différance in the league

by Steve Bell (The Guardian, 1992)*

In the West now we find many intellectuals who take part
against the intellect. If you want an example, look at Richard Rorty** [...]
Consider his philosophy of anti-foundationalism. There is no foundation
to things discoverable by the intellect, and no foundation to the things
that we believe, no reason to believe them; they're mere assertions.
And being mere assertions, they're ultimately political assertions.
Activating your intellect, using your bean, doesn't help.
It doesn't change anything.
— The Heritage Foundation, Lecture #337

Anyone who follows academic philosophy blogs, even if only a few of them, knows that there is something — supposedly related to one's philosophical orientation — called the "analytic/continental divide" (or "analytic/continental distinction") that is debated from time to time. (See, for example, Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog). There are even conferences on the matter: Analytic vs. Continental? Rapprochement? — a mini-conference at the 2008 AAS Conference.

One has a certain picture in their mind of analytics being the science-y types and continentals being the artsy types of the philosophy world. I also have this picture of — in addition to mini-confererences — philosophy departments having an annual softball-basketball-bowling-etc. match like the Republicans and Democrats do in the Annual Congressional Baseball Game, but with ANALYTICS or CONTINENTALS emblazoned on their jerseys.

(If anything, I prefer to sit on the scrimmage line with the postanalytic philosophers. Maybe they are the referees — though I am a bit biased toward the side of the underdog.)

But would there be enough CONTINENTALS to even field a team? A cursory search led me to a couple of examples. A news release from the University of Alberta noted the recent hiring of a professor who "[specializes in] continental philosophy, including existentialism, phenomenology, poststructuralism, deconstruction[ism], and post[-]modernism" — that's a good sign — while the University of Rochester flatly states "deconstructionism and existentialism are not offered in the department".

In the annual Congressional game, the teams are separated along political lines. But is there any sort of political split in the above imaginary philosophical match? Steve Gimbel, in Politics and the History of 20th Century Philosophy (Philosophers' Playground), concludes: There simply is no neat mapping of the analytic/continental divide onto the contemporary American political split.

My own conception is that in American college and university philosophy departments the political leanings are overwhelmingly liberal, and they are mostly reliable Democratic voters, whether they are "analytic" or "continental", but the few who are conservative are much more likely to be "analytic" — as long as we are talking "divide" here. There are, no doubt, quite a few continentals who are anarchists or libertarians of some sort. But then I am reminded of the definition of "libertarian" as being a Republican on drugs.

A conservative case is Alvin Plantinga, John A. O'Brien Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame, evangelical Calvinist, called by Time magazine "America’s leading orthodox Protestant philosopher of God", and a leading critic of Darwinism from an analytic-philosophical framework. He touts, for example: Christianity, these days, and in our part of the world, is on the move, There are many signs pointing in this direction: the growth of Christian schools, of the serious conservative Christian denominations ... .

And how did the "serious conservative Christian" churches vote? People who described themselves as born-again evangelicals, presumably energized by the vice-presidential candidacy of Sarah Palin, were firmly behind McCain by a huge margin of 47 percentage points.

On the other hand there is Francis Fukuyama, who has been called an American postmodernist on the right, now writes in Newsweek (Oct 13, 2008): It's hard to fathom just how badly these signature features of the American brand have been discredited. Between 2002 and 2007, while the world was enjoying an unprecedented period of growth, it was easy to ignore those European socialists and Latin American populists who denounced the U.S. economic model as "cowboy capitalism." But now the engine of that growth, the American economy, has gone off the rails and threatens to drag the rest of the world down with it. Worse, the culprit is the American model itself: under the mantra of less government, Washington failed to adequately regulate the financial sector and allowed it to do tremendous harm to the rest of the society.

Fukuyama, of course, ended up voting for Obama. I guess he is now post-(neo)conservative as well.

What is most intriguing though — and this is where the politics comes in — is that while there may be anti-"continental" grumblings from some academic analytic philosophers (witness that now-famous letter to Cambridge University), and some — hopefully few — departments that actually "ban" them (so much for diversity), in the conservative political world there is nothing like the "postmodern anti-foundationalists", called out by name^**, who are hung out to be their philosophical punching bags.

I've never seen analytic philosophers receive such attention. Perhaps it is because, unlike the continental or postmodern philosophers, they are not seen to be a threat.


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* The cartoon refers to a letter that was sent to Cambridge University in 1992 asking them not to award an honorary degree to Jacques Derrida. W.V. Quine was one of the signers.

** Besides Rorty (and Derrida of course) are names like Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, and Sartre. The Heritage Foundation, Lecture #136