A "Defense" of Continental Philosophy

Sometimes I "use" "air-quotes" to "emphasize" my complete "sincerity"

Friend (and sometimes critic) of the blog Bentham’s Bulldog has a new piece out, How Continental Philosophers “Argue,” about how continental philosophers are really bad at arguments.

How Continental Philosophers "Argue"

In my corners of substack and parts of Twitter, he’s gotten a lot of flak, angry posturing, jokes, and random insults.

Source: https://x.com/jonathanbfine/status/1988383257550078277 The Ivy League philosopher with the most popular response to the post on twitter (>1.7k likes and >100k views), believes “you’re 12” is an adequate response.

What his critics have not managed to provide, however, is any semblance of an argument. This is all in all pretty funny:

But as an ardent defender of those who cannot defend themselves, I feel compelled to defend the poor argument-ability-challenged Continental philosophers and their fans.

In particular, I think analytic philosophy fans tend to judge Continental philosophy on analytic philosophy’s terms, but it’s better to try to judge Continental philosophy on its own terms. At the very least, it’s better to first understand which are the different tradeoffs that Continental philosophy tries to make from analytic philosophy, before passing further judgment.

Parsimony vs nuance

Sometimes when you talk to a critical theorist, or other philosophers in the continental tradition, they might say something like “Okay it appears that we understand the situation. Can we complexify the story?” or ‘Let’s problematize this account’ or ‘What are we foreclosing with this reading?’”

To a philosopher in the analytic tradition, or a scientist/social scientist in the empiricist and rationalist traditions, this sounds insane. Why would you want to add complexity to a model that you already understand?

This is because parsimony and simplicity of theory is a virtue in analytic philosophy, as well as the natural and social sciences.

In contrast, complexity and nuance are virtues in the continental tradition. Reality is complex and detailed, and you don’t want your simple, sharp models to dull the edges or smooth the details of reality for the sake of your simple models.

Overall, it’s clear to me that this is a tradeoff, and many points along the tradeoff are defensible. But I also don’t want this comment of “nuance about nuance” to be a Wise Saying or something you nod along to.

That said, while I see the value of both parsimony and nuance in real life, in philosophy I side more with the analytic philosophers than the continental ones. Complexity is clearly a cost not a benefit, and having simple predictive models is often extremely valuable.

Arguable vs Important

While there are important exceptions on both sides, analytic philosophers focus on what’s clear and arguable, while continental philosophers focus on what’s important. I’m reminded of this biographical essay on Derek Parfit by friend of the blog Larissa MacFarquhar:

He decided to study philosophy. He attended a lecture by a Continental philosopher that addressed some important subject such as suicide or the meaning of life, but he couldn’t understand any of it. He went to hear an analytic philosopher who spoke on a trivial topic but was quite lucid. He wondered whether it was more likely that Continental philosophers would become more lucid or analytic philosophers less trivial. He decided that the second was more likely, and returned to Oxford.

On this, I side more with the continental philosophers than the analytic philosophers. I go to philosophers for clear reasoning on the real questions that matter. I care more about questions like right and wrong, how to make decisions, the meaning of life, the nature of minds, how should the world be arranged in 100 years from now, etc, and not e.g. the 117th objection to Justified True Belief. I care about conceptual sharpening of the big questions, not internecine disputes. And between hard-to-understand arguments on big questions vs clear arguments on things that don’t matter, I’d (reluctantly) much prefer to slog through the more unclear arguments.

Philosophy as arguments vs philosophy as art

This one’s harder to talk about, and also more central to Bentham Bulldog’s arguments.

In analytic philosophy, philosophy is more like mathematics or science. You make claims, defend them through a premise->logic->conclusion chain, and try to convince people with reason and evidence. The writing should be as clear, and transparent as possible, except when clarity impedes precision. Success comes from proving your thesis and defending objections from a committee of skeptical peers.

In continental philosophy, philosophy is more like poetry or art. You present a work to create perspectives, evoke insights, and transform people’s visions. The writing itself is part of the philosophical work: style and content are inseparable Often, the success of a continental philosophy work is more clearly a collaborative project between the reader and the writer, where through deep reading the reader gains additional insights both into the question the writer wants to talk about and the reader’s own life.

Though they’d probably hate me for this comparison, I think of continental philosophy works as frequently presenting curated data for further analysis, whereas analytic philosophy is more about sharing the relevant models directly.

In analytic philosophy’s terms, continental philosophy clearly fails. On its own terms…I’m not sure? I get the feeling that at least some continental philosophy is genuinely beautiful art, but I can’t honestly say I’ve enjoyed or gained as much aesthetic appreciation from it as from reading, e.g., Kafka or Murakami.

Final considerations

Is continental philosophy on balance worth it? I really don’t know, but at least as of today their defenders have not sufficiently argued the case, whether on analytic philosophy’s terms or their own.

I’ve sketched three tradeoffs (parsimony vs nuance, arguable vs important, and argument vs art), but my explorations are hardly exhaustive. Nor have I covered all of the relevant tradeoffs.

What other tradeoffs am I missing? And where do you come down on these tensions? Do you think this rough model makes sense? I’d love to hear further thoughts in the comments, or perhaps in substantive post replies by others.

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