy:
- General interest for themes and topics around irrationality
- Limit phenomena of every kind; profound & obscure dimensions of human
existence
- Genetic & ‘transcendental’ considerations of rationality, understanding,
cognition
- However: continental/analytic divide = ‘umbrella term’, vague
- Main problem: neither geographical zone, nor language-criteria are suited for a
distinction between analytical/continental philosophy
What is ‘contemporary’ philosophy?
- “Contemporary” Philosophy = Philosophy of the 20th century
o Simply temporal sense?
o or also a qualifying sense?
- Characterization of a certain philosophical “style”
- WW I & II: revealed the flip side of industrialization, globalization & civilization
o industrial and technological potential of destruction
- “Contemporary” thought is marked by the catastrophe
What is ‘contemporary’ philosophy?
- But: philosophy is not the passive echo of historical events
o Philosophy has its own temporality.
o No direct causal link between history and history of ideas
- Philosophical ideas also anticipate socio-political transformations.
- …but only in a retrospective view.
- Emergence of continental philosophy takes place before the 20th century:
o In 19th century, society that preceded WW I
o Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche and Sigmund Freud: inaugurators of
contemporary continental philosophy
Three crises and their solutions
- 3 fundamental philosophical questions from the 19th century:
1. Is the knowing subject still a firm ground for the establishment of a
philosophy?
à Descartes’s ‘res cogitans’
2. Are the notions of truth and knowledge still central?
3. What is philosophy’s relationship to practice? To non-philosophical fields
and disciplines?
3
, Continental philosophy Cato Sluyts
- Authors 1st section: Marx & Engels, Nietzsche, Freud, Heidegger
- 3 crises at the origin of the 20th century philosophy:
1. The crisis of knowledge and the knowing subject or “epistemic” crisis
2. The crisis of truth or “epistemological” crisis
3. The crisis of the philosopher or “sociological” crisis
The crisis of knowledge or the ‘epistemic’ crisis
- Episteme (ἐπιστήμη) = knowledge, cognition
- “Epistemic” (adverb or adjective) = with reference to knowing (activity) and
knowledge (result of activity)
- Epistemic crisis = the crisis of the knowing agent
o Breakdown of the subject’s central position for knowledge
- Self-knowledge as the highest form of knowledge
o Socrates “know thyself” (“γνῶθι σεαυτόν”, or in Latin: “nosce te ipsum”)
o Descartes’ (1596-1650): cogito ergo sum
o Kant’s (1724-1804): “Copernican Revolution”
The crisis of knowledge or the ‘epistemic’ crisis
- 20 Century: (self-)knowledge becomes suspect
o Marx’s (1818-1883) “ideology”; Nietzsche’s (1844-1900) “genealogy”;
Freud’s (1856-1939) ”unconscious”
- Humanity = tendency to dissimulate and disguise: the more we think we know
ourselves, the more we are caught in illusion
- “Epistemic crisis” = loss of confidence in our intellectual capacities to
understand ourselves and the world
- But no skepticism:
o Marx, Nietzsche and Freud continue to provide insights and knowledge
about humanity and selfhood
- Knowledge becomes more complex: it now stands in a paradoxical relationship
to misconception and illusion
The crisis of truth or the “epistemological” crisis
- “Epistemology” = episteme + logos (‘doctrine’, ‘theory’, ‘coherent discourse’ or
scientific inquiry)
- Epistemology = inquiry into knowledge, its structure, conditions and
presuppositions: truth, validity, justification, theory
- “Truth” becomes “complex”, “problematic”, “multidimensional”, “relational”,
“equivocal”
The ‘sociological’ crisis
- Philosophy’s loss of legitimacy after the speculative “excess” of German
Idealism:
o Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762-1814), Friedrich Schelling (1775-1854) and
Georg Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831)
- 19th century: empirical knowledge superseded pure (reflective, speculative)
thinking
4
CONTINENTAL PHILOSOPHY
Professor T. Grohmann
Assessment
- Final written exam
o On lectures and seminars
- 4 written assignments
o 10% of final grade
o On seminar readings
2-4 questions; written by hand
à very precise and a critical/reflective/comparative one
Know the authors, text, theoretical framework, key words, vocabulary
à seminars and lectures
Respond as technical as possible
Core of the course are the authors and philosophical material; not the intro to
continental philosophy
Course content
- Section 1: Philosophy in the 20th century; Is it a theory or practice? Is the concept
of truth still important?
o Marx & Engels, Nietzsche, Freud, Heidegger
- Section 2: What is modernity and our relation to it? What is post-modernism?
Horkheimer & Adorno, Foucault, Lyotard
- Section 3: What is language and is there a non-linguistic world?
o Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, Wittgenstein, de Saussure
- Section 4: What is alterity? What is the Other? What is the philosophical
importance of the Other in 20 century philosophy?
o Levi-Strauss, Todorov, Lacan
- Section 5: Criticisms of capitalism.
o Marx & Engels, Althusser, Deleuze & Guattari
- Section 6: What is gender identity? What is desire and is it male? How to become
a woman?
o Freud, Beauvoir, Butler
1
,Continental philosophy Cato Sluyts
LECTURE 1 – 12/02
Section 1: Philosophy in the 20th century; Is it a theory or practice? Is the concept of
truth still important?
- What is continental philosophy?
- What is contemporary philosophy?
- Marx & Engels, Nietzsche, Freud, Heidegger
The continental/analytical divide
- Label of ‘continental’ philosophy: invented by Anglo-Saxon thinkers after WWII
o ››› to distinguish a logical interpretation of language from other currents
(Existentialism, Phenomenology, Hermeneutics, Philosophy of Life,
German Idealism, etc.)
o Pejorative undertone, polemical
- Origins of the divide: Wiener Kreis, circle of Vienna
o Rudolf Carnap, ӆberwindung der Metaphysik durch logische Analyse der
Sprache” (Overcoming metaphysics through logical analysis of
language),1931
à critiqued Heidegger as nonsense
The continental/analytical divide
- Carnap: ‘metaphysical’ statements (Heidegger, Hegel, …) are obscure and
unverifiable ‘pseudo-statements’, like: “das nichts nichtet (the nothing nihilates)
o Pseudeo-statements: appear meaningful and often satisfy grammatical
rules; logical analysis can show their emptyness
o “Nothing” = the logical operator of negation, not a subject-term
à S (subjects) est P (predicate)
- What does ‘analytical’ philosophy? Philosophical analysis of language
o =“analysis” (untying, loosening, decomposing)
- Language = overall medium of thinking, cognition, and understanding
o ››› the most fundamental object of philosophical inquiry
The continental/analytical divide
- Restriction of philosophy to what is “meaningful”:
o Rejecting that what cannot be said (the “unspeakable”, the “irrational”,
the “un-logical”).
- Restriction to what can be empirically verified:
o Rejecting the non-empirical (the transcendental)
- Analytic philosophy: excludes from Philosophy the ”unspeakable”:
o Unconscious, pre-verbal experience; limit phenomena of human
existence (suicide, psychosis, trauma, death, etc.)
Currents of continental philosophy
- Philosophy of life: Nietzsche, Bergson, Maine de Biran, Eucken
- Critical Theory: Adorno, Horkheimer, Habermas, Benjamin
- German & French phenomenology: Husserl, Heidegger (1889-1976), Merleau-
Ponty (1908-1961), Derrida
2
,Continental philosophy Cato Sluyts
- Existentialism: Kierkegaard, Jaspers, Sartre (1905-1980), Camus (1913- 1960)
- ”Structuralism”, “Post-structuralism”: Levi-Strauss, Lacan, Foucault, Deleuze,
Derrida
- Neo-Kantism: Rickert, Natorp, Windelband, Dilthey, Cassirer
- Hermeneutics: Gadamer, Ricoeur, Greisch
- Feminism: Beauvoir, Bordo, Kristeva, Nussbaum
- Cultural Studies, Race Studies, Gender Studies, Decolonial/Postcolonial
Studies…
Continental philosophy:
- General interest for themes and topics around irrationality
- Limit phenomena of every kind; profound & obscure dimensions of human
existence
- Genetic & ‘transcendental’ considerations of rationality, understanding,
cognition
- However: continental/analytic divide = ‘umbrella term’, vague
- Main problem: neither geographical zone, nor language-criteria are suited for a
distinction between analytical/continental philosophy
What is ‘contemporary’ philosophy?
- “Contemporary” Philosophy = Philosophy of the 20th century
o Simply temporal sense?
o or also a qualifying sense?
- Characterization of a certain philosophical “style”
- WW I & II: revealed the flip side of industrialization, globalization & civilization
o industrial and technological potential of destruction
- “Contemporary” thought is marked by the catastrophe
What is ‘contemporary’ philosophy?
- But: philosophy is not the passive echo of historical events
o Philosophy has its own temporality.
o No direct causal link between history and history of ideas
- Philosophical ideas also anticipate socio-political transformations.
- …but only in a retrospective view.
- Emergence of continental philosophy takes place before the 20th century:
o In 19th century, society that preceded WW I
o Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche and Sigmund Freud: inaugurators of
contemporary continental philosophy
Three crises and their solutions
- 3 fundamental philosophical questions from the 19th century:
1. Is the knowing subject still a firm ground for the establishment of a
philosophy?
à Descartes’s ‘res cogitans’
2. Are the notions of truth and knowledge still central?
3. What is philosophy’s relationship to practice? To non-philosophical fields
and disciplines?
3
, Continental philosophy Cato Sluyts
- Authors 1st section: Marx & Engels, Nietzsche, Freud, Heidegger
- 3 crises at the origin of the 20th century philosophy:
1. The crisis of knowledge and the knowing subject or “epistemic” crisis
2. The crisis of truth or “epistemological” crisis
3. The crisis of the philosopher or “sociological” crisis
The crisis of knowledge or the ‘epistemic’ crisis
- Episteme (ἐπιστήμη) = knowledge, cognition
- “Epistemic” (adverb or adjective) = with reference to knowing (activity) and
knowledge (result of activity)
- Epistemic crisis = the crisis of the knowing agent
o Breakdown of the subject’s central position for knowledge
- Self-knowledge as the highest form of knowledge
o Socrates “know thyself” (“γνῶθι σεαυτόν”, or in Latin: “nosce te ipsum”)
o Descartes’ (1596-1650): cogito ergo sum
o Kant’s (1724-1804): “Copernican Revolution”
The crisis of knowledge or the ‘epistemic’ crisis
- 20 Century: (self-)knowledge becomes suspect
o Marx’s (1818-1883) “ideology”; Nietzsche’s (1844-1900) “genealogy”;
Freud’s (1856-1939) ”unconscious”
- Humanity = tendency to dissimulate and disguise: the more we think we know
ourselves, the more we are caught in illusion
- “Epistemic crisis” = loss of confidence in our intellectual capacities to
understand ourselves and the world
- But no skepticism:
o Marx, Nietzsche and Freud continue to provide insights and knowledge
about humanity and selfhood
- Knowledge becomes more complex: it now stands in a paradoxical relationship
to misconception and illusion
The crisis of truth or the “epistemological” crisis
- “Epistemology” = episteme + logos (‘doctrine’, ‘theory’, ‘coherent discourse’ or
scientific inquiry)
- Epistemology = inquiry into knowledge, its structure, conditions and
presuppositions: truth, validity, justification, theory
- “Truth” becomes “complex”, “problematic”, “multidimensional”, “relational”,
“equivocal”
The ‘sociological’ crisis
- Philosophy’s loss of legitimacy after the speculative “excess” of German
Idealism:
o Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762-1814), Friedrich Schelling (1775-1854) and
Georg Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831)
- 19th century: empirical knowledge superseded pure (reflective, speculative)
thinking
4
