Overcoming the Big Divide? The IJPS and the Analytic Continental Schism

ABSTRACT

Philosophy in the 20^th century witnessed a schism between so called ‘analytic’ and ‘continental’ schools of philosophy. One of the aims of the IJPS from its inception was to provide a space for articles attempting to overcome, or at least foreshorten, that divide. This paper critically examines the various understandings of the divide and takes a quick glance at some of the attempts to bridge it.

KEYWORDS:

• IJPS
• analytic philosophy
• continental philosophy
• style
• genealogy
• methodology

The history of Western philosophy, from its beginnings in ancient Greece, can be told as the story of a succession of disputes and disagreements between philosophers and philosophical schools, but the 20th century schism between so called ‘analytic’ and ‘continental’ schools of philosophy stands apart insofar as the two opposing sides, unlike many of their historical predecessors, did not by and large engage in any meaningful debate and frequently denied the philosophical credentials of the other side.¹ The relaunch of Philosophical Studies (Ireland) as the International Journal of Philosophical Studies, with Routledge as the publisher, provided an occasion for Dermot Moran, the founding chief editor of the journal, and I, as the then book editor, to decide on a new orientation and focus for the journal. Dermot Moran, in the editorial of the first issue of IJPS (Moran 1993) writes:

The IJPS is committed to publishing articles that develop the scholarly and critical understanding of aspects of the entire history of western philosophy from the Greeks to the contemporary period. But it is not just a journal in the history of philosophy; the journal also seeks to promote mutual comprehension and discussion between the main contemporary currents in philosophy. It is a matter of some dispute whether these contemporary philosophical currents ought rightly to be regarded as characterized by diverse methods, or distinct schools, or in some other way. (Moran 1993, 7)

My contribution to the celebration of 30 years of IJPS tries to shed some further light on this continuously disputed issue.

The journal continued with this pluralistic editorial approach in 2003–2013 when I acted as the chief editor. The following brief reflections attempt to capture my thinking on the ‘big divide’ and expands on the opening address that I gave to the ‘Philosophies of Philosophy’ conference in 2013, which was organized to mark the 20^th anniversary of the journal and its hand-over to the next editor, Rowland Stout.²

Historical Background

The early 20th century witnessed the birth of two revolutionary movements in European philosophy. The analytic school, founded by Gottlob Frege in Germany and Bertrand Russell in the UK, and continued through the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein and the Logical Positivists, emphasised the continuities between philosophy and the natural sciences and transformed philosophy through the innovative use of mathematical logic. The second contemporaneous movement, spearheaded by Edmund Husserl, and continued by his student Martin Heidegger, centred on the phenomenological description of experience. The 1929 International Davos Conference, with Heidegger, Carnap and Cassirer among the participants often seen as a symbolic, if not actual, moment of complete rupture between phenomenology and logical positivism, and the irrevocable marginalisation of Neo-Kantianism (Friedman 2000). The ‘parting of the ways’ of those three European philosophers crystallized into what came to be called ‘analytic’ and, since the 1970s, ‘continental’ philosophy. With the advent of National Socialism and the emigration of German and Austrian analytic philosophers to the UK and USA, the division acquired a geographical dimension, and was for period known as an opposition between Anglo-Saxon and European philosophy. Edward Cassirer also moved to USA, but his work did not find the same following as that of the Logical Positivists. By the end of the Second World War, the philosophical landscape was divided between the Anglophone ‘analytics’ and the various French and German ‘continentals’ – a collective term used by analytic philosophers for the practitioners of phenomenology, critical theory, existentialism, and structuralism, while the American pragmatists and the UK’s Cambridge idealists fell into disfavour. The relationship between the two groups ranged from overt antagonism to mutually disdainful ignorance. Over the years, there had been attempts to construct bridges and facilitate dialogues, but the division, at least until recently, had resisted most attempts at reconciliation. While the schism has been very real and often quite damaging to the discipline of philosophy, as Ray Monk, among many others, has pointed out ‘no one has come up with a satisfactory way of drawing the line’ between the two approaches (Monk 2019). Several lines of thought have emerged.

The Ecumenical View

This Approach Denies That There Is a Real Distinction Between the Analytic and Continental Traditions. Bernard Williams, in Defending This View, Argued That:

The contrast between ‘analytic’ philosophy and ‘continental’ philosophy means neither an opposition in terms of content, of interest, or even of style. Indeed, there are some differences, some of which are important, between typical examples of philosophical writing to which these terms could be applied, but these differences do not rest upon any significant basic principles. It could even be said that these terms mark a difference without a distinction. (Williams 1990 in Engel Engel and Sugden 1999, 218)

Similarly, the perennially open-minded Hilary Putnam wrote:

From my point of view, the only legitimate function for ‘movements’ in philosophy, is to gain attention and recognition for ideas not yet being received or which have been neglected or marginalized. Analytic philosophy has been around for a long time, and it is certainly one of the dominant currents of world philosophy. Making it into a ‘movement’ is not necessary, and it only preserves the features that I have deplored. Just as we can learn from Kant without calling ourselves Kantians, and from James and Dewey without calling ourselves pragmatists, and from Wittgenstein without calling ourselves Wittgensteinians, so we can learn from Frege and Russell and Carnap and Quine and Davidson without calling ourselves ‘analytic philosophers’. Why can we not just be ‘philosophers’ without an adjective?. (Putnam 1997, 208)

Such anti-sectarianism, despite its laudable ambitions, is unsatisfactory, because it simply ignores the realities of academic philosophy. The division between analytic and continental philosophy (these days often referred to as ‘Post 19th Century European Philosophy’) is used by philosophy departments to organize their curricula, to advertise their courses, to train PhDs, and to make hiring decisions. Professional philosophy journals and conferences too frequently signal their aims and objectives by, directly or obliquely, referring to this distinction.

A Distinctive Subject Matter

It has been argued that analytic philosophy can be distinguished from other approaches because of its focus on certain distinctive subject matters. For instance, Michael Dummett defines analytic philosophy in terms of its primary focus on providing a philosophical account of thought in term of a philosophical account of language and meaning. He writes:

What distinguishes analytical philosophy, in its diverse manifestations, is the belief, first, that a philosophical account of thought can be attained through a philosophical account of language, and, secondly, that a comprehensive account can only be so attained’. (Dummett 1994, 4)

The approach, unfortunately, says more about Dummett’s own narrow conception of philosophy than the distinction between the two approaches. Very clearly, not all philosophers classified as ‘analytic’ focus on giving an account of thought or doing philosophy of language; John Rawls is just one prominent example. Meanwhile, at the other side of the divide, non-analytic philosophers such as the deconstructionists, focus on the link between philosophical questions and language or texts. Even discussions of topics such as science (Babich 2010), mathematics or logic (Badiou 2014) are not exclusively analytic but are given different levels of prominence and are treated differently by philosophers of the differing traditions.

The Genealogical Approach

The genealogical approach uses textual genealogy as the demarcating criterion. Tim Crane’s approach is an example. Crane argues that analytic philosophy is neither a body of doctrines nor is it defined in terms of a philosophical method. Rather, each genre of philosophy is a ‘historically constructed collection of texts, which define its key problems and concerns’ (Crane 2012, 21). He writes:

… it is undeniable that there is a difference between trying to read Deleuze and trying to read David Armstrong. The philosophical project of Adorno is a very different kind of thing to that of Quine. It would be simply bone-headed and dogmatic not to recognize differences like these. Of course, post-war French philosophy (for example) has had very different concerns from post-war Anglophone traditions. But it seems to me that the difference consists not in any distinctive essence or doctrine that can be labeled ‘analytic’ or ‘continental.’ Deleuze and Armstrong are both, after all, materialists in a certain sense (and I don’t believe that this is a mere homonym). Rather, the difference between them is a difference in the kinds of questions they start with, a difference in the ways they present their ideas, and crucially, a difference in the kinds of texts they assume to be worth reading or canonical . (Crane 2012, 23, emphasis added)

Ray Monk also takes a broadly genealogical view by suggesting that the continental school has its roots in the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl, and encompasses a range of diverse traditions, including the existentialism of Jean-Paul Sartre, the structuralism of Ferdinand de Saussure, the postmodernism of Jean-François Lyotard, and the deconstructionism of Jacques Derrida. The analytic school, meanwhile, has its roots in the work of Gottlob Frege, Bertrand Russell, and Ludwig Wittgenstein, and has been until fairly recently much more narrowly focused, concentrating mainly on logic and language (Monk 2019, 1).

Although there is a great deal of truth in these claims when we focus on the work that philosophers cite from among their contemporaries or immediate predecessors, things look different once we take a broader and longer perspective. Canonical texts of Plato, Descartes, Kant, and Wittgenstein are read and cited by philosophers from all traditions. What marks off these readings are the interpretations and commentaries offered, which are often good examples of the very division we are trying to explain. It is true that analytic philosophers often cite Frege and Mill while continental philosophers cite Heidegger and Hegel. Furthermore, that analytic philosophers seldom refer to Levinas or Deleuze, while continental philosophers seldom refer to Saul Kripke or David Lewis, two of the most widely cited analytic philosophers of recent decades. But such data, rather than offering an account of the divide, are themselves in need of explanation. What is distinctive about the authors primarily cited within each tradition? What elements of the work of these philosophers, each seminal to their respective traditions, lend themselves to such schism? Furthermore, different genealogies and styles can be found within both the analytic and continental traditions; for instance, contemporary critical theorist and post-modernists seldom refer to each other’s work, and he divide between them also appears irreconcilable. Lumping both approaches together under the heading ‘continental’ based on this broad genealogical approach does not seem to do justice to the distinctness of their traditions.

Philosophical Method

Philosophical method is a further candidate for demarcating analytic from continental philosophy. Many, including Rorty (2012), Putnam (1997) and François Récanati (1984) have cited an aspiration for clarity and precision, a dedication to formal methods of argumentation, and a zeal for detail rather than breadth as distinctive of analytic philosophy. While it is true that most analytic philosophers, at least in classrooms, emphasize clarity, precision, and a reliance on formal argumentation as the main tools of their trade, by overemphasizing these methodological features we run the risk of putting philosophers such as John McDowell outside the analytic tent, while simultaneously allowing into the circle American pragmatists such as James, Dewey and C. I. Lewis, who would not have recognized themselves as ‘analytic’ in the sense the term applies to Russell and Frege. The type of ostracism I worry about has already happened. Crispin Wright, for instance, writes ‘If analytic philosophy demands self-consciousness about unexplained or only partially explained terms of art, formality, and explicitness in setting out of argument, and the clearest possible sign-posting and formulation of assumptions, targets, and goals, etc., then [McDowell’s Mind and World] is not a work of analytical philosophy’ (Wright 2009, 157–8). But what is left of analytic philosophy if it begins to exclude a seminal figure such as McDowell, who clearly does not belong to the phenomenological or any other ‘continental’ tradition?

Pascal Engel has a somewhat different take on the question of methodology. For him, analytic philosophy is defined by an implicit commitment to a set of distinctive cognitive norms. The norms of truth and justification are the demarcating ground, he argues, and ‘the more a philosopher is prepared to accept consciously the cognitive norms of truth and justification that he follows in his practice, the closer he is to the theoretical and practical commitments of analytic philosophy’ (Engel and Sugden 1999, 29). The prevailing norm in continental philosophy, Engel claims, is a sense of deference towards authors of the past. While Engel’s claims seems to be appropriate to those ‘continental’ post-Nietzschean philosophers who are suspicious of the traditional Enlightenment values of truth, reason, and rationality, it is not clear if all those philosophers routinely categorized as ‘continental’ share this rather radical outlook. For instance, using Engel’s method of demarcation, Jean Paul Sartre would not fall into the continental camp, nor would the founder of phenomenology, Edmund Husserl.

Philosophical Style

Philosophical style is also mentioned as a criterion for distinguishing between analytic and continental philosophy. The suggestion, put forward by Putnam, Rorty and Dummett among others, is that analytic and continental philosophy are two distinct styles of philosophizing. Jason Stanley following this line of thought, writes:

… it’s the style in which [continental] philosophy is done which distinguishes it from analytic philosophy, or more precisely, the kind of considerations that are provided (often for very similar conclusions). While an analytic philosopher might give certain arguments for relativism about truth, or the social dimension of rationality, she will do so in such a way as to make vivid her commitment to an inter-subjective standard of rationality or truth according to which her arguments can be judged. In contrast, perhaps continental philosophers … intend the literary style in which they make their arguments to underscore their view that there is only a spurious distinction between allegedly epistemically pure, truth-tracking disciplines, on the one hand, and literature, on the other (Stanley 2005).

The notion of style as used by the Stanley is too sparse to be useful for understanding this deep divide. As Levy (2003), discussing the distinction, has also noted, stylistic differences are superficial and matters of passing conventions and fads, and if the divide was just a question of surface differences, then a reconciliation between the two traditions would not have proven so elusive.

But a deeper understanding of the very concept of philosophical style is also possible and may be of some help. At its most basic, a ‘style’ is the way or the manner in which something is done or said. In literature, style is defined by the way thoughts and ideas are put together or constructed. A writer’s choice of words, figures of speech, various literary devices, the way sentences and paragraphs are shaped, whether they are long or short, simple or syntactically complex, are some of the elements that go into defining a literary style. In philosophy, too, there have been attempts to analyse the question of style in literary terms. Brand Blanshard, in his seminal 1953 essay on philosophical style, contrasts Hegel with William James as paradigm cases of a philosopher (Hegel) who writes unreadable and possibly even incoherent philosophical texts, with one (James) who aims at outmost clarity and lucidity (Blanshard 1954, 2).

Western philosophy, although it often traces its roots to the Socratic oral tradition, is primarily a mode of writing, and hence, at least in some respects, its outputs possess a literary style. However, it would not be very productive to simply transpose the idea of style, as found in literature, onto philosophy. Philosophy aims, directly and self-consciously, at increasing our stock of understanding and knowledge at a highly abstract level; and this aim is also reflected in its style(s). It is also true that we can easily detect the differences between the writing styles of Heidegger (or Heideggerians) and that of his analytic contemporaries, such as Carnap. But as the discussion of philosophical method in the previous section indicated, we cannot explain one of the most important of intellectual schisms of our time simply on basis of style of writing. Wittgenstein, for instance, is usually considered one of the founders of analytic philosophy, but his unique writing style is unlike anything else in either tradition. Style has also been equated with fashion and historic trends (Putnam 1997, 203). Once again, there is an element of truth in this contention. Looking at the history of philosophy, we can certainly detect various trends becoming prominent at different times and places. ‘Ordinary language philosophy’ in Oxford in the 1950s is a good example, and in that sense, the differencing philosophical styles become a sociological matter. But we would be diminishing the significance and impact of the biggest intellectual division in philosophy if we saw it merely as a trend. Trends and fashions are transitory, while the analytic/continental division has shaped philosophy for over 100 years.

The deeper sense of of style in philosophy is captured by Whitehead’s observation that ‘style is the ultimate morality of the mind’ that ‘pervades the whole being’ (Whitehead 1929, 12). Philosophical style, in this deep sense, involves fundamental conceptual and regulative choices which cannot be reduced to the use of literary devices or to fashions in writing. It incorporates all the elements of philosophical approach discussed under the notion of philosophical methodology, but goes well beyond it. Philosophical style is not a unitary phenomenon, but a cluster concept which signals a conceptual orientation and bears the traces of a thinker’s engagement with her subject matter as well as with the world at large (Baghramian 2014, 311). Some key features of style, understood in this sense, are relevant to the analytic/continental division in philosophy. But similar considerations can be brought into play in discussing the differences between, for instance, 19^th century German Idealism, the progenitor of continental philosophy and 19^th century Empiricism.

William James famously claimed: ‘The history of philosophy is to a great extent that of a certain clash of human temperaments’ (James 1907, 11). James famously distinguished between the tough-minded empiricist and the tender minded rationalist temperaments, but I think his insight can be given a broader reading. IJPS has been based in UCD’s pluralist School of Philosophy where we observe with fascination how our brightest and most able students choose between analytic or continental traditions or try to combine them. Their choices are multifactorial, but are ultimately dictated by their intellectual temperaments. Some favour precision, detail, and the ever-increasing weight of argument and counter-arguments; others prefer poetic allusions, flights of imagination and birds-eye perspectives over vast intellectual vistas. Some wish to criticize others to praise their intellectual heroes. Some like the clear lines of logic and the beauty of science; others, maybe poets at heart, bemoan the disenchantment of the world though the loss of mysteries. There are those who value the originality of an idea or following a single line of argument above all else and those who prefer to couch their new ideas in a play of texts against texts creating a complex tapestry of cross references and allusions. The distinctive temperaments become grounds for demarcating between contrasting approaches to philosophy as well as reasons for preferring one style of philosophy over others.

A philosophical temperament, as noted, can also manifest itself through the choice of particular methodologies, which in turn involves prioritizing certain cognitive approaches. Isaiah Berlin talks about this using the parable of the hedgehog and the fox. Recasting his parable, we can say that the ‘hedgehogs’ of philosophy organize their work around a small set of principles and make sense of things by using those principles. Philosophical ‘foxes’, on the other hand, ‘pursue many ends, often unrelated and even contradictory, loosely, if at all, connected’ (Berlin 1953, 1). Analytic philosophers are often hedgehogs focusing on narrow questions and digging deep, while continental philosophers have more of the characteristics Berlin attributes to the intellectual foxes, who cast their nets more widely and ambitiously.

There is another important, and not unrelated, component of philosophical style that marks the differences between analytic and continental philosophy. Style, understood in the thick or deep sense, involves both conceptual and normative choices. The issues that philosophers choose to focus on, and more importantly, the epistemic and aesthetic norms they rely upon in expressing their conceptual choices also mark off analytic philosophy from its continental counterpart. Traditionally, analytic philosophers were reluctant to engage with what is known as ‘meaning of life’ issues, while such topics have been at the center of much of continental philosophy. (Compare for instance Quine with Sartre and Heidegger). These differences, of course, have historic roots. Frege was primarily a mathematician concerned with formalism, and the logical positivists were scientists who used verification as their criterion of meaningfulness; issues relevant to the meaning of life are, famously and sadly, not subject to verification. Even Wittgenstein, this most iconoclastic of 20^th century philosophers, assigned questions about the why of life and the universe to the ‘unsayable’ or that which goes beyond sense. Other analytic philosophers continued in the same vein. But things have begun to change in recent years, and many analytic philosophers, following a trend that started by Thomas Nagel (1979), have begun to talk about issues that in the past were confined to continental circles. But there is still a difference between the ways such previously excluded questions are framed within each philosophical camp. And that’s where the criterion of normative focus as a component of philosophical styles comes in. Typically, analytic philosophers put forward a specific thesis and may appeal to common-sense intuitions, actual or hypothetical examples, empirical considerations and even scientific data in its support. They rely on reason, understood in terms of the rules of logic, in order to show that their opponents, real or hypothetical, are inconsistent or unsound and their own position is well-supported. They also frequently propose thought-experiments to test their philosophical intuitions. Continental philosophers, on the other hand, are often engaged in a conversation involving philosophers from their philosophical genealogy, where the aim is to contribute to the furthering of that conversation through commentaries rather than a challenge. Most significantly, continental philosophers are frequently suspicious of both common sense intuitions and assumptions and the primacy given to the natural sciences. Their aim is to penetrate beyond the veil of language, ideology or politically ingrained cultural assumptions and to unmask the unobvious, the distorted or the hidden. It is these last characteristics, with their strong normative commitments, that distinguish philosophical style and temperament from mere methodology. Interestingly, feminist philosophers in analytic English language departments in the UK and US also share and emphasise some of these normative orientations. As their work is being de-ghettoised and becomes a part of the philosophical mainstream, often through recent work in social epistemology, these stylistic differences between analytic and continental philosophy are also starting to become irrelevant.

One of the most convincing characterisations of continental philosophy was offered by Simon Critchley’s article “What is Continental Philosophy? published in volume 5, 1997 of the IJPS. Unlike many other similar attempts mentioned above, Critchley offered a multi-criterial characterisation of continental philosophy focusing on a number of loosely connected themes, including:

1. the centrality of tradition and history for Continental philosophy and the way this affects philosophical practices of argumentation and interpretation, (ii) the way in which the concept of Continental philosophy emerges out of the German idealist reception of the Kantian critique of metaphysics and the significant way this is continued in Nietzsche with his concept of nihilism, (iii) the centrality of the concepts of critique, emancipation and praxis for the Continental tradition, (iv) the importance of the theme of crisis that runs through the Continental tradition, (v) an explanation and justification of the pervasive anti-scientism of the Continental tradition. (Critchley 1997: 347)

Critchley’s themes i-v are aspects of the continental ‘style’ of philosophy I have been outlining. They provide some of the key elements of the normative focusing that sets up a framework for doing philosophy in a distinctive way. The picture presented of what is distinctive about each tradition is complex and messy, but it would be naïve to think that a single criterion can be offered to distinguish between two complex ways of thinking and approaches to a very complex subject.

The demarcation lines outlined here do not offer a necessary or jointly sufficient set of criteria for distinguishing between analytic and continental philosophy, but they are all relevant. This is in part because the division between the two traditions, although real, does not allow for a straight cut off point. There is a spectrum of positions within what we loosely call ‘academic philosophy’ in the western tradition. Tim Williamson and Jacques Derrida occupy the two extreme ends. McDowell and Habermas fall in the middle of the spectrum, each tilting only slightly towards one or the other of the two extremes. Moreover, today, neither continental nor analytic philosophy is unitary (whether they ever were is another question). They each have a broader scope than signalled by this exclusive classification.

The Experience of IJPS

Many of the articles, published in IJPS in the past thirty years, that attempted to bridge the divide reflect this plurality of approaches. Beginning with Gregory McCulloch’s (1993) ‘Sartre: Between realism and idealism?’ in the very first volume of the journal, we see attempts by analytic philosophers to read well known continental counterparts in terms central to their own tradition. A notable early example of this approach was Martha Nussbaum’s (1997) ‘Is Nietzsche a political thinker?’, where she uses some of the criteria central to analytic political theory to demarcate the ‘political’ in order to respond to the question she poses about one of the most significant thinkers associated with the continental tradition. This style of critical engagement was not one way. A good example is David Carr’s criticism of Daniel Dennett’s use of ‘phenomenology’ in Consciousness Explained (Dennett 1991:passim) . Dennett, Carr argues, almost completely disregards the work of Husserl and his successors in German and French philosophy, even though many of the most important ideas of Husserl, Merleau-Ponty and others reappear in his work in only slightly altered form (Carr 1998, 331).

While many of the early engagements between the two traditions were by and large critical of the work of the philosophers from the other side, they played an important role in demonstrating that conversations across the schism are possible. Starting in the early 2000s, the tone and the level of engagement began to change. New departures by key philosophers from both sides of the divide were responsible for this change. Robert Brandom’s ‘Hegelian turn’ gave an entry to quite technical discussions in philosophy of language to philosophers who traditionally had been grouped as ‘continental’. Rockmore’s (2002) ‘Brandom, Hegel and Inferentialism’ was an early example of this new level of engagement. Rockmore’s article had more in common with earlier attempts of engaging across the divide, as he denied the continental credentials of Brandom by arguing that infererentialism was anti-Hegelian. But the next generation of philosophers engaging with similar attempts at crossing the boundaries took a more ecumenical position. Several special issues of the journal reflected this newer trend. A notable example was the 2019 special issue on ‘Hegel and Sellars’, where the objective was to provide a more detailed analysis of the similarities and differences between two key philosophers divided by time, language, and philosophical orientation (Giladi & Sachs 2019: 359).

Similar changes were happening on the other side of the divide. Phenomenologists, for instance, focussing on philosophy of mind, were discovering common points of interest with their analytic counterparts. German Critical Theorists, chiefly under the influence of Habermas, also were engaging with English speaking political theorists, including John Rawls and Richard Rorty. These new trends found their way into the IJPS, either as contributions to special issues or as self-standing articles. A notable example of the first was a special issue, edited by Ratcliffe & Gallagher (2008), which captured the cross fertilisation between the phenomenology and analytic philosophy of mind on the topics of embedded, embodied and extended mind – trends that were starting to gather momentum in that decade. Most recently, the boundaries between the two approaches have become even more blurred by a shift towards more engaged and politically sensitive ‘analytic’ approach by philosophers who in their earlier work had focused on pure epistemology, philosophy of language or metaphysics., Sally Haslanger on political epistemology and social critique (2021), and Jason Stanley on philosophy of language and ideology (2023) rely on analytic and continental thinkers alike and their reception in philosophical circles on the continent have opened new avenues of dialogue. Miranda Fricker’s notion of epistemic injustice (2014) has proven useful to philosophers from both traditions. Several recent special issues of the journal on topics such as Vulnerability (Baghramian, Petherbridge & Stout 2020) and Testimonial Injustice (Altanian & Baghramian 2021) capture this trend. The philosophical preoccupations and normative orientation of this new generation of politically committed philosophers promises to lay to rest some of the key divisions between analytic and continental styles of philosophy. Other stylistic differences, deep or shallow, are likely to persist but, we hope, will become intellectually and professionally less divisive.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. The one important exception was the attempt to bridge the gap between the two through a conference in Royaumont in France in 1959. to connect some French phenomenologists and their Oxford counterparts. But as Ray Monk recounts the history, the attempt was proved futile not least because of Ryle’s paper :Phenomenology versus ‘The Concept of Mind,’” where Ryle argued for the “the superiority of British (‘Anglo-Saxon,’ as he put it) analytic philosophers over their continental counterparts, and dismissed Husserl’s phenomenology as an attempt to ‘puff philosophy up into the Science of the sciences’ (Monk 2019: _).

2. An early version of this paper was delivered at the Plenary Session of the conference ‘Challenges of Modernity’ organized by the Departments of Philosophy and Psychology, University of Yerevan, Armenia (October 10–12, 2014).