Continental Philosophy Society

I am still interested in what it is we lose when reading translations. Obviously a majority of readers of any text will not go out of their way to transcend the limits of translation by learning the original language. For my part however, I do not feel comfortable with taking my understanding of a text up to the highest level when I am relying on translation.

I am reminded of a talk given by Rick Benitez on Meno's Slave boy sometime last year. It was one of the motivators for my desire to learn languages. He said that 'Meno's slave boy' has become a standard aspect of reading a certain greek text, however the original words make no reference to age or gender of the slave, it could just easily be translated as an old slave maid.

Are these just inconsequential examples however? Perhaps I do not need to be so worried about translation.

I know of two senses of the expression continental philosophy.

When we say continental philosophy it's usually in the contemporary sense of intellectual movements (ranging from German idealism, phenomenology, structuralism). All of these 'movements' (a shaky notion) are full of diverse and ulitmately unique thinkers, so continental here merely plays the role of a 'label' for a quick contrast to divergent movements elsewhere, say pragmatism in American, empiricism, or logical positivism.

In the historical sense, as the other sense, continental simply refers to mainland European Philosophers after Descartes up to Kant (Spinoza, Rousseau, Wolff, Leibniz, Voltaire etc.) as opposed to Philosophers from Britain.

I think there is very limited use, and, therefore, little meaning in using 'continental' to characterise or summise a thinker, other than to distinguish a few influences amongst others. It's a similiar linguistic expression to 'existentialism' as Sartre coined it, identifying a fabricated 'lineage' of thinkers which underlie only Sartre's concerns and his style of thinking. As to why we are using it, well ask Pederson! He came up with the idea of creating a 'continental philosophy society' as opposed to the Russellian one -- I took to be a certain decrying: 'We are interested in reading thinkers that take politics, art, philosophy and history as belonging together and of equal importance, rather than holding logic, or the hard sciences as torch bearers for a brighter future'.

I just had a breakthrough in understanding Husserl, Heidegger, Phenomenology's move away from Transcendental Phenomenology and the tradition of Continental Philosophy (In particular how the course 'Descartes and Continental Philosophy' does not study any of the Continental Philosophers that we touched on in Existentialism; Answer there are periods of Continental Philosophy [Which raises the question for me, does one need to study all prior periods to understand a later period, i.e. for me, do I need to study Descartes to deeply ground my study of Being and Time, an issue I am still struggling with])


My guiding question in my recent study has been, how did Phenomenology become more than simply Transcendental Phenomenology. Transcendental Phenomenology was the start of the Phenomenological method. Edmund Husserl made the 'discovery', in an effort to ground Objectively Valid Results. I do not feel confident enough yet to give a definitive comment on Husserl and his objectives, and so I shall give an extensive quote from Cartesian Meditations. This section is from "The necessity of a radical new beginning of philosophy". Such a Herculean task was one that Husserl felt that Phenomenology was suited for, that is, the task of setting a new place to begin from for all philosophy could be achieved with Phenomenology.

_{The splintering of present-day philosophy, with its perplexed
activity, sets us thinking. When we attempt to view western
philosophy as a unitary science, its decline since the middle of
the nineteenth century is unmistakable. The comparative unity
that it had in previous ages, in its aims, its problems and methods,
has been lost. When, with the beginning of modern times, religious
belief was becoming more and more externalized as a
lifeless convention, men of intellect were lifted by a new belief,
their great belief in an autonomous philosophy and science. The
whole of human culture was to be guided and illuminated by
scientific insights and thus reformed, as new and autonomous.
But meanwhile this belief too has begun to languish. Not
without reason. Instead of a unitary living philosophy, we have
a philosophical literature growing beyond all bounds and almost
without coherence. Instead of a serious discussion among
conflicting theories that, in their very conflict, demonstrate the
intimacy with which they belong together, the commonness of
their underlying convictions, and an unswerving belief in a true
philosophy, we have a pseudo-reporting and a pseudo-criticizing,
a mere semblance of philosophizing seriously with and for one
another. This hardly attests a mutual study carried on with a
consciousness of responsibility, in the spirit that caracterizes
serious collaboration and an intention to produce Objectively
valid results. "Objectively valid results" the phrase,
after all, signifies nothing but results that have been refined by
mutual criticism and that now withstand every criticism. But
how could actual study and actual collaboration be possible,
where there are so many philosophers and almost equally many
philosophies ? To be sure, we still have philosophical congresses.
The philosophers meet but, unfortunately, not the philosophies.
The philosophies lack the unity of a mental space in which they
might exist for and act on one another. It may be that, within
each of the many different "schools" or "lines of thought", the
situation is somewhat better. Still, with the existence of these
in isolation, the total philosophical present is essentially as we
have described it.}

This is a link to the full text http://www.24grammata.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Husserl-Cartesian-Meditations-24grammata.com_.pdf. Go to page 17 if you wish to see the context of this section, a short few pages on a new radical Cartesian Step.

In any case, these are a part of the conditions that gave rise to phenomenology.

A key foundation of Husserl's thought is the theoretical attitude of natural science. This however is not a foundation of existentialist phenomenology. My question then was, how did Phenomenology get away from the influence of the attitude of natural science, an attitude which would aim to objectify and make absolute. The answer lies in Heidegger's diagnosis of the traditional fixation on what is present-at-hand. Transcendental phenomenology is disengaged. This makes all contemplation of things, contemplation of 'presence-at-hand'. However this specific mode of seeing objects is 'special' and not fundamental according to Heidegger. I agree with Heidegger. To know a hammer one has to pick up a hammer and start hammering. No amount of contemplating a hammer is going to give you the insight that you can gain from hammering. For Heidegger, and the existential Phenomenology that arose out of a certain reading of his work, values, practical aspects, emotional responses, etc. are fundamental constituents of the world, and are not subsequent to simple cognition.

"Many see in the position advocated by Heidegger the main shift in the history of continental philosophy in the twentieth century: from transcendental to existential phenomenology." (Routledge Guidebook to Husserl and the Cartesian Meditations, p147).

Answering your question Ruell, on why Heidegger is seen to be so influential

Continental philosophy had a separate history before the shift between Husserl and Heidegger, and this history before hand would be what 'Descartes and Continental Philosophy' studies. I am still curious how much one can give group identity to continental philosophy however.

I mean we are a continental philosophy society. Why is that so?

Logos (Λόγος) gives us a particularly good example of how translation and interpretation go together.

I've laid out three places that show how translation and interpretation go together. The first, is the 'traditional' take on logos as 'giving an account' as in providing a rationale; which, in turn, lends itself to be seen as diverging out into logic as argumentation and validity, with the other, with assertion as judgment.

The second, and more nuanced we can call a 'primordial' reading of logos. Primordial as in more basic and fundamental than the others. This is Heidegger's translation/interpretation, that has two places and differs.

Being and Time.

1) Logos is connected to Aristotle's definition of speech as apophainesthai, meaning in speaking we allow something to be seen, for ourselves and others, meaning we make manifest that which we talk about as it is.

2) Letting something be seen shows the structure of synthesis in Logos, by showing us the togetherness of things, in showing something as something and not nothing.

3) Truth now enters with 'letting something be seen' in the Greek sense of aletheia, meaning to bring out of concealment, to let something be seen from its unconcealed state, i.e., discover it.

4) Logos does not equal truth, but relies on something prior which is related to the Greek term 'noein' meaning 'straightforward apprehension', eytmologically it is close to scent as in that which we detect immediately. We usually translate 'noein' as 'thinking'. Thus, logos brings out neoin in that the true sense of things as they are reveal themselves.

5) Thus we can define the function of logos as Heidegger says " in letting something be seen straightforwardly, in letting beings be apprehended, logos can mean reason". This, furthermore, acquires the meaning of 'ground' or in Latin 'ratio', as that which is already present as the basis for discourse as such.

6) The final point, similar to 'togetherness' is the relatedness of logos in that by letting something be seen it shows the relationship with and a relating to something.

Now onto, Heidegger's later essay. We see all six points come together in eloquence: Logos is defined as 'that which gathers all present beings into presencing and lets them lie before us'. This comes to be a reflection and criticism of the Greeks, namely Heraclitus. In that, the essence of language is experienced but not thought expressly (Heidegger, 77).  In short, we see that Logos is primarily linked to language as such, an essential part of what it means to be captured by language and how it speaks to us about how beings are.

Here are the references as quotes.

Here's an excerpt from the Penguin books Early Greek Philosophy, the reader for the Presocratic Philosophy unit to show this point.

The fourth illustrative example is the concept of logos. The word logos is even harder to translate than arche. [logos] is cognate with the verb legein, which normally means 'to say' or 'to state'. Thus a logos is something said or stated. When Heraclitus begins this book with a reference to 'this logos', he probably means only 'this statement' or 'this account': his logos is simply what he is going to say. But the word also has a richer meaning; to give a logos or an account of something is indeed to describe it, to say what it is; but it is also to explain it, to say why it is what it is. Thence, by an intelligible transference, logos comes to be used of the human faculty which enables us to offer explanations or reasons for thing: logos may mean 'reason'. In this sense logos may be contrasted with perception, so that Parmenides, for example, can urge his readers to test his argument not by their sense but by logos, by reason. (The English term 'logic' derives ultimately from this sense of the word logos, by way of the later Greek term logike
The Presocratics never imposed a single and clear sense on the term logos, and it would be exaggerated to contend that they invented the concept of reason or of rationality. But their use of logos constituted the first step towards the delineation of a notion which is central to science and philosophy.

page xxiii

Compare this with two places from Heidegger, the first Being and Time and Early Greek Thinking (a collection of short essays from the 1940s).

If we say that the basic meaning of logos is speech, this literal translation becomes valid only when we define what speech itself means... Even if logos is understood in the sense of a statement, and statement as "judgement", this apparently correct translation can still miss the fundamental meaning--especially if judgment is understood in the sense of contemporary "theory of judgment". Logos does not mean judgment, in any case not primarily, if by judgment we understand "connecting two things" or "taking a position" either by endorsing or rejecting.
Rather, logos as speech really means deloun, to make manifest "what is being talked about" in speech. Aristotle explicates this function of speech more precisely as apophainesthai.
 Logos lets something be seen (phainesthai), namely what is being talked about, and indeed for the speaker (who serves as the medium) or for those who speak with each other.
 Speech "lets us see", from itself, apo . . ., what is being talked about. In speech (apophansis, insofar as it is genuine, what is said should be derived from what is being talked about. In this way spoken communication, in what it says, makes manifest what it is talking about and thus makes it accessible to another. Such is the structure of logos and apophansis. Not every "speech" suits this mode of making manifest, in the sense of letting something be seen by indicating it[...]

Only because the function of logos as apophansis lies in letting something be seen by indicating it can logos have the structure of synthesis. Here synthesis does not mean to connect and conjoin representations, to manipulate psychical occurrences, which then gives rise to the "problem" of how these connections, as internal, correspond to what is external and phyiscal. the syn [of synthesis] here has a purely apophantical meaning: to let something be seen in its togetherness with something, to let something be seen as something.

Furthermore, because logos lets something be seen, it can therefore be true or false.
But evetything depends on staying clear of any concept of truth construed in the sense of "correspondence" or "accordance" [Ubereinstimmung]. This idea is by no means the primary one in the concept of aletheia [Greek for truth]. The "being true" of logos as aletheuein
means: to take beings that are being talked about in legein as apophainesthai
 out of their concealment; to let them be seen as something unconcealed (alethes); to discover them. Similarly "being false", psuedesthai is tantamount to deceiving in the senf of covering up: putting something in front of something else (by way of letting it be seen_ and thereby proffering it as something it is not.

But because "truth" has this meaning, and logos is a specific mode of letting something be seen,logos simply may not be acclaimed as the primary "place" of truth. If one defines truth as what "properly" pertains to judgment, which is quite customary today, and if one invokes Aristotle in support of this thesis, such invocation is without justification and the Greek concept of truth thoroughly misunderstood. In the Greek sense what is "true" -- indeed more originally true thanlogos we have been discussing -- is aisthesis, the straightforward sensuous apprehending of something. To the extent that an aisthesis aims at its idia [what is its own] -- the beings genuinely accessible only through it and for it, for example looking
 at colors -- apprehending is always true. This means that looking always discovers colours, hearing always discovers tones. What is in the purest and most sense "true" -- that is, what only discovers in such a way that it can never cover up anything -- is pure noein [usually translated as 'thinking'],
straightforwardly observant apprehension of the simplest determinations of the Being of beings as such. This noein can never cover up, can never be false; at worst it can be a nonapprehending,agnoein, not sufficing for straightforward, appropriate access.

What no longer takes the form of a pure letting be seen, but rather in its indicating always has recourse to something else and so always lets something be seen as something, acquires a structure so synthesis and therewith the possibility of covering up. However, "truth of judgment" is only the opposite of this covering up; it is a multiply-founded phenomenon of truth. Realism and idealism alike thoroughly miss the meaning of the Greek concept of truth from which alone the possibility of something like a "theory of Ideas" can be understood at all as philosophical knowledge. And because the function of logos lies in letting something be seen straightforwardly, in letting beings be apprehended, logos can mean reason.

Moreover, because logos is used in the senf not only of legein but also of legomenon--what is pointed to as such; and because the latter is nothing other than the hypokeimenon--what always already is at hand at the basis of every discourse and discussion in progress;
 for these reasons logos qua legomenon means ground, ration. Finally, because logos as legomenon can also mean what is addressed, as something that has become visible in its relation to something else, in its "relatedness" logos acquires the meaning of a relationship with and a relating to something.

This interpretation of "apophantic speech" may suffice to clarify the primary function of logos

Now lets compare with Heidegger's take on 'logos' in his essay Logos (Heraclitus, Fragment B 50)

[The Logos] names that which gathers all present beings into presencing and lets them lie before us in it.[The Logos] names that in which the presencing of what is present comes to pass. The presencing of present beings the Greeks call τό έόν, that is,τό είναι όντων, in Latin, esse entium.
We say the Being of beings.

Ο Λόγος, τό Λέγειν [logos and legein] is the Laying that gathers. But at the same time [legein] means for the Greeks to lay before, to exhibit, to tell to say. [The Logo] then would be the Greek name for speaking, saying, and language. Not only this. [The Logos], thought as the Laying that gathers, would be the essence of saying [die Sage] as thought by the Greeks, Language would be saying. Language would be the gathering letting-lie-before of what is present in its presencing.
 In fact, the Greeks dwelt in this essential determination of language. But they never thought it -- Heraclitus included.
The Greeks do experience saying in this way. But, Heraclitus included, they never think essence of language expressly as the [Logos], as the Laying that gathers.

page 77.

I have various questions that are motivating my study.

What is the phenomenon of faith, understood both individually, and as something manifest in culture and history? (I do not not take the new Atheist view that faith is at worst a mistake, or best a outdated survival mechanism, it is more complex than a simple thing to be dismissed. However I do sympathise with Miguel de Unamuno's view of faith as irrational but necessary as a bulwark against the winds of chaos. I am also partial to 'Maps of Meaning' (Jordan Peterson), a pragmatist (although I must confess a perhaps too basic understanding of pragmatism) view that religions provide 'resonance patterns', advocating acts that are good for me now, my family now, my society now, the environment now... me tomorrow, my family tomorrow... me next year, my family next year.... etc. Such a resonance patterns view of religions accepts the view that there is no absolute, there is simply what works. Against this, I do not sympathise with the religious universalists view that all religion's are fundamentally the same at core (although this was a stage of my development), there are fundamental incompatibilities, that can not be explained away by relativism. This is getting off on a tangent, with questions such as what is the relationship between faith and religion, however all I intended to do was provide a picture of some of the questions motivating my study.