>Probbaly not a problem on this list -- my guess is
>rather the reverse. As the below indicates, most
>hereabouts would far rather spend time with
>Schopenhauer or Hegel or Nietzsche than with Quine,
>Rawls, or Davidson.
I think it all goes back to when Frege (an analytic continental if ever there was one, in fact you could argue he truly founded the method) dismissed Husserl simply because he couldn't understand or identify with Husserl's concerns. OTOH, both Wittgenstein and Derrida both make much more sense if you appreciate Husserl and the phenomenological tradition.
>As a fairly nonprejudiced result of an analytical
>philosopy training, I'd say the the two styles have
>different virtues. Anglo-American philosophy,
>so-called, prizes (but often fails to attain) clarity,
>precision, thoroughness, exactness, comprehensiveness
>and depth of argument -- the virtues Hegel would
>associate with the Understanding.
I see a lot of currents in the Anglo-analytic traditions winding up in positions that are as fin de siecle as the continental traditions. And to some minds, a lack of systematicity means no depth whatsoever.
>So-called continental philosophy aspires to profundity, breadth,
>meaningfulness, vision -- the things that initially
>attract people to philosophy. I guess these are related
>to the virtues Hegel associated with Reason, though he
>wanted that to include rigor and exactitude as well.
>At its best, this kind of philosophy can be poetry or
>literature -- Nietzsche and Kierkegaard. At itsd worse
>it can be just obscurantist.
I think that both currents have wound up in a period of deep skepticism over rationality. In any case, in either tradition, I would argue some of the best works of literature have been written by philosophers. It's like reading an interior monologue with a madman (and they are almost all men) who thinks he is God. Wasn't it a constant source of melancholy in Wittgenstein to know he had one of the greatest minds of the 20th century, but somehow he felt he had wasted it doing philosophy?
F
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