The Abyss That’s Engulfing Western Philosophy

And a call for honour in the clash between scientific and literary philosophical traditions

One of the reasons that Western philosophy has been relatively unpopular over the last century is that these philosophers seem hopelessly divided.

The modern (post-medieval) division is roughly between the Anglophone and European traditions that started with the split between empiricist and rationalist epistemologies. That division deepened with the rift between Fregean logic and linguistic analysis, on the one hand, and Husserlian phenomenology, existentialism, and post-structuralism on the other.

Ultimately, this division is about the epistemic status of science. The point of saying, with the empiricists, that knowledge is based on perceptions or on “sense data,” rather than on the nature of the human mind or on other local conditions is to cast knowledge as being objective and irreducible to psychological, social, or historical contexts. And the kind of knowledge in question was the scientific kind that Galileo, Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein, and the rest had developed.

The fundamental question for modern philosophers was about what there’s left for philosophers to do, given the advent of science. Is science the last word on knowledge? If so, philosophers should close shop and wait for the scientific methods to answer all valid questions.

Or is scientific progress not as absolute as it seems? As “postmodernists” would later put it, is science just another genre of literature, just a stage of history that will be supplanted by another cultural development and by an irreconcilable set of questions that will motivate some foreign way of interacting with the environment?

A rough history of the division in Western philosophy

Again, empiricists such as John Locke, George Berkeley, and David Hume argued that knowledge reflects not the knower as much as what’s known. Knowledge is built up from logical ways of organizing the records of observations, so knowledge is as universal as logic and as the patterns found in nature. This explains why scientific knowledge accumulates, or why we’ve come to know more about the world with each advancing century, starting especially in the West with the break from Christendom in the Italian Renaissance.

Empiricism was a celebration of science that would reach its highest points with Gottlob Frege’s formal overhaul of Aristotelian and Scholastic logic, with the positivistic optimism or prejudice in the Vienna Circle, and with Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Tractatus (1921), for instance, in which he boasted that he dissolved all philosophical problems.

Rationalists such as Rene Descartes, GW Leibniz, and Baruch Spinoza argued instead that knowledge is an expression of the mind that filters and interprets sense experience. Contrary to empiricists, the mind isn’t a blank slate but is equipped with “innate ideas,” “synthetic a priori preconceptions,” or structures that provide the foundations of any way of thinking.

Early modern rationalists were still tied to the medieval outlook of Christendom, or they were enamored with mathematics (in Spinoza’s case), so they took these mental structures to be universal and necessary. But this inward approach to accounting for knowledge eventually became relativized, as Edmund Husserl emphasized the roles of intentionality and consciousness in knowledge, and Martin Heidegger radicalized phenomenology by pointing out that human consciousness is always practically related to its environment.

Jean-Paul Sartre took this relativistic line of thinking further, stressing human freedom and responsibility in a nihilistic vacuum. Others in this school that drifted further from the Anglo-American esteem for science would point to other contexts, besides the psychological one.

Following GWF Hegel’s dialectic approach to tracing the development of knowledge, Friedrich Nietzsche and Michel Foucault stressed the “genealogical” or sociopolitical and historical contexts. For instance, Nietzsche argued that Christianity and liberalism are forms of “slave morality,” the so-called civilized knowledge claims being little more than disguised moves in a power struggle between social classes.

Jacques Derrida presented language as a crucial context, arguing that there’s nothing outside the text, as in no non-linguistic thought that’s above the need to be interpreted as a literary product. Other hermeneuticists would go on to treat even the sciences and maths as genres of literature that stand alongside the humanities.

The division that became an abyss

By the time we reach the twenty-first century, we have such a chasm between these schools of thought that each seems like madness to the other. While some philosophers, such as the pragmatist Richard Rorty have tried to build bridges between these approaches, the fact is that the institutions are divided. Thus, you’ll be ridiculed and run out of town if you’re in a philosophy department that specializes in one of the schools and you aim to research the opposing one.

Neither school is even intelligible to the other, given the different styles that developed to express the opposite convictions. If you read Anglo-American philosophy, known to itself as the “analytic” school, you’ll be struck by how scientific, technical, and professional its writings seem.

The analytic philosopher’s goal is to be clear, logical, argumentative, up-front, and objective, the assumption being that Frege explained logic in quasi-mathematical terms, so that logic — rather than political, historical, or linguistic bias — is a bedrock of knowledge. The philosopher’s job, then, is to clarify problems by analyzing concepts and thus preparing the way for scientific testing of well-formed hypotheses. Philosophy works with science since the scientific methods are “operative,” meaning there’s no need to reinvent the wheel or to trace the history or other contexts that led to the development of those methods (unless you happen to be interested in the history).

The opposing school gives no such credit to logic, science, or even to argumentation in its writings. On the contrary, for this so-called “Continental” school (as analytic philosophers dismissively call it), rhetoric is king because philosophy is only a form of literature, subject to interpretation like any work of fiction. Indeed, this school blurs the line between fiction and nonfiction, becoming conspiratorial with Karl Marx and Nietzsche, who laid the groundwork for the cynical belief that what are alleged to be fruits of the professional consensus of experts are just propagandistic schemes for establishing personal or social dominance.

At their best, according to this side of the chasm, philosophies are mind-expanding prose-poetic works of art, while at their worst, they’re ideological in a pejorative sense. And the very same can be said for scientific theories themselves. For instance, the naïve motive behind modern science is the humanistic one of dominating nature to enable our species to progress at the expense of all lesser life forms. That humanism is a modern “metanarrative” or myth, which “postmodernists” “deconstructed” and doubted.

Specimens of two species

It’s easier to appreciate the difference between these kinds of philosophy if we look at some examples. So here’s a paragraph from the analytic philosopher Jerry Fodor’s 1989 article “Making Mind Matter More”:

I remark, in passing, that determining that ceteris paribus stuff in the air causes maggots did not require that Pasteur be able to enumerate the ceteris paribus conditions, only that he be able to recognize some cases in which they were in fact satisfied. Sufficient conditions for the satisfaction of ceteris paribus clauses may be determinate and epistemically accessible even when necessary and sufficient conditions for their satisfaction aren’t. A fortiori, hedged laws whose ceteris paribus conditions cannot be enumerated may nevertheless be satisfied in particular cases. Perhaps we should say that M is causally responsible only if Ms cause Bs in any world in which the ceteris paribus clause of “M → B all else equal” is discharged. This would leave it open, and not very important, whether “all and only the worlds in which the ceteris paribus conditions are discharged” is actually well defined. It’s not very important because what determines whether a given law can cover a given event is whether the law is determinately satisfied by the event. It is not also required that it be determinate whether the law would be satisfied by arbitrary other events (or by that same event in arbitrary other worlds). It seems to me that the plausibility of Davidson’s assumption that hedged laws can’t ground causes may depend on overlooking that point.

And here’s a paragraph from the more literary philosopher Ray Brassier’s 2007 book Nihil Unbound: Enlightenment and Extinction:

Thus the distinction between the real’s foreclosure to thought and determination-in-the-last-instance as a transcendental effectuation of that foreclosure is not a dyadic distinction between different reifiable ‘things’. Neither the being-foreclosed of the real nor its effectuation as determination-in-the-last-instance can count as philosophically distinguishable ‘things’. There is only one ‘thing’: objectifying transcendence as occasional cause. ‘Between’ the real’s foreclosure to objectification and determination-in-the-last-instance’s foreclosure to objectification there is neither identity nor difference but only an identity-of-the-last instance occasioned by objectification itself. The real’s foreclosure is effectuated as determination’s foreclosure to objectification on the basis of the latter as occasional cause. Objectification remains the single hypostatized instance here. The real qua cause-of-the-last-instance is already-given as determinate but it has also already-given the synthesis of object and objectification as the occasion which causes its own determination. This determination is simply the unilateralization of transcendental synthesis. And it is the prefix ‘non-’ which ultimately condenses the unilateralizing force of determination-in-the-last instance as a non-dialectical negativity.

Now, neither paragraph is likely easy to read if you’re not used to reading academic philosophy. But their difficulties differ, and again that’s because of the authors’ styles that reflect their opposing assumptions about what philosophers are supposed to do, given the existence of modern science.

You see in Fodor’s paragraph the emphasis on science and logic. Fodor takes for granted that there are laws of nature, and that we can reason about their status and implications. Thus, he talks about the necessary and sufficient conditions needed to satisfy clauses of a type of natural law, the distinction between those conditions being a part of formal logic. And he uses Latin terms like “a fortiori” to show that he means to be arguing in good faith, not trying to pull the wool over the reader’s eyes with manipulative rhetoric.

By contrast, Brassier’s paragraph is more abstract and creative, albeit quite ponderous. His jargon is grounded in phenomenology and existentialism, in the tomes of Heidegger, Sartre, and the like that meant to clarify not the nature of empirical facts (which is science’s job), but the nature of experience, of what it means to be real or an objective thing to a conscious being. Rather than arguing or explaining anything, or painstakingly analyzing concepts or the use of language, Brassier is trying to invent a language to disclose a way of looking at the world.

That’s at least a neutral way of spelling out the differences. More critically, we can imagine some objections from either perspective.

• Brassier might say to Fodor that he’s hopelessly caught within a neo-positivistic paradigm, as Fodor presupposes the humanistic ideology that supports the naively triumphalist views of science and logic. Fodor still speaks of “laws of nature” even though he dismisses the existence or relevance of a divine lawgiver, which shows that this ideology is incoherent. Deconstructing the ideology, we’d find the sordid power grab, as neoliberal industries presume that they’re entitled to exploit empirical knowledge by domesticating plants and animals, and that there would be no natural backlash because nature is dumb and mindless. Likewise, positivism terminated itself as a genre that had run its course, as mathematicians moved on from Frege’s and Russel’s Platonist ambitions, and as historians like Thomas Kuhn explained the importance of paradigms in establishing what counts socially as normality in scientific discourse. Also, more daring and penetrating philosophers like Brassier uncover the nihilistic implications of God’s death and of nature’s mindlessness, existential implications that make Fodor’s logic-chopping seem trivial.
• Then again, Fodor would say to Brassier that his writings don’t uncover anything since they consist of juvenile, sophistical gibberish. If you’re not arguing or explaining anything, as in working with formal logic and science, the most you can be doing with language is telling stories. So Brassier’s book would be fiction, not nonfiction. But Brassier’s stories or chapters are ethically dubious because he presents them, rather, as pseudo-arguments or pseudo-explanations. Brassier is only posing with big words to appeal to fellow cynical elitists who use philosophy to seem fashionable as they preen with their shibboleths. This is a shallow language game indeed, something that can’t be said about analytic philosophy’s estimation of logic and science since even Brassier’s nihilism presupposes the naturalistic reasonings about the findings of science. “Reality” is best explained in the reductive scientific manner, and Brassier is only pontificating in a pretentious, overcomplicated way to show off in front of his fellow decadent sophisticates. In speaking of mere language games and power plays, the non-analytic philosophers should speak only for themselves since they’re like the hammer that sees everything as a nail.

The call for honour in philosophy

Is this just an impasse, then? Are late-modern philosophers hopelessly divided?

Here we need to distinguish philosophy from its academic institutions. Those institutions are divided for largely social reasons, just as the sciences are divided from the humanities, and the different sciences are divided from each other. As Emile Durkheim explained, social groups form on tribal grounds, and each tribe takes something different to be sacred, defining itself largely by that faith-based commitment or way of life.

That sociological fact about the profession of philosophy (or about professions in general) might seem to support the “Continental” standpoint. But it also supports the analytic one since this is a generalization about all tribes; hence, if true, this would be an objective, transhistorical fact. That is, the generalization would be anthropological and not just a false front for some sinister move in a power struggle. The social patterns would speak largely for themselves, in that the more you look at societies and at history, the more you see these tribal dynamics at work.

Both philosophical schools, therefore, have a point. Scientific progress is real, as is the universality of basic logic in critical thinking. Consequently, the reasonableness of some propositions isn’t so easily explained away in cynical terms. Granted, ideologies and politics can interfere with the pursuit of knowledge, especially in professional contexts where there’s power to be had from a privileged social status.

But the problem with the “antirealist’s” cynical take on knowledge is that it’s self-refuting. If all propositions are ideological and political, why would that be? What sort of beings would play so many language games or keep embroiling themselves in the will to power?

The only viable answer in the modern world is that we’re primates that haven’t entirely escaped our animal nature. Yet it’s scientific objectification that tells us what it means to be a primate or an animal. If language games and the will to power are everywhere, then there must be a transhistorical and transcultural perspective, after all. Hence, it’s not the case that all propositions are only locally or relatively true, contrary to the postmodernist’s cynical posture.

The edge that analytic philosophy has over the literary kind, as far as I can tell, is that the analytic style of writing is fairer and more honourable than the alternative one. It’s much easier to fake your way through thinking if you’re talking and writing like an artist since in art you can do whatever you want. Anything goes in art, but that’s not the case with cognition. We’re free to say or to write whatever we like, assuming we live in a liberal society, but some statements will be more rationally justifiable than others.

Again, at its best, literary philosophy functions like great art. This kind of philosophy is just prose-poetry, albeit the kind that can go on for hundreds of pages. The problem is that it’s hard to write great poetry. Therefore, the failures in this attempt are acute. Bad prose-poetry seems excruciating because it’s held to such a lofty standard. Most art that’s produced doesn’t change the world, and it’s just as easy to spin your wheels while trying to open minds, as to arrive at a genuine revelation or an original insight.

By building on science, analytic philosophers take the easier path. Even if analytic writings may be more boring and narrow-minded than freewheeling literary ones, at least the former’s merits can be objectively assessed.

What makes a poem good or bad is more subjective, which is why it’s easier to fake your way in poetic circles than in scientific ones. Experts can distinguish between good and bad art, but even educated nonexperts can tell that analytic philosophy isn’t pure bullshit because that philosophy is based on logic, science, and linguistics, which obviously aren’t just fabrications. Saying that you need to be an expert to appreciate the magnificence of the average work of literary philosophy is like saying you need to enculturate yourself in the cult of Scientology to appreciate its grand revelations.

There may be some great thinkers in the tradition of literary philosophy who’ve produced genuine works of art, but there are likely at least as many sophistical poseurs in that field who exploit art’s open-endedness to pass off their drivel. However vain the analytic philosopher’s humanistic ideology might end up being, at least this kind of philosophy is based on real discoveries, not just on an anything-goes sort of wokeness, or on hyper-liberal tolerance for all possible linguistic expressions.

Still, I think the wisest course is to avoid taking the disciplinary divide so seriously, and to be pragmatic about what you read. Read widely and learn from whomever you can.

But if you’re going to philosophize, do so with honour. That means reckoning with ideologies and power-grabs where they’re found, including in secular humanism, and writing to communicate knowledge and ideas, not to perpetrate parasitic fakery.

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