Analytic Vs. Continental Philosophy

Abstract

The liberal/conservative divide and the continental/analytic divide may reflect similar cognitive categories connected to brain laterality. Yet this obviously doesn’t mean that conservatives must be analysts and liberals must be continentalists. These preferences may be the result of other factors that tilt the individual to different cognitive styles in each case.

I also discuss the phenomenon of “hybrid” hemisphericity, that is, the case where analytic philosophers may prefer liberal political stances, and continental philosophers more conservative positions.

The formal categories of analysis and holism, taken in the context of epistemological bilaterality, may provide a way to understand and integrate these divisions in the context of a principled metaphilosophical framework.