[...]... and other voices in the contemporary philosophical culture, the thinking about the breakdown that is an appeal to the idea of a division between analytic and Continental philosophy does not so much as capture the rotten scene as it is part of it 2 There is no such thing as the tradition of Continental philosophy 3 The idea of a distinctive Continental tradition is best thought of as an item in the conceptual... analytic /Continental idea is the object of investigation rather than the matter of course resource for (meta)philosophising I will call this the wide-angled view Taking this view will not establish the problematic character of the idea of Continental philosophy But 21 The Idea of Continental Philosophy it will show us how things can look when one tries to forgo it And that is a start When we look at the. .. precisely what is beyond the pale philosophically speaking – the Cambridge don’s dig is a cat coming out of the bag It is not only What we do not do, but What ought not be done if one wants to think seriously within the central channels of the Western philosophical tradition On this view, the idea of Continental philosophy is the idea of a kind of bastard offshoot of that tradition, an offshoot which, although... thought of as an item that has its original home in the conceptual armoury of analytic philosophy In this respect, Continental philosophy is less the name for an other kind of philosophy than analytic philosophy, but a term that functions within analytic philosophy as the name of its own other, that part of its lexicon which represents what is ‘not part’ of it In what follows I will often say that Continental. .. you look the complete Continental philosopher’.17 The pertinence of the friendly remark (and the reason it took putting a black leather jacket on to look the part) would not be lost on anyone who is 9 The Idea of Continental Philosophy at all familiar with contemporary images of Continental intellectuals The distinction between that (supposedly) rather exotic breed of engagé thinkers and their (supposedly)... matters somewhat and add the further category of ‘works on works of Continental philosophy To complicate matters further still these works tend to go by the name of ‘studies in Continental philosophy However, my claim will be that even the most exemplary and influential of such writings remain historically and methodologically secondary to the major works of Continental philosophy that they engage with,... the name for the mainland of Europe, as distinguished from the British Isles’ The idea of the Continent is in itself a designation from over here of a place which is, essentially, over there There is a reference to an elsewhere inscribed in the name, and this is something that the idea of Continental philosophy imports into itself from its British origins The British title may now have travelled the. .. connections within the phenomenological movement at large helps severely weaken the idea of a distinctive Continental tradition which contrasts markedly (intraphilosophically) with the analytic tradition There is no plausible way of engaging with the idea of a distinctive Continental tradition which does not acknowledge the centrality of the phenomenological movement to the history of philosophy in Continental. .. that there is after all a clear methodological core to the idea of Continental philosophy – namely phenomenology However, as we have seen, that would not by itself serve to distinguish it in the right kind of way from the analytic movement since parts of that movement also belong to the movement of phenomenology at large The idea of Continental phenomenology’ might do the trick, but then it is the. .. confident that the same can be said for Continental philosophy In the chapters that follow I will argue that the very idea of a fruitfully distinguishable philosophical tradition of Continental philosophy is, first and foremost, part of the mythological history of (the movement that came to call itself) analytic philosophy That is, and this is my third interpretive proposal, the very idea of such a tradition . within the central channels of the Western philo- sophical tradition. On this view, the idea of Continental philosophy is the idea of a kind of bastard offshoot of that tradition, an offshoot which,. 21 3 The Usual Suspects 38 4 The Analytic Perspective on the Idea 69 5 The Continental Perspective on the Idea 91 6 The (B)end of the Idea 115 Appendix: Continental Philosophy in Britain since. alt="" The Idea of Continental Philosophy A PHILOSOPHICAL CHRONICLE For Jennie THE IDEA OF CONTINENTAL PHILOSOPHY A PHILOSOPHICAL CHRONICLE 2 Simon Glendinning Edinburgh University Press ©