difficulties

There’s been some chatter recently concerning the nature and state of the “analytic/continental divide” – but when hasn’t there been? What I’m specifically thinking of is this piece in the NYT’s “The Stone” column by Gary Gutting, Brian Leiter’s entirely predictable reaction to (and more-or-less endorsement of) it, and Eric Schliesser’s more critical response on New APPS (as well as John Protevi’s Deleuze-specific clarifications). Now, I have to say that for the most part I agree with the points that Schliesser makes, so that there’s no need to repeat them.

But, I do think it’s worthwhile to emphasize one particular thing that he says, because (1) it’s something to which not nearly enough attention is drawn, and (2) it’s a particular pet peeve of mine: namely, the idea that “analytic” philosophy is (as a rule) written with clarity and precision, while “continental” philosophy is (to paraphrase Gutting) “unnecessarily difficult.” Schliesser hits the nail on the head when he writes that “the clarity of analytic philosophy is something of a self-serving myth.” Much of the supposed clarity of analytic philosophy is simply a result of the fact that those propounding its clarity are familiar with its jargon – a jargon that does, admittedly, allow for a great degree of precision within its context of use. However, it takes effort to become familiar with such jargon, as it does to master the tools of any trade. To imply that an average representative text of analytic philosophy (whatever that may be) is easily understandable by an average non-philosopher (whoever that may be), whereas a corresponding continental text is very likely to be less understandable, is simply ridiculous.

It is impossible to quantify and compare the amount of effort it takes to master the terminology of, e.g., texts in philosophy of mind, versus texts in existentialism or deconstruction – not only because it’s hard to imagine what one would use as a reliable metric, but also because the amount of effort required in each case would depend partly on the reader. A variety of factors would influence how easily any particular person is able to make sense of any particular text. For me, it was certainly the case that – having been exposed to philosophy from both sides of the divide in the early stages of my philosophical education – I found representatives of continental strains much easier to grapple with than those from analytic traditions.

What makes the tired line that analytic philosophy is clearly written while continental philosophy is obscure or imprecise bug me the way that it does, though, is not simply that it’s incorrect but that it often not called out as incorrect. Instead, the rebuttal might be offered that, yes, analytic philosophy is clear, but it’s irrelevant to the world, or that the “obscurity” of continental philosophy allows for deeper levels of meaning and more rewarding reading.  But these responses take the initial claim as uncontested, and I agree with Schliesser that it should be contested. Yes, Heidegger is difficult reading (in that his texts require time and attention), but so is Davidson, Sellars, even Austin (and for the same general reasons). And perhaps it’s true that you’re less likely to find wordplay or literary tropes in the texts of Rawls or McDowell than in those of Derrida, but that’s not to say that the latter are not philosophically rigorous (I would, and have, argued that Derrida is one of the most rigorous and philosophically substantive writers of the 20th century).

idle chatter

In a local reading group this semester, we’ve been going through some of the key sections of Being and Time. Last weekend one of the sections we looked at was §35 on Gerede or “idle talk,” and I realized the extent to which I think that this section, as short as it is, is really one of the most crucial sections in Division One. At least, that is, insofar as the explication of Dasein in its average everydayness is supposed to be the starting point of the phenomenological project of Being and Time.

The reason for §35′s importance lies mainly in the way that it attempts to give an existential explanation of ordinary communication. Since the explosion of electronic media technologies (particularly, I would argue, first television and then the web), the kind of communication that Heidegger describes as idle talk has been given concrete form in increasingly ubiquitous structures. Not coincidentally, the couple of times I’ve taught Heidegger, I’ve found that this is perhaps the part that my students have had the easiest time understanding (is there a better example of “passing the word along” than the “Retweet” button?).

On the other hand, isn’t it the case that pointing to Twitter or Facebook or cable news (or respected newspapers, for that matter) as prime examples of forums for idle talk is also an example of idle talk? That is, Twitter is so trivial, cable news so superficial, that it practically announces its own inauthenticity. The interpretation of such media as only perpetuating idle talk is perhaps always already given along with the media themselves.

The question that arises for me, then, is this: can a deeper and more thorough critique of the ideology and structures of such media get past the level of idle talk, or does the anticipation by these media of kinds of critique that can be leveled against them preempt the efficacy of such critique? Is something other than critique required?

(He asks, on a blog…)

Related(?): thinking about this put me in mind of Paul Lansky’s More than Idle Chatter, which I haven’t heard in probably a decade. For your listening pleasure:

back

It has now been over a year since I’ve used this blog, but I’ve decided it’s time to give it another try. So here we are.

Among everything else taking up space on my desk right now are things that pertain to the syllabus I’m working on for next semester: Philosophy of Being. Almost the entire first half of the course will focus on Aristotle’s Metaphysics, but the second half will move it around a little more – start off with a little Thomas Aquinas, move right on into Kant, and then finish up with a hearty dose of Heidegger. That’s the question I’m dealing with right now, though: exactly what Heidegger, and how much? I’m leaning toward the Intro to Being and Time, “What is Metaphysics?”, and “Time and Being”. But there’s so much other Heidegger I’d also like to do (not to mention adding on some Derrida and even Latour as a coda).

This is always my experience writing a new syllabus; I get to wishing that semesters were about one month longer. Of course, that’s not the feeling one usually has about the end of the current semester.

then again…

In some new comments to one of my older posts, David Roden has started a very interesting conversation about iterability, materiality, and even Twin Earth! (He posits that iterability may need some kind of minimal memory device to operate as such, one which can support a causal or informational chain.)

turning off

I’ll be making this blog temporarily private sometime soon, giving in to the creeping inducement of paranoia among young philosophers come October. In the meantime, I offer the following snippet of Nishitani Keiji, reading Meister Eckhardt:

To say that God is what God is in himself precisely in that absolute nothingness in which God is not God himself means nothing other than to consider ecstasy as applying to the existence of God as well as of man.