What is Continental Philosophy?

Anthony Quinton, "Continental Philosophy," in Ted Honderich, ed., The Oxford Companion to Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 161.
Simon Critchley, Continental Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University pres, 2001).
Angela Davis, Are Prisons Obsolete? (New York: Seven Stories, 2003).
Terry Eagleton, Figures of Dissent (London: Verso, 2003).

Hackers have already sought to alter or destroy this text many times. I am blocking http://ad.doubleclick.net/adj/N553.msn.com.B213 on March 10, 2007 at 6:59 P.M.

On March 14, 2007 at 10:13 A.M., I was prevented from posting this essay once again, struggling to get back to the group, as I block http://adq.nextag.com/buyer/dyad/160x600s.jsp
On May 30, 2007 my msn group was hacked into. I will revise this essay here and repost it to protect it from damage. Please see "New Jersey's Feces-Covered Supreme Court."

June 13, 2007 hackers have damaged my Norton Security "intrusion detection" feature and I cannot turn it on or reconfigure it. I will keep going for as long I can. (This last sentence was just corrected, in identical fashion, for perhaps the seventh time.) Then I will find another computer. Errors are inserted in this essay; then corrected by me; then reinserted for maximum frustration value. I will choose to regard this task as a stimulus to greater creativity in my revisions, increasing my determination to articulate my position.

November 2, 2007 at 6:30 P.M. I am unable to update my security system, new attacks against my computer make writing a challenge. I have no idea what the true number of visitors to my blogs or my books is now. I cannot always access my own books at Lulu, which continues to refuse to distribute one of those books. Many other distractions and harassments are routine.

It is said that barbarians entering the city of Rome were so mystified by the art work and beauty they discovered that they destroyed such works in fear and wonder. There is something about ideas and beauty that frightens and enrages any simple or angry person. Such a person is forced by encountering intelligence and beauty to contemplate what he or she is by comparison with the persons in this world who make beautiful things or who think philosophically. I am sorry for those whose deformations prevent them from realizing that they are only destroying themselves when they seek to destroy ideas or beauty. You can not beat up a philosophy.

Americans pay a fortune for their university educations. I am sorry to report that, as we say in New York, "we're getting robbed." Students are too often not receiving a well-balanced education. Theoretical sophistication among graduates of so-called "elite" schools is almost non-existent. European and other counterparts (who are usually no smarter) than American students are almost always far more sophisticated, fluent in more languages, better at appreciating art and more subtle thinkers. My daughter attends one of the best schools in the country, as far as I am concerned, which must be as good as any school, anywhere, but her experience is not as common as it should be. Every child should receive such an education.

True, U.S. graduate schools are often superior to their rivals. However, there is a fearsome specialization even among young American scholars today. A whole generation of students knows more and more, about less and less. Worse, any talent for synthezising and multidisciplinary thinking is usually beaten out of bright young people by tenured morons.

If there is a field of study in which general learning comes in handy, together with some experience of the world, then it must be philosophy. Unfortunately, philosophy in the English-speaking world has become much too narrow, highly technical, insular and unworldly. This sharpening and limiting of our collective philosophical perspective has occurred in the century of the Holocaust and Gulags, world wars, plagues and catastrophes. No wonder most intelligent people think of philosophy as bullshit. It's not. Philosophy is only made to seem less "substantive" than other subjects by professors of philosophy. This is, perhaps, when you should alter the spacing between my paragraphs or otherwise insert "errors" in this text.

There is also a great deal of evidence to suggest that exceptional philosophical or scientific ability may come at a great cost in emotional suffering. I do not know and cannot say whether such ability is something that one should aspire to achieve. It is less a choice than a calling, I suspect, for those who find themselves driven to know. Not surprisingly, such inquirers are usually classified as mental defectives or "retarded." Einstein was described in his teens as slow and inept with regard to mathematics, giving hope to those of us with normal gifts and great curiosity. I am told by New Jersey persons that my book is "shit" and that I am "shit." My writings are described by the Manohla Dargis-types as "pseudo-intellectual" stuff. You decide.

The dominance of "analytical" styles of philosophizing is finally waning. Whatever gains in logical theory and intellectual figure-eights have been achieved in epistemology, any abdication of philosophy's vital role and responsibility in public life must be recognized as shameful. The cultural void has been filled (badly) by psychobabble, scientism, New Age drivel and ... well, "The Colbert Report." (This last sentence has just been corrected after the insertion of "errors" not seen in previous versions of this essay.)

I once was challenged by a self-professed admirer of Wittgenstein, who had never heard of Wittgenstein's later works. My ethnicity is a license for morons to explain what I know better than they do or to assume that I fail to appreciate the implications of my own statements. When judges responsible for making life and death decisions in American society have never heard of Josiah Royce and only have a vague idea of who William James might be -- even as they are gleefully adept at manipulating the tax code and proud of it -- we are in deep shit.

We are too often governed by child molesters and imbeciles, often by persons who are both, as in New Jersey. Senator Bob? Neil M. Cohen? We live in a society where one state's (guess which one!) former Chief Justice is reputed to have been responsible for the racial profiling policy on the Turnpike and Parkway, while other members of that state's high court today has "alleged" associations with shady characters, besides the disreputable lawyers that he or they "know."

December 14, 2009 at 3:08 P.M. "Errors" were inserted in this essay since my previous review. I will do my best to make the necessary corrections. Allegations of money laundering by Senator Bob and additional underworld affiliations usually result in more vandalisms of my writings. This sanctioned illegality is not surprising to me.

There is a kind of philosophy that has remained "funky," engaged, concerned with pop art and politics, meaning of life and sexual identity questions. It is called "Continental Philosophy." These categories are misleading. English language philosophy is trivialized as silly game-playing with language and logic. European thought is dismissed by science worshippers as windy obscurity and pompous opinions about the deeper meaning of, say, Diet Coke. In fact, there is a single Western and increasingly global philosophical tradition that is about important things and begins with the birth of our civilization. Besides, if you're a Continental philosopher, you get to dress in black and wear an earring -- sometimes in your nose -- along with your black Converse high tops.

Philosophical curiosity and discussion probably starts with religion and art, along with the discovery and expression of human freedom. There must have been an early homo sapient who wondered about the meaning of it all -- right before killing a bison and inventing the wheel. No doubt she was one of my ancestors. Come to think of it, she was probably one of our "founding mothers" in the Western tradition.

Any number of English language philosophers address the issues at the center of human life in terms that -- if they wrote in French or German -- would produce orgasmic bliss in trendy corners of Manhattan: Richard Rorty, John Searle, Cornel West, Richard Bernstein, Robert C. Solomon, Michael Frayn, Simon Blackburn, Edward Craig, Simon Critchley, Roger Scruton, John Finnis, Angela Davis, Gillian Rose and Judith Butler off the top of my head fall into this "biphilosophical" category. No offense. (If my image-posting feature had not been damaged by hackers, I would post a photo of Angela Davis to accompany this essay.)

These thinkers are just as likely to quote Michel Foucault or Elvis, as W.V. Quine or Hilary Putnam -- even Thomas Aquinas or Karl Marx -- in their writings. Great. I like that. This sort of openness is needed if we are to think clearly about the issues that we face and to refresh the philosophical tradition. Unfortunately, there is still too much insulting, ignorant condescension on the part of many products of English language philosophical training. A good example is found in the entry on Continental thought in the (often deservedly) much praised Oxford Companion to Philosophy, which is heavily slanted towards the "no-nonsense, bottom line, plain language" approach beloved in Britain and America.

Philosophy is not accounting. There are times when difficulty and abstraction as well as deep thinking are unavoidable. Mr. Quinton offers a boilerplate history of developments in recent European thought, neglecting contributions by English language philosophers to those developments. For example, Iris Murdoch should be mentioned in a history of existentialism; accounts of structuralism and poststructuralism or postmodernist thinking should refer to Stanley Fish, Richard Rorty, Cornel West (West contributes to all of the following: existentialism, humanistic Marxism, postmodernism and Christian apologetics).

Frederic Jameson, Judith Butler and Gillian Rose should be summarized for students of Critical Marxism and postmodernist influences on political thought. Drucilla Cornell's use of the now disappearing "deconstructive" approach in jurisprudence should be explained. Angela Davis should be studied for her development of forms of resistance to racism; philosophical underpinnings of the sixties' revolution; the links between poststructuralist theory of crime and violence (Foucault on prisons) and Marxism; America's history of racism; intelligent radical feminism as well as gender and identity theory in a media-dominated society.

Professor Davis is the one philosopher I know who has understood the hermeneutic function of prisons in American society. Imprisonment is a principle in America and other Western nations, not just something that happens to a few people. To suggest, as Mr. Quinton does, that "there is really no perceptible convergence between the two philosophical worlds" is both undesirable and inaccurate. There are other errors in this brief essay by Mr. Quinton, together with an insulting dismissiveness about the very subject he has taken the trouble to discuss for the benefit of students or persons new to philosophy. I am not very patient with insulting dismissiveness. It is an attitude I have come to know much too well. I think such a response to one's work merits a strong rebuttal in exactly the same terms.

Given Mr. Quinton's obvious disdain for Continental thought, it makes little sense to have him write on the topic -- especially when so many able philosophers in the English-speaking world are important contributors to this tradition of speculation and are in a much better position to discuss Continental thought. Why not ask Angela Davis to write this entry? I am confident that the result will be more interesting and accurate. Mr. Quinton writes: "But all, [Continentalist philosophers,] in varying degrees, rely on dramatic, even melodramatic, utterance rather than sustained rational argument."

This statement reveals assumptions concerning what constitutes a "rational" argument, or how such arguments must be formulated and articulated, that are precisely what is at issue in the adoption of Continentalist methods. This assertion is controversial and biased towards one particular and much challenged form of philosophical argumentation. Furthermore, it is reflective of an antiphilosophical dismissiveness and intolerance of alternative theoretical vocabularies and use of new media that are increasingly necessary in our communicative environment if philosophy is not to become irrelevant.

Finding myself engaged in this lonely battle to express apparently controversial opinions against a tidal wave of protected criminal censorship as well as cybercrime, I wonder why philosophers and other American intllectuals do not join my effort to speak freely of these matters. I would be just as offended if someone expressing opinions different from mine were subjected to censorship and torture as I am in fighting my daily battle agaisnt oppression. ("Fidel Castro's 'History Will Absolve Me.'")

It may be an important insight that the ideas of Frederick Schelling and a number of contemporary scientists are overlapping or identical, and that much the same may be said concerning, say, F.H. Bradley and J.M.E. McTaggart as compared with Paul Davies and Bernard Haisch, or J.F. Haught and Bernard Lonergan. In the absence of a talent or training in detecting such patterns, these important associations will be missed. They are being missed. Why would students of philosophy not think of Angela Davis and Gustavo Gutierrez in the same breath? They should.

The three Matrix films, in their totality, are just as much a single philosophical work as Kant's three Critiques. The movies are more relevant and accessible to young people today than most philosophical writings. I did not say that these are equally profound works, but that Kant and the Wachowski brothers are all philosophical in their concerns. This sort of limitation of acceptable philosophical methods and styles to what is safe, dull, familiar and academically respectable in "Oxbridge" terms is not politically or otherwise innocent. It means that young thinkers like Mr. Quinton will be rewarded by older thinkers like Mr. Quinton, so that they will go on thinking and writing like Mr. Quinton. Does this remind you of the American legal profession?

The result is an increasingly smaller circle of the philosophically initiated, speaking only to one another, keeping the philosophical feast for themselves, depriving many "non-traditional students" of an opportunity to participate in the intellectual project of their societies, thus preventing them from making their contributions to the agenda for debates in the new century. It's an "us" versus "them" approach to philosophy which reeks of elitism. That's sounds like law school and New Jersey's corrupt legal world. Philosophers must be better than that.

It ain't gonna happen, folks. People will conduct their philosophical conversations, badly, in a flawed and "unsophisticated" terminology, perhaps. They will speak, shout, rage against corruption and injustice, posing ultimate questions to the system and, when necessary, to God. Part of what is happening in the Midddle East and especially in Latin America -- which is being ignored by American media -- is precisely such an interrogation: What is Islam today? How should we act on our faiths? What does Catholicism require of believers in conditions of extreme poverty and social injustice? What is the most effective form of revolution and resistance to oppression in today's culture? Is science only the latest religion of the West? Why are the thoughts of Carlos Fuentes and Tariq Ali so similar? Why is it necessary for me to run scans nearly twenty-four hours a day, while struggling against hackers and viruses to shout a protest in a society that claims to guarantee my "freedom of expression"? Why is it that people affiliated with New Jersey government, I believe, hack into my computer and deface my writings on a daily basis with impunity? Guilty conscience? A desire to prevent communication of uncomfortable truths? Why is my intelligence and learning, such as they are, an unforgivable offense to some people? (A new "error" was just discovered in this sentence. Next time I read the essay, there will be more such "errors" inserted into the text.)

My keyboard is spraypaint. I am writing on an electronic wall because publication is denied to me as efforts are made to discredit my writings by people who cannot read them -- in fact, who cannot read. Now they want to destroy the wall. I will write with my own blood or shit on the walls of the room where I sit, typing and laughing. Millions of others throughout the world similarly demand their right to speak and listen to one another -- and to be heard by the powerful. I said DEMAND the right to speak and be heard. Hackers destroying or blocking my printer have mostly succeeded in preventing my child from printing her homework assignments. They will not stop me from writing. Numerous errors have been inserted in this essay, are corrected, then are reinserted overnight. The goal is to produce even more psychological harm by frustrating communication efforts, by silencing a person you consign that person's experience to oblivion. Neither goal will be achieved. ("What is it like to be tortured?")

Is this what America seeks to do to the people of Afghanistan or Pakistan? I hope not. You are witnessing one mild form of psychological torture used against a person who has already experienced far more severe forms of torture, for years, and whose greatest affront to powerful persons in one state's corrupt legal system is an unwillingness to legitimate crimes committed against him. (Is my use of the third person significant? Or is the raising of the issue a way for N.J. to avoid responsibility for such crimes?)

The monopolization of the intellectual conversation of humanity must not be permitted to go unchallenged. Billions must not be silenced, as efforts are made to silence me. Do not become what Thomas Merton described as "a guilty bystander" when efforts are made to silence ANYONE. Do not "cooperate" with oppression.

Cinema initiates conversations for poor and ordinary people everywhere, whose viewing of a work like the Matrix films that contain a global language of images makes them "co-producers," invited to "finish" the messages of these "revolutionary" texts. We are forced to interpret movies, by participating in their completion -- completion for us, as viewers, sharing the cultural and moral space of the artists producing them and achieving completion for our collective political projects.

We viewers can only complete these cinematic texts for one another by deciding what they mean and how they relate to our lives, even if we do not have access to the Bodleian Library at Oxford University. This frightens powerful people. It does not frighten genuine artists and writers of books, thinkers and poets -- whose efforts are always concerned with enhancing freedom. Shakespeare's "Hamlet" and Da Vinci's "Mona Lisa" are the first works in the history of cinema ... because they are, and always will be, "unfinished." So are you.

These questions concerning where meaning may be found today don't matter to American journalists covering Third World nations because they assume that important debates everywhere are like debates in America -- about legal and economic issues. They're not. Radical thinkers will bring genuine "philosophical lightning" to the public square in taped lectures, films, drama and other pop cultural products. For this reason Cornel West makes a rap CD and appears in films. West's goal is to communicate, not to appear safe and unthreatening to the academic establishment.

Most of all, the Internet will continue to become a forum for philosophical discussion that is difficult to control. Hence, continuing efforts to obstruct, silence and destroy critics like me. You're not going to succeed in silencing me. If you are reading this text, then you are participating in an act of resistance to oppression. At least this is true for as long as I can keep my computer working and the words appearing on the screen. Refuse to become a "guilty bystander." Make philosophy a form of resistance and a locus of struggle. We will always win our struggles for freedom if we remember that "we have one another." We are never alone.

Philosophy is potentially dangerous and explosive stuff -- and the powers that be know that. There is no cause for conservatives to worry. American ideas will do really well in competitions with all others -- but not if the nation's practices contradict our professed ideals.

Why are you trying to censor me? Do you really believe that such tactics will work? Can you think of anyone better qualified to speak of hope and faith in America's promise than someone like me? You won't destroy my work. It may be meaningful for others. This is the seventh time that I correct this text at Critique. I will not stop. I will not give up. I will continue to write.

The tactics used by the power-structure in America and elsewhere -- the methods of this "power-elite" (Mills), a group which often has nothing to do with who holds elective office -- includes banalizing and trivializing ("philosophy t-shirts"), or cheapening and softening the message in philosophy, or making philosophy appear excessively dull and respectable, like something written in a highly technical jargon at elite schools to be read exclusively by other philosophical weirdos. "All I know about Hegel," one moron said with a horrible chuckle, "is that the name rhymes with bagel." A person relishing such a level of ignorance -- who may be a graduate of an Ivy league school -- is the ideal subject for a "kinder and gentler" form of entertainment-dictatorship. Ignorant and proud of it.

People have died as a result of expressing philosophical opinions. Some of us will always be willing to do so, whatever risk may be involved -- like Professor Angela Davis or Armando Valladares -- neither of whom would ever censor anyone. Philosophy has served as a form of resistance in concentration camps. Philosophy cannot be "neutered." Real philosophy is too powerful for that. Real philosophy is "Kriptonite" for intellectual mediocrities. As a result, philosophy is feared and ghettoized. Philosophy is kept far away from minority youth, because they may begin to ask uncomfortable questions and will not be satisfied with canned answers.

Mr. Quinton's "high table" manner is evident in comments such as this: "[Structuralism] may be said to have culminated with Foucault and to have transcended itself, shooting off into outer intellectual space, with Derrida." (p. 163.) Worst of all, he writes: "The evident political intentions of the critical theorists ruled out any interest on the part of analytic philosophers committed to neutrality." (p. 163.)

Neutrality is political. Especially in a society burdened with racism and gross economic inequalities. Philosophy should be "used" to criticize flawed systems of ideas that produce avoidable and idiotic suffering: for example, outdated notions of sexual or other "normality" or adjustment to a fictional standard of "acceptable behavior" are deserving of criticism. (See "America's Holocaust.") Both Foucault and Derrida are highly imaginative and powerful thinkers, who philosophized concerning important subjects in a way that is meaningful for many people all over the world. I say the same of Sartre, Ricoeur and a few others. Finally, as a corrective to Quinton's entry, there is Professor Critchley's summary of Continental thought in our time:

"... the response to nihilism is the substantive problematic of post-Kantian Continental philosophy, that runs like Adriadne's thread through the intellectual labyrinth of the last couple of centuries. It leads much Continental philosophy to look for non-philosophical discourses and practices that might respond to the crisis of modern times. Nietzsche finds resources in the tragic thinking of the Attic Greeks. Heidegger finds it in the meditative thoughtfulness of poetic creation, Adorno finds it in the autonomy of high modernist art, Marx finds it in political economy, Freud finds it on the couch in psychoanalysis. The point here is that the problematic of nihilism begins to explain why so much Continental philosophy is concerned with relations to non-philosophy, whether art, poetry, psychoanalysis, politics, or economics." (p. 87.)