Political Science

What today divides Continental from analytical philosophy? This paper argues that the present divide is not what it once was. Today, the divide concerns the styles in which philosophers deal with intellectual problems: solving them, pressing them, resolving them, or dissolving them. To show this, we argue for two theses. First, the difference between most Continental and most analytical philosophers today is that Continental philosophers find intelligible two styles of dealing with problems that most analytical philosophers find unintelligible: pressing them and resolving them. Second, when it comes to a genuine divide in which incomprehension of the other side’s basic philosophical purposes combines with disagreement on fundamental questions of doctrine, the only such divide today is that between those Continental philosophers who tend to press problems (roughly, the heirs of Derrida) and those analytical philosophers who tend to solve problems. It is among these sub-groups that there is a real philosophical divide today. So the analytical-Continental difference is more a matter of style than of substance: but as we try to show, differences in style shape differences over substance.

"Journal of French and Francophone Philosophy - Revue de la philosophie française et de langue française", Vol XXIV, No 2 (2016), p. 221-258.

Curated by Mark William Westmoreland with Brien Karas (Villanova University, USA)

Featuring Jimena Canales (University of Illinois-UC, USA), Stephen Crocker (Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada), Charlotte De Mille (The Courtauld Gallery, UK), Souleymane Bachir Diagne (Columbia University, USA), Michael Foley (University of Westminster, UK), Hisashi Fujita (Kyushu Sangyo University, Japan), Suzanne Guerlac (University of California, Berkeley, USA), Melissa McMahon (Independent Scholar, Australia), Paulina Ochoa Espejo (Haverford College, USA), and Frédéric Worms (L’École Normale Supérieure, France)

Bergson(ism) Remembered: A Roundtable

Curated by Mark William Westmoreland with Brien Karas (Villanova University, USA)

Featuring Jimena Canales (University of Illinois-UC, USA), Stephen Crocker (Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada), Charlotte De Mille (The Courtauld Gallery, UK), Souleymane Bachir Diagne (Columbia University, USA), Michael Foley (University of Westminster, UK), Hisashi Fujita (Kyushu Sangyo University, Japan), Suzanne Guerlac (University of California, Berkeley, USA), Melissa McMahon (Independent Scholar, Australia), Paulina Ochoa Espejo (Haverford College, USA), and Frédéric Worms (L’École Normale Supérieure, France)