Let's stipulate that there is, since Ernest Nagel conceptualized it (in 1936), an 'analytical' tradition and that there is also a 'continental' tradition (which coalesced in the 1950s and 60s) in professional philosophy. Let's also stipulate that both traditions have competing schools within them and that sometimes the rivalries among these schools are more lively and more intense than the rivalry between the traditions. Let's stipulate that, in addition to intellectual and, perhaps, ideological contrasts, the traditions compete for jobs, status, scarce resources (etc.) just like the schools within the traditions do. Finally, let's stipulate that there are more traditions and more ways to distinguish among different sensibilities within professional philosophy today and allow that professional philosophy does not exhaust what philosophy sans phrase might be.
Since my blogging at NewAPPS, I encounter people who think that I am committed to the overcoming of the 'divide' between the two schools. I understand this reaction because (i) some folk at NewAPPS are committed to overcoming some such divide; (ii) despite my analytical training, I sometimes mention continental figures favorably; (iii) I am a regular critic of the bullying, even embarrassing dismissals of continental philosophy by some of my peers in analytical philosophers; and (iv) I tend to ignore caricatures of analytical philosophy by some continental philosophers. But (i-iv) do not represent a commitment to overcoming of any divide between the traditions.
First, I like to see two distinct and vital traditions continue. For, (a) the rivalry and sometimes intense rivalry between the two distinct research traditions/schools can produce vitality for both (as well as to outside schools). After all, (b) mutual emulation and rivalry can inspire excellence. Of course, it's not obvious that after the burst of energy emanating from the initial Heidegger Carnap clash, the existing rivalry generates intellectual vitality to the schools as such. But even if it does not happen at the level of a school, it may happen at a moral local personal or (non-trivially) 'field' level. For example, it's clear that the work on concepts by my (Deleuzian) friend Jeff Bell was vivified by his encounter with Davidson & Lewis; my encounter with folk doing work on historical epistemology (a la Foucault) inspired me to become more ambitious in my own historical projects; some feminist (analytical) epistemologists quite clearly draw on research pioneered in more continental/sts-style scholarship, etc.
Second, I do try to promote more respectful and receptive mutual intellectual engagement. Admittedly, this may get in the way of school-formation, which may rely, in part, on sharply policed boundaries between the two and, for internal cohesion, the positing of a simultaneously unintelligible and moronic other. But I have come to think that the schools (and their conflicting ways of understanding their shared history) have developed resources that could be illuminating to the other. For example, in reading Quentin Meillassoux's After Finitude, it struck me that continental philosophers could gain something if they allowed themselves to be more familiar with the analytical treatments of modality and philosophy of science. Meanwhile, while staying with the theme of modality, analytical philosophers can learn something from continental philosophers when it comes to reflecting on the impossible and, say, the ways in which we conceive of semantics can be parochial. These things happen: analytical philosophers have become very interested in the metaphysics of experience and embodied experience, and so have found resources in a (naturalized and somewhat domesticated) phenomenology. Some have flirted with analytical existentialism.
Third, while I am not against folk trying to overcome the divide -- perhaps a Hegelian aufhebung is what is historically necessitated --, my own preference is for more experimentation with hybrids and monstrous mixtures between the schools. For these help make us aware of the unexplored alternatives that our schools generate. Of course, hybrids can be sterile and inefficient; but that need not prevent them from being beautiful and wondrous.*
*This post was prompted by discussion with Protevi, Carl Sachs, and Jack Samuel.
Nicely said! The hard question here is how to foster conditions favorable to hybrids and beautiful monsters, and how to institutionalize those conditions. (I prefer Iain Thomson's term, "coyote" -- a border-crosser.)
This comes up again and again for a couple of reasons, but here's one (I think). Those of us who have, in some way or another, seen our way clear of "the analytic/Continental divide", still don't have ways of feeding our perspectives back into structure of the profession. The profession is still largely dominated by the Leiter-ized discourse of what counts as a "good" graduate program. The divide is deeply ingrained in the sociology of the profession. (For example: as far as I know, students at Pitt aren't encouraged to take classes at Duquesne, or conversely.)
And students who come into grad programs with an emphatic interest in being trained as hybrids or coyotes have far fewer options, both in schools to apply to and in people to work with. The problem reiterates when it comes to journals to publish in, which in turn is crucial for getting a TT job, etc.
In short: there's a disconnect between those of us who want to either overcome the Divide or produce beautiful hybrids (and there are a lot of us!) and how the profession is actually structured.
By the way, thanks for naming me in the blog post!
Posted by: Carl Sachs | 03/25/2016 at 10:08 PM