Analytic versus
Continental Philosophy
Kile Jones explains the differences between these ways of thinking
“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.”
Romeo and Juliet
S
hakespeare never met Wittgenstein, Russell, or Ryle,
and one wonders what a conversation between them
would have been like. “What’s in a name, you ask?”
Wittgenstein might answer “A riddle of symbols.”
Russell might respond “An explanation of concepts,”
and Ryle might retort “Many unneeded problems.” What
might Hegel, Husserl, or Nietzsche reply? It seems odd to
even ask such a question, but why? To answer that, we need to
look at the philosophical traditions which these thinkers
inhabit. This will reveal the differences at the heart of the divi-
sion between what have become known as ‘analytic’ and ‘conti-
nental’ philosophy. I hope that by understanding these two
philosophical camps we may better understand their differ-
ences and similarities, as well as how they might compliment
each other.
Typical Definitions
In order to lay a general framework let’s start with some
typical definitions that scholars give, despite the fact that these
definitions tend towards over-generalization or over-simplifi-
cation. In his well-known collection of essays on this subject, A
House Divided, C.G. Prado begins with their difference in
methodology. He says:
“The heart of the analytic/Continental opposition is most evident in method-
ology, that is, in a focus on analysis or on synthesis. Analytic philosophers
typically try to solve fairly delineated philosophical problems by reducing
them to their parts and to the relations in which these parts stand. Continen-
tal philosophers typically address large questions in a synthetic or integrative
way, and consider particular issues to be ‘parts of the larger unities’ and as
properly understood and dealt with only when fitted into those unities.” (p.10.)
So analytic philosophy is concerned with analysis – analysis
of thought, language, logic, knowledge, mind, etc; whereas
continental philosophy is concerned with synthesis – synthesis
of modernity with history, individuals with society, and specu-
lation with application.
Neil Levy sees this methodological difference as well; in
Metaphilosophy, Vol. 34, No 3, he describes analytic philosophy
as a “problem-solving activity,” and continental philosophy as
closer “to the humanistic traditions and to literature and art...
it tends to be more ‘politically engaged.” Hans-Johann Glock
remarks in The Rise of Analytic Philosophy that “analytic philoso-
phy is a respectable science or skill; it uses specific techniques
to tackle discrete problems with definite results.”
Although these distinctions are helpful in understanding the
larger picture, they can be overgeneralizations. To say for
instance that there are no thinkers in analytic philosophy who
12 Philosophy Now ! July/August 2009
write political philosophy or harvest the blessings of history is
to be mistaken. One need only think of A Theory of Justice by
John Rawls or The History of Western Philosophy by Bertrand
Russell. On the other side, it is not as if continental philosophy
has nothing to contribute to logic or language; Hegel wrote
extensively on logic, and Heidegger extensively on language. In
fact, every philosopher, if they are at all comprehensive, can be
found to make this line more blurry. Therefore, we must be
watchful in our generalizations, realizing that any definitive
assertion is likely to be tentative at best.
With this warning in mind it should equally be noted that
these generalizations contain partial truths. Philosophy of
mind, for instance, is strictly analytical: Hilary Putnam, Daniel
Dennett, David Chalmers, J.J.C. Smart are all analytic
thinkers, and to look for this analysis in traditional continental
philosophy is like looking for Prester John. Likewise, it is
almost impossible to find analytic philosophers discussing phe-
nomenology. This reveals that these two camps are clearly
divergent in emphasis and have different places in philosophy.
They have different trajectories, motives, goals, and tools, and
must be understood in light of their independent and differing
traditions. The question now is, how did these different tradi-
tions come about?
The Split of Traditions
If we must start somewhere to find the beginning of this
split, perhaps we should begin with the Sage of Königsberg,
the great Immanuel Kant (1724-1804). Kant constructed a
theory of knowledge to explain how ‘synthetic cognition is pos-
sible a priori’ [broadly, how there are some things, which aren’t
just matters of definition, that we can work out by reason alone
– Ed]. One crucial step in his process is the bifurcation
between two realms: the noumenal (things as they are in them-
selves) and the phenomenal (things as they appear to us). There is
a chasm, says Kant, between what is known in appearance, and
what is beyond any possible experience, and so unknowable (eg
God, immortality, freedom). However, there were two major
backlashes against Kant’s doctrines.
The first of these came in the works of G.W.F. Hegel (1770-
1831), from whom many of the Continental philosophers of
the 20th century directly or indirectly drew inspiration. Hegel’s
backlash was primarily against Kant’s separation of the noume-
nal from the phenomenal, ie of reality in itself from its appear-
ance. For Hegel there could be no such division, because he
believed all of reality was united in one Idea. There could be no
epistemic chasm between the knowable and unknowable, for
there’s nothing outside the Idea left to be unknown.
Hegel became the precursor of the traditional continental
emphasis on grand overarching narratives and the inclusion of
everything (literature, history, art, etc) into philosophy’s quest.
Speaking on this last aspect of continental philosophy, Michel
Foucault noted that “from Hegel to Sartre [continental philoso-
phy] has essentially been a totalizing enterprise.”
By the late 19th century Hegel’s idealist approach dominated
philosophy right across Europe and even in Britain the leading
philosophers – like F.H. Bradley, J.M.E. McTaggart and
Thomas Hill Green – were Hegelians. But as the century
closed, a second backlash against Kant was brewing both in
Cambridge and in Vienna.
While Hegel had reacted to Kant’s two-tiered epistemic
reality, others now reacted against Kant’s synthetic a priori.
G.E. Moore led the attack in Cambridge, rapidly convincing
his colleague Bertrand Russell. Moore insisted on the impor-
tance of analysing concepts; Russell, who was a philosopher of
mathematics, developed a reductionist approach to knowledge
called logical atomism and a general focus on particular logical
problems in opposition to any sort of totalizing enterprise,
both of which things led him away from the Hegelians. Mean-
while, Ernst Mach, a leading physicist and philosopher, saw
Kant’s joining of metaphysics and epistemology as hazardous
to science, and even referred to Kant’s epistemology as ‘mon-
strous.’ A group of philosophers in Vienna eventually gathered
around the philosopher Moritz Schlick, with the intention of
furthering Mach’s philosophy. They first called themselves the
‘Ernst Mach Society’ but eventually became known as the
Vienna Circle. Among the many goals of this circle of philoso-
phers, were the eradication of metaphysics (Carnap), reclaim-
ing the supremacy of logic in philosophy (Gödel), linguistic
conventionalism (Waismann), and also the debunking of Kant’s
‘synthetic a priori’. Those in the Vienna Circle instead made
the Humean distinction between a priori (non-observable) and
a posteriori (dependent on observation) truths; and they said
that the only truths are either tautological (true by definition)
or empirical (verified by observation).
Therefore, these two reactions to Kant led to the formation
of two distinct schools of philosophy, each with their separate
attitude towards metaphysics and epistemology, thus having
differing philosophical methodologies and trajectories.
Heidegger and Wittgenstein Widen the Split
As the continental post-Hegelians formulated their various
dialectical metaphysics, and while the Vienna Circle con-
structed logically-oriented theories of knowledge, German
professor Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) was constructing his
theories of ontology [ontology means ‘the study of being’ – Ed].
For Heidegger philosophy is, and should be, essentially ontol-
ogy. He describes philosophy as “universal phenomenological
ontology” (Being and Time, p.62), placing Being in an elite
philosophical category because “it pertains to every entity.”
Contrary to the Vienna Circle, which saw philosophy as
mainly an epistemological project, Heidegger argued that
Being precedes knowledge, and that phenomena (the contents
of experience) must be studied prior to any logical categoriza-
tion or interpretation. This turn toward phenomenology cre-
ated in Heidegger a distaste for logical analysis in philosophical
problems: Richard Matthews describes Heidegger as “trying to
place limits upon logic” and seeking “to free philosophy from
logic”, yet one could go further and say that Heidegger cancels
out logic in favour of a pre-logical phenomenology.
Meanwhile there were numerous shifts in emphasis in ana-
lytic philosophy. The revolutionary Tractatus Logico-Philosophi-
cus by Russell’s student Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) led
it to focus on the philosophy of language. Wittgenstein had
developed a theory which saw propositions as logical pictures
of states of affairs in the world. This meant that sentences
were only meaningful if they painted such pictures. Thus,
along with Carnap and the Vienna Circle, Wittgenstein found
himself destroying metaphysics and God-talk. In a lecture in
1929, Wittgenstein noted that:
“in ethical and religious language we seem constantly to be using similes.
But a simile must be the simile for something. And if I can describe a fact
by means of a simile I must also be able to drop the simile and to describe
the facts without it. Now in our case, as soon as we try to drop the simile
and simply to state the facts which stand behind it, we find that there are
no such facts. And so, what at first appeared to be simile now seems to be
mere nonsense.”
Not only was Wittgenstein a fulcrum in the long analytic
tradition of anti-God-talk, he created in analytic philosophy a
mentality which saw the analysis of language as a tool whereby
‘philosophical pseudo-problems’ could be deflated. What were
once held to be conceptual or logical problems were, accord-
ing to Wittgenstein, mere mistakes about language – problems
created by stepping beyond the limits of language, or through
semantically misguided statements that confused the logic of
language, to be dissolved by an analysis of the propositions in
question.
The Rise of Existentialism and Logical Positivism
In post WWII France, Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980) popu-
larised ‘phenomenological ontology’, which is how he
described existentialism. This has had decisive effects on Conti-
nental thought up to the present. For Sartre, human ontology
is united in its complete subjectivity: we are what we choose
and what we experience. Picking up Heidegger’s teaching of
the Dasein (being-there), Sartre identifies humans as existential
beings – we have been thrown into an uncaring world and we
find we are inescapably free and inescapably responsible for
our actions. Sartre famously remarks:
“I am abandoned in the world, not in the sense that I might remain aban-
doned and passive in a hostile universe like a board floating on the water,
but rather in the sense that I find myself suddenly alone and without help,
engaged in a world for which I bear the whole responsibility without being
able, whatever I do, to tear myself away from this responsibility for an
instant.” (Being & Nothingness, p710.)
His friend Albert Camus (1913-1960) would find genuine
absurdity in our existential state. For Camus, “the absurd is the
essential concept and the first truth” and “accepting the absur-
dity of everything around us is... a necessary experience” (An
Absurd Reasoning, pp.15, 16.) Embracing and challenging the
absurd character of the world brought about true and authen-
tic experience. Yet there were two threats in embracing the
absurd: it might lead to despair and possible suicide; or it could
lead to idealism and ignorance. The goal is to balance between
these extremes of idealism and despair.
July/August 2009 ! Philosophy Now 13
 Continental philosophy was undergoing a shift while Sartre
and Camus were publishing their numerous works. No longer
were continental thinkers engaged in a totalizing project, but a
firm individualism. Hegel’s utopian ideas about the grand
sweep of history had not foreseen WWII and the rise of
National Socialism. Because of that war, continental philoso-
phers realized that any enterprise which sought a power
monopoly, even philosophy itself, was to be mistrusted.
Meanwhile, “the rise of analytic philosophy”, Robert Hanna
noted, “decisively marked the end of the century-long domi-
nance of Kant’s philosophy in Europe” (Kant and the Foundation
of Analytic Philosophy, p.5). Logical Positivism brought the
thoughts of the Vienna Circle to fruition while decisively
framing the focus of analytic philosophy. Bertrand Russell
described his similar program of ‘logical analysis’ thus:
“All this [religious dogma and metaphysics] is rejected by the philosophers
who make logical analysis the main business of philosophy… For this renun-
ciation they have been rewarded by the discovery that many questions, for-
merly obscured by the fog of metaphysics, can be answered with precision.”
(The History of Western Philosophy, p.835.)
The procedure he named ‘logical analysis’ was to focus on
logical issues, philosophical problems and epistemology with
the tools of scientific testing and procedure, to avoid being
caught in the unprofitable web of speculative metaphysics.
This ethos became the trademark of analytic philosophy and
defined its methodology and trajectory. This was how analytic
philosophy was truly defined as a separate way of doing philos-
ophy over and against the continental.
Postmodernism as Modern Continental Philosophy
On the continent of Europe, existentialism largely ended
with Sartre and de Beauvoir, but a succession of other move-
ments there have continued a general trend of sceptical, anti-
authoritarian philosophy. Structuralism gave way to post-
structuralism and, with Jacques Derrida, to deconstructionism.
Foucault examined issues of government control, madness and
sexuality; Baudrillard raised questions on hyper-reality and
simulacra, and Vattimo resurrected nihilism. These various
developments are all loosely called ‘postmodernism’. It’s a hard
term to define, but what can be said is that it is about the task
of deconstructing absolute views of reality, truth, value, and
meaning. The meta-narratives of German Idealism come
sharply under scrutiny in postmodernism, for these overarching
systems of meaning have, in the postmodern view, only left
their hopefuls sadly disappointed. Postmodernists view parts of
analytic philosophy as similarly too optimistic and overly self-
satisfied – for instance, analytic philosophy’s trust in logic and
science can be seen as ignoring the big issues of meaning and
existence. Postmodernism can now be seen as a main terminus
within continental philosophy for continuing many of its classi-
cal traditions.
Philosophy of Mind as Modern Analytic Philosophy
In the late twentieth century philosophy of mind became
one of the main concerns of analytic philosophy. Hilary
Putnam, one of the great pioneers of modern philosophy of
14 Philosophy Now ! July/August 2009
mind, introduced ideas that he thought would solve the prob-
lem of how the mind and the brain relate. He became one of
the founders of functionalism, a theory which analyses mental
states in terms of their function. He also put forth a theory of
‘multiple realizability’, which posits that differing types of
physical entities could experience the same mental state if
there were the right organisational similarities. By contrast,
Donald Davidson became the champion for a theory known as
‘non-reductive physicalism’, which states that only physical
objects can cause physical effects, but that the mind is not
entirely reducible to the physical brain. David Chalmers,
director of the Center for Consciousness at Australian
National University, has argued that the mind cannot be
reducible to the physical brain because of various hypothetical
arguments, including the possibility of zombies. All of these
theories are within the tradition of analytic philosophy.
Summary: The Story So Far
There were two distinct responses to Kant’s metaphysical
and epistemological theories: one by Hegel and much later the
other by the Vienna Circle. Hegel rejected Kant’s two-tiered
world by advocating a strict ontological monism, while the
Circle rejected Kant’s synthetic a priori by dividing what can be
known into tautologies and empirically verifiable data. Hei-
degger translates Hegel’s idealist ontology into phenomenol-
ogy by placing strict emphasis on being-in-the-world.
Wittgenstein enters the philosophical scene with his analysis of
language, fueling the anti-metaphysical fire of the Vienna Circle
by postulating the criteria that language must mirror observable
nature and nature alone, if it is to be considered meaningful.
Over on the Continent, existentialism adopted many of the
teachings of the phenomenologists and added issues of exis-
tence, freedom, angst and absurdity. In England, Logical Posi-
tivism continued the analytic tradition of the Vienna Circle;
Russell and A.J. Ayer constructed various theories of knowl-
edge and methods of logical analysis. In recent times post-
modernism has emerged as a dominant strand of continental
philosophy. Postmodernism attacks absolutist views of truth,
historical meta-narratives, idealistic metaphysics and linguis-
tic/semantic realism. On the analytic side, modern philosophy
of mind has emerged as a strong movement which incorpo-
rates analytic thinking with biology, neuroscience, and physics.
Thus, continental philosophy started with German idealism,
which was translated into phenomenology, reconstructed in
existentialism, and is currently still in postmodernist mode.
Analytic philosophy started as a reaction to Kant’s epistemol-
ogy in the Vienna Circle, picked up its linguistic impetus
through Wittgenstein, became strictly formulated by Logical
Positivists and others, and continues today strongly in philoso-
phy of mind, among other disciplines.
What are we to do with analytic and continental philoso-
phy, then? Neil Levy makes a great and simple wish when he
writes that we “could hope to combine the strengths of each:
to forge a kind of philosophy with the historical awareness of
continental philosophy and the rigor of analytic philosophy.”
(Metaphilosophy, Vol. 34, No.3.) If we are to keep a balance, we
must understand that both camps have methods, trajectories,
and emphasis that can be honored and incorporated into a syn-
thesis. This is not to mean that we must believe everything. © KILE JONES 2009
Rather, we should realize that there are correct and incorrect Kile Jones studied philosophy and theology in Boston, and is now
starting points, methods and answers in both analytic and con- taking a PhD at Glasgow University.
tinental philosophy. What a philosopher is dealing with –
specifically, what question she’s trying to answer – largely
determines what emphasis she will have. Yet philosophy can
also be done interchangeably: there is a way of doing analytic
phenomenology, and of doing phenomenological analysis; sci-
entific history and historically-minded science; epistemological
ethics and ethical epistemology.
Although it may be possible to use both camps to construct a
balanced philosophy of life, it becomes quite difficult once one
gets into specialized fields. When anyone enters the philosophy
of mind, for instance, they necessarily find themselves using
the methods of analytic philosophy.

What to Learn from Both Traditions

Each camp has something unique to contribute to philoso-
phy. Analytic philosophy should be able to enter into phenom-
enology, existentialism, literature, and politics with the same
enthusiasm as continental philosophy. It should also realize
that philosophy is not without a history; philosophy is a histor-
ical movement which tackles social and political questions as
well as more technical problems of logic and epistemology. To
assume that analytic philosophy is above the social and histori-
cal currents of its time is to canonize a golden calf and ignore
the wider reality. Similarly, the average person may not care
about answering the Problem of Induction or the Liar Para-
dox, but may wonder what life, existence, and history means to
her. She may be questioning her political situation or her place
within society, and to presume that what she’s asking are not
philosophical questions belittles the scope of philosophy.
Continental philosophy may have some things to learn as
well. It might need to realize that all reasoning must assume
that logic is meaningful and necessary; that language is intri-
cately connected with our ability to convey meaning, and that
epistemology is one of the most crucial areas to investigate:
whenever we are making assertions or expounding propositions
we act as if our ability to know is correct and justified. It seems
obvious that existence and Being are vital to philosophy, yet
analytic philosophers might ask how we know that to be true.
Continental philosophy may be forgetting those basics neces-
sary for intelligible experience. Science, logic, and the analysis
of language are not the only things that matter, but neither are
literature, art, and history.
What is the difference between a philosopher and a philan-
thropist? One is questioning issues pertaining to the life of the
mind, while the other is engaging in social concern and virtu-
ous living. We must never negate one for the other: they both
have a role to fill, and to harmonize them is the greatest of
goals. The balance between love and knowledge, the knowing
and the doing of the good, is the philosopher’s ideal state, and
the promised land to which the modern sage must set her eyes.
There is a great hope standing before contemporary philoso-
phy, somewhere between skepticism and dogmatism, nihilism
and idealism, logic and art. There is a hope for a progress with
humility, which will aid humanity not only epistemically but
also ethically.

July/August 2009 ! Philosophy Now 15