Introduction: Central Europe in the History of Philosophy

Abstract

There is a view about the history of philosophy in the last century and a half which has been influential at least in English—speaking countries. It runs somewhat as follows. In the nineteenth century, mainstream philosophy throughout Europe was Kantian or Hegelian idealism. Analytic philosophy came into being in Cambridge around the turn of the century as a reaction to this. Most British were swiftly converted, most continentals (‘Europeans’, as many British still call them) were not. The exceptional continentals (in Vienna for instance) who survived the Nazi terror emigrated mainly to America and joined the analytic mainstream, leaving the continentals (assorted phenomenologists, existentialists, Marxists, structuralists etc.) to their own devices. A great divide of method and interests separates the two ways of doing philosophy; clusters of characteristics distinguish them. Analytic philosophy is objectivistic, rigorous, logico—linguistic, ahistorical, impersonal, value—free, naturwissenschaftlich. Continental philosophy is subjectivistic, hermeneutic, psychological, historical, personal, value-laden, geisteswissenschaftlich. Malcontents on either side of the divide, conveniently associated with the English Channel, look to the other side for inspiration and may “convert”. One is either “analytic” or “continental”: tertium non datur.