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suggestions for books to read for pluralist reading group (hat-tip David Shope)

February 18, 2014

This semester we've started a pluralist reading group at LSU. We've got students and faculty from both analytic and continental philosophy who may not have that much antecedent overlap in background and methodology. So (as much as possible) it's very important to get books that will help analytic philosophers learn continental philosophy while simultaneously help continental philosophers learn analytic philosophy.*

This semester and summer we're working through Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, focusing on secondary material that will be accessible to both analytic and continental philosophers (Forster's Twenty-Five Years, Beiser's two books covering Kant to Hegel, Robert Stern's work, and Westphal's Blackwell Guide to the book). In summer we're going to move to contemporary philosophers who use Hegel, including Stern and Markus Gabriel's metaphysical works, anti-metaphysical Pittsburgh Hegeliana, and Zizek's recent doorstop. Given Stern's contentions about the connection between Hegel properly understood and Deleuze, we might move on to the recent interpretations of Deleuze that are interesting and pretty accessible to all (including Bell, Delanda, and Protevi).

All of this will keep us very busy for a while, but we're wondering what other authors would be helpful with respect to reading groups that exist to build dialogue between analytic and continental philosophy.

Again, the ideal book will be such that analytic philosophers will learn some continental philosophy and continental philosophers would learn some analytic philosophy. The four authors who clearly satisfy these desiderata are Lee Braver, Ray Brassier, Hubert Dreyfus, and Samuel Wheeler.** We also thought of the great Crowell/Malpas anthology on Heidegger and the transcendental. But we couldn't come up with anything else.

Given the desiderata, where each book must be helpful to people with quited different training, there may not be much else out there. But it would probably be really helpful not just to the LSU reading group if anyone had anything else to suggest.

*I realize this post is problematic in various ways: (1) I'm assuming that "pluralism" = "analytic and continental" and hence leaving out huge swaths of philosophy, and (2) I'm thinking of the split between analytic and continental as if it carves nature at the joints. Think of this as dialectical, where coming to reason requires the understanding's tarrying with such oversimplifications.

**I would have liked to have described the relevant works in this post, but I am about to go enter the mouth of the beast. Jury duty. Hopefully in the next week or so I can do a post that is more informative about why such works are helpful for both analytic and continental philosophers. If anyone wants to take a stab at this in the comments with respect to any of the above works and/or any newly suggested works that would be cool too.

Posted in Analytic – Continental divide (and its overcoming), Jon Cogburn

47 responses to “suggestions for books to read for pluralist reading group (hat-tip David Shope)”

Tom Mulherin

February 18, 2014

How about Raymond Geuss’s work on the Frankfurt School? The Idea of a Critical Theory is the obvious place to start, but he also has some very good essays on Adorno (in Outside Ethics and Morality, Culture, and History).

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Michael Kremer

February 18, 2014

I don’t know enough continental philosophy to know if this makes sense, but how about John Haugeland’s posthumous book Dasein Disclosed?
(NDPR review)

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Dave Maier

February 18, 2014

Maybe Andrew Bowie: From Romanticism to Critical Theory: The Philosophy of German Literary Theory and Aesthetics and Subjectivity : From Kant to Nietzsche are (as their titles suggest) mostly secondary works, but see also Music, Philosophy, and Modernity. He’s also got a new book on Adorno, and an earlier book on Schelling (haven’t read either though).
Also, re: Hegel, have you seen Brady Bowman’s Hegel and the Metaphysics of Absolute Negativity? It’s a “metaphysical” reading, focusing on absolute negativity. It’s a bit over my head actually, but if you’re reading Stern you might want to check it out (also Paul Redding).

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Dave Maier

February 18, 2014

Just now noticed the absolutely pure redundancy of the second sentence of my second paragraph. Ha, that’s excellent.

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Kevin

February 18, 2014

It’s sort of an odd book, but Bas van Fraassen’s Empirical Stance is interesting in its own right, and connects pretty naturally with Sellars & company, on the one hand, and Heidegger, Sartre, and Bultmann, on the other. I’ve used it in decidedly pluralistic classes, and students from both camps found the book intriguing…and frustrating.

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David Liakos

February 18, 2014

Pluralistic books that are somewhat off the beaten path that I would mention include Frank B. Farrell’s Subjectivity, Realism, and Postmodernism: The Recovery of the World in Recent Philosophy, which is an absolutely masterful survey of the realism/antirealism debate in analytic philosophy circa the 1990s through the lens of German idealist notions of subjectivity, and also includes a critique of “postmodern” Continental antirealism.
I’d also recommend Cristina Lafont’s The Linguistic Turn in Hermeneutic Philosophy which critiques German figures in the hermeneutic tradition like Hamann, Humboldt, and especially Heidegger and Gadamer for their linguistic idealism on Habermasian grounds and offers direct realism from analytic philosophy of language as a possible corrective, bringing the two traditions of philosophy of language into dialogue.
Finally, I’m about to start a book by the German philosopher Karl-Otto Apel called Toward a Transformation of Philosophy which includes some of the earliest work that connects Wittgenstein and Heidegger, and in general brings Heideggerian German philosophy into contact with American pragmatism and 20th-century analytic. I can’t attest to its quality yet though I’ve heard good things but it sounds very pluralist to me.
And of course, Wheeler, Braver, Dreyfus, etc., would also be the first people that come to my mind!

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John Protevi

February 18, 2014

Jeff Bell, Deleuze’s Hume (Edinburgh, 2009): http://www.euppublishing.com/doi/abs/10.3366/dls.2014.0139

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Matt

February 18, 2014

It’s likely not what you’re looking for, but since Bowie has already been mentioned, I’ll say that I liked his German Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction book. (Not all parts are equally good, but for its size, I thought it was very nicely done.)
It’s probably not in the traditions you’re most interested in, but Joseph Heath’s Communicative Action and Rational Choice is also a very good “bridge building” sort of book.
Ian Hacking’s Historical Ontology or perhaps Arnold Davidson’s The Emergence of Sexuality would be good choices, too, I’d think.

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Patrick

February 18, 2014

I second the Ian Hacking suggestion, and would also add Todd May’s “The Moral Theory of Poststructuralism.” It would be a nice contrast to the more metaphysical/phil mind focus I’m seeing emerging, insofar as it deals in great detail with themes from analytic meta-ethics in French philosophy.

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Clayton

February 18, 2014

Stanley Cavell’s Senses of Walden is a great book, though its focus is Thoreau. At the end, however, are a pair of shorter pieces on Emerson, at least one of which deals with Heidegger as well. I remember enjoying them quite a bit.

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Sean

February 18, 2014

Perhaps Robert Hanna’s ‘Kant and the Foundations of Analytic Philosophy’ would be a nice way to illuminate the shared roots of the analytic and continental traditions.

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Chris Stephens

February 18, 2014

How about Michael Friedman’s book, A Parting of the Ways: Carnap, Cassirer, and Heidegger. ?

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Carl Sachs

February 18, 2014

In addition to the excellent books already mentioned, here are a few others:
(1) Mind, Reason, and Being-in-the-World: The McDowell-Dreyfus Debate (ed. Joseph Schear);
(2) pretty much anything by Richard Bernstein, but esp. Beyond Objectivism and Relativism and Praxis and Action;
(3) Adorno: Disenchantment and Ethics, Jay Bernstein — Bernstein brings Adorno into conversation with, among others, Sellars, Brandom, and McDowell;
(4) Phenomenology and Philosophy of Mind, ed. Smith and Thomasson.
(5) Dialogues with Davidson (ed. Malpas)
(6) How Scientific Practices Matter, Joe Rouse.

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Mohan Matthen

February 18, 2014

I would say, on this day of all days, read Israel Scheffler’s Anatomy of Inquiry. It’s the last good book written in analytic general philosophy of science.

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Brannon McDaniel

February 18, 2014

Professor Matthen writes that Scheffler’s Anatomy of Inquiry is the last good book written in analytic general philosophy of science.
But, off the top of my head, all of the following are of good quality, in the analytic general philosophy of science, and written on or after 1963, which is the date of original publication of Scheffler’s book:
Carl Hempel, Philosophy of Natural Science (1966)
Ernest Nagel, The Structure of Science (1961)
Wesley Salmon, The Foundations of Scientific Inference (1963)
Wesley Salmon, Scientific Explanation and the Causal Structure of the World (1984)
Bas van Fraassen, The Scientific Image (1980)
I take it Kuhn doesn’t make the cut because Structure of Scientific Revolutions isn’t sufficiently analytic, and Hempel’s Aspects of Scientific Explanation doesn’t make it because it’s largely a collection of previous articles.
But don’t the five I listed above pretty clearly qualify according to Professor Matthen’s criteria?

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Brannon McDaniel

February 18, 2014

Oops: Forget about Nagel. 1961 is too early. Sorry about that.

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Patrick S. O’Donnell

February 18, 2014

• Cavell, Marcia. The Psychoanalytic Mind: From Freud to Philosophy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993.
• Dilman, Ilham. Freud and Human Nature. Oxford, England: Basil Blackwell, 1983.
• Dilman, Ilham. Freud and the Mind. Oxford, UK: Basil Blackwell, 1984.
• Dilman, Ilham. Love and Human Separateness. Oxford, UK: Basil Blackwell, 1987.
• Gardner, Sebastian. Irrationality and the Philosophy of Psychoanalysis. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1993.
• Gillett, Grant. Bioethics in the Clinic: Hippocratic Reflections. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004.
• Gillett, Grant. The Mind and Its Discontents. New York: Oxford University Press, 2nd ed., 2009.
• Goldie, Peter. The Emotions: A Philosophical Exploration. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.
* Anything by Richard Wollheim?!

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Brannon McDaniel

February 18, 2014

In response to the original post: Alberto Coffa’s The Semantic Tradition from Kant to Carnap: To the Vienna Station.

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John Schwenkler

February 18, 2014

How about Sebastian Roedl’s Self-Consciousness?

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Matt Hare

February 18, 2014

Some great suggestions here. I’m definitely going to pursue that Farrell book.
I’ve recently been working through Cavaillè’s ‘Sur la logique et la théorie de la science’ for the first time with a reading group, and it strikes me as an ideal pluralist text (in the sense meant in the original post). Admittedly, it’s pretty much useless as a ‘teaching’ text, in the way that good cross-traditional secondary literature can be, but because it was written before the whole analytic/continental divide was fully constructed it has a kind of innocent pluralism. Husserl and the logicists (especially Carnap and Tarski) are treated with equal attention, and as obvious interlocutors, and Cavaillè ultimately ends up with critiques that are of equal relevance to, say, phenomenology and Quine, so it’s fertile ground for discussion.
Aside from that, I’ve been trying to dip into some Ernst Tugendhat, and he strikes me a good source for similar reasons.
I’ve also found A.W. Moore’s recent ‘The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics’ really useful. It’s not something you’d read cover to cover in a group, but the little dialogues he builds between analytic and continental figures are fantastic, such as the contrast between Bergson, Deleuze and Lewis on the possible/actual split.

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Joe Berendzen

February 18, 2014

I would assume that this is at the top of what Jon calls “anti-metaphysical Pittsburgh Hegeliana,” but I figure that it is worth mentioning by name that Brandom’s Tales of the Mighty Dead is a pretty obvious choice. You might also try reading some Habermas; I would think that the essays in Truth and Justification or On the Pragmatics of Social Interaction would work well (although the problem here might be that rather than bridging gaps it would just put everyone in the same “trying to get Habermas” boat…).
If the group wanted to shift gears a bit and move further away from the post-German Idealism orbit, Shaun Gallagher’s How the Body Shapes the Mind would be a good choice.

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Carl Sachs

February 18, 2014

In addition to Hanna’s Kant and the Foundations of Analytic Philosophy, his Embodied Minds in Action (co-authored with Maiesse) is a very nice book that (to borrow a well-known bon mot) binds the spirit of Merleau-Ponty in the fetters of Kripke.

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Anonymous

February 18, 2014

Anything by Richard Bernstein, who seems to me to be one of the most underrated contemporary philosophers. He went to school with Rorty and, while he shared many of Rorty’s philosophical interests, he avoided Rorty’s polemicism. I would say he is one of the most insightful and “pluralist” of contemporary philosophers. He successfully combines critical theory, pragmatism, the history of philosophy, analytic philosophy, and continental philosophy together. He is one of the most sophisticated readers of Hegel and much of his writing seems to embody the Hegelian ideals of reconciliation, nuance, and internal critique. Hilary Putnam recently claimed, in regards to Bernstein’s most recent book, “Richard Bernstein has written what is by far the best and most sophisticated account of recent and present-day pragmatist thought, including Rorty’s and Brandom’s. It is written with Bernstein’s characteristic clarity, and it is the fruit of immense scholarship and deep thinking. It is a book that every serious student of these thinkers needs to read and think about.”
For a Phenomenology of Spirit reading group, one of his first books Praxis and Action is still incredibly relevant and devotes chapters to Hegel, Marx, Kierkegaard, Sartre, Classical Pragmatism (especially Pierce), and Analytic Philosophy (especially of the 1960s and 1970s). He spends the book investigating the recent turn towards action in each of the different traditions.
While Bernstein’s other writings touch on Hegelian themes, his most recent publication The Pragmatic Turn has numerous discussions of the relationship between both classical and contemporary pragmatism. Bernstein extensively shows the connections between Hegel, Pierce, James, Habermas, Brandom, McDowell, and other contemporary philosophers.
Some of his essays in his book The New Constellation critique thinkers like Foucault, Derrida, Heidegger and other 20th century continentalists from a Hegelian perspective.

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Cynic

February 18, 2014

I suppose by “pluralism” we (again) mean white (men) “analytics” and “continentals,” and their inherited (dominant) philosophical problems.
I would think that a pluralist reading group should include plenty of women and minorities. There’s no (relative) shortage of materials available, but often there’s a shortage when authors are actually brought up for consideration.
If there’s any interest in Social and Political philosophy, I’d recommend Pateman’s The Sexual Contract, and along similar lines, Mills’ The Racial Contract. And although many wouldn’t consider it “philosophy” (pluralism, indeed!), I’d recommend Du Bois’ Souls of Black Folk, a true classic.

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Jon Cogburn

February 18, 2014

Quite possibly I mean something like that de re, but certainly not de dicto. Please the OP’s footnote *. Here’s what I probably should have said in addition to that:

It’s pretty hard if not impossible for people with my training to understand continental femimism and aesthetics (for example) without a much better understanding of German Idealism, 19th Century Philosophy, Phenomenology, and the canonical Parisian 68ers (Foucault, Derrida, and Deleuze).* And it’s no small labor to get even minimally up to speed on these.

But thanks for the cool citations. We’ll definitely check them out!
[*From the comments above, I think maybe that one should add Critical Theory to this list.]

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Neal Hebert

February 18, 2014

I really wish I had the time to take part in this reading group, but I think Jon and the rest of my dissertation committee would murder me if I showed up.
The above being said, I suspect that a lot could be gained by adding a third potential target audience to the reading group: non-philosopher scholars (i.e., scholars who work with philosophy but are not in the discipline of philosophy as such). I’ve learned, after transitioning from a philosophy department to a humanities PhD (for me it’s theatre history, in specific) that there’s a lot of interesting stuff going on outside of philosophy proper, in part because these scholars operate outside the analytic/continental distinction: my professors didn’t even know that there was a divide, given that we mostly do work in history of philosophy because of the nature of our discipline.
If you were to tackle Heidegger, I suspect I know a couple scholars outside of the Department at LSU who’d be interested in participating.

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Robin James

February 19, 2014

Hi Jon, I hope you consider this a friendly nudge to give continental feminism, well, all feminism really, and aesthetics a chance. I think you might not really have a good picture of the kind of work that goes on in these fields; I say this as, well, a continentally-trained feminist aesthetician.
First, perhaps the ‘training’ you lack is in feminism? Continental and analytic feminists have been talking to one another for 30+ years (read the Hypatia archives) and it seems to be working just fine…perhaps because we have feminism in common?
Second, ‘continental feminism’ isn’t just obtusely-written psychoanalysis. It can be exceptionally clearly written. Take, for example, Del McWhorter’s “Racism & Sexual Oppression in the US”–sophomore and junior philosophy majors have no problem with this text, so I should think it wouldn’t be out of reach for a philosopher of any background.
And finally, not to be rude, but I just don’t buy the “continental feminism and aesthetics are too hard for someone with my training argument” because I regularly publish in popular music studies journals for audiences with no background in philosophy whatsoever, and my work in continental feminist aesthetics is apparently clear enough for musicologists and media studies people (people with no background in philosophy at all) to understand.

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Peter Gratton

February 19, 2014

Hey, how did we get this far down a list before the fact that the pluralist readings–many good–are all male suggestions (did I miss any?) and nothing in philosophy of race or Africana philosophy.

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GiT

February 19, 2014

From the Habermas angle, Philosophical Discourses of Modernity might be useful (and the follow-up, Post-Metaphyiscal Thinking, though that is more American Pragmatism to PDM’s Continental), though I think the concern that one might get a bit too tangled up in Habermas is warranted.
I haven’t read it, but I see David Hoy and Thomas McCarthy have a sort of dialogue titled Critical Theory that might fit the bill. I would expect something by them to be lucid and useful. There’s also Fraser and Honneth’s Redistribution or Recognition on the critical theory side of things, with Hegel as an important element.
Seyla Benhabib’s Situating the Self is bookended by Hegel, and touches on feminism and colonialism (and Arendt).
In general Critical Theory and the world of Habermasiana/Habermiscellania seem to me to have a lot of people dealing with both “analytic” and “continental”, and Hegel to boot. But it also adds Marxism, Critical Theory, and a political theory bent that might make things messier than desired.

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Jon Cogburn

February 19, 2014

Fair points, and thanks for the reading suggestions.
Part of the point of the group is for analytic philosophers to not be completely lost at SPEP. Given this, it’s very important to get some background that is taken to be canonical by nearly everyone at SPEP and such that analytic programs generally do a very bad job covering. As far as I can tell, these areas are (possibly in decreasing order of importance, though maybe then Phenomenology should switch places with 19th Century, there’s a lot of Husserl at SPEP): German Idealism, 19th Century Philosophy, Phenomenology, and Paris ’68.
If we spent the semester reading jointly accessible feminist philosophy or contemporary philosophy of mind or African philosophy, this would be all to the good, but much, much less helpful for bridging the analytic/continental divide that exists in the study group. It’s far more helpful to study the works that nearly everyone take to be foundational (such as Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit).
But the overwhelming majority of foundational figures in German Idealism, 19th Century Philosophy, Phenomenology, Paris ’68 are white men. So at the very least we are going to be reading about books by white men. But please suggest scholarship on these figures by people who aren’t white men (e.g. Lafont’s excellent work) or figures in these milieus that might get wrongly ignored.
Or argue that a group that tries to bridge the analytic/continental divide should not be focusing on works that the overwhelming majority of self-identified continental philosophers take to be foundational. Or argue that our reading group should not try to bridge the analytic/continental divide, but should rather be doing something else. But I think a reading group that tried to explore every area of non-mainstream (in the pejorative sense of “mainstream”) philosophy would be pretty useless, and I think one focused just on say feminism or African Philosophy or American Pragmatism would be vastly less effective at bridging the analytic/continental divide.
I realize I might be completely wrong about some of the above, so please rebut!

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Matt

February 19, 2014

and nothing in philosophy of race or Africana philosophy.
Someone had mentioned Charles Mills’ excellent The Racial Contract. I didn’t mention excellent work by people like Tommie Shelby or Derek Darby (or older work by Bernard Boxill)among others because it seems to me to be done in a way that’s not terribly outside of the “mainstream” of political philosophy. (Shelby’s book is really good for showing how “social theory” in a broad sense can be used by political philosophers, but I didn’t take that to be the question.) Probably there are other works in philosophy of race/africana philosophy that really fit the question, but as the stuff I’m most familiar with didn’t seem to, I didn’t mention it. Charles Mills more recent book White Marxism, Black Radicalism might fit the bill, and looks very interesting, but I’ve not had the chance to read it yet, so can’t really suggest it.

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Jon Cogburn

February 19, 2014

Please see previous note and also rebut!
Let me reiterate that in the extended sense of “pluralist” I think that a pluralist reading group would not be nearly as helpful. Since we’re all busy, we don’t have time to study everything under the sun. Given these strong constraints it makes sense to read books that will help analytics best understand the maximum number of talks at SPEP that they would otherwise not understand given their poor training in so many important areas of philosophy.
Philosophy of race, Africana philosophy, American Pragmatism, feminism, or the new pluralist philosophy of mind (all things suggested above) in general would be poor subject matters with a group with this as an end-goal. German Idealism and Phenomenology are very good subject matters for this end-goal.
Again, maybe I’m missing something. Is there something perverse about the end-goal? Or is there some better way to achieve it? I’m sure their might be, but I don’t get it yet from what people are saying in this string.

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Jon Cogburn

February 19, 2014

Just to be clear, I’m thankful for all of the above suggestions, and I’m sure that they will be helpful for people reading this looking for philosophy that is widely accessible to both analytic and continental philosophers. I also realize that I should probably add Critical Theory and Hermeneutics to the big four (German Idealism, 19th Century, Phenomenology, and Parisian 68ers) as foundational areas of continental philosophy of which most analytics are entirely unaware.
By foundational I just mean that most other work in some manner still draws on these areas.

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sk

February 19, 2014

The distinction between ‘feminist philosophy’ (especially from a continental perspective) and ‘philosophy that takes Hegel to be foundational’ is a false one. Consider: Irigaray (especially “The Eternal Irony of the Community”); Kristeva (especially Revolution in Poetic Language); Simone de Beauvoir (The Second Sex, or Ethics of Ambiguity, which shows its Hegelian heritage a bit more clearly); Judith Butler (especially Subjects of Desire, but really, like, her whole body of work is underpinned by Hegel, she even refers to herself as essentially a Hegelian in Frames of War from 2011); Kimberly Hutchings’ book, Hegel and Feminist Philosophy, is a useful resource, as is the Feminist Interpretations of GWF Hegel, from Nancy Tuana’s Re-Reading the Canon series; there’s a whole wealth of material from the last ten years taking up Hegel’s reading of Antigone and its significance for feminist thought, from Hyppolite and Lacan down to Butler’s Antigone’s Claim and beyond. You get the idea.
To set up continental feminist philosophy as inaccessible in comparison to the Phenomenology is a bit silly. And I do get that we can’t all read everything all the time! But what does this mean for pluralism, and the claim that the analytic/continental divide would be overcome if we just read each other? (Not to mention that there is a whole tradition of reading Hegel in order to understand how this very logic of ‘overcoming’ operates, from Kierkegaard on down to socialist feminists like Patricia Mills to Derrida’s Glas to Irigaray). There is an interest in what kinds of things you are choosing to read in the Hegelian heritage; it’s a really, really big heritage, so some selection must be necessary! As a representation of pluralism, however, it is a strange interest, especially as Robin pointed out, feminist and critical race philosophers have been working across the ‘divide’ for some time.
Just as a side note, after having been going to SPEP for many years now, I would say there is more work on feminism presented than on Critical Theory (though I’ve done both!).

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Peter Gratton

February 19, 2014

Jon,
I would only repeat a lot of what SK has said. I would have to say that much work on Hegel is by feminist scholars (think of Butler on the master/slave dialectic). So perhaps one way in would be to read Hegel and then two “canonical” texts reading them–such as Fanon’s Black Skin/White Masks, which makes much of Hegel’s notion of recognition for his own work. At SPEP I spend way more time in panels on feminism, race theory, and queer theory than phenomenology (oh not another paper on the hyle!) and as such it would be hard to think of going to SPEP and just wanting to do several areas–not least since those are a bit part of what SPEP is. But true we can’t read everything and I’ve tried to put together reading groups and can understand the problem of people joining in to say you must read everything. But as “pluralist”… you have to admit that has a meaning beyond just analytic/continental.
And while I’m on it: RJ mentioned that in Hypatia and elsewhere there is this cross-breeding between analytic and continental you don’t see elsewhere. It’s also the case in critical race theory and African philosophy as well, and those facts make this whole analytic/continental thing seem really parochial.

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Muhammad Velji

February 19, 2014

I’m always shocked when no one mentions Charles Taylor when talking about someone who is accessible (and also has great credibility coming from Oxford) in both analytic and continental camps. Human Agency and Language and his Philosophical Arguments are both classic collections that one can go through.

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Scu

February 19, 2014

This is mostly another ‘vote’ in support of the arguments forwarded by Cynic, Robin James, Peter Gratton, and sk.
Hypatia is, as Robin James put it, an amazing pluralistic journal. Not just publishing work from Anglo-American/analytic and continental camps, but also publishing decolonial/philosophy of race thinkers, Pragmatists, historians of philosophy, etc.
I don’t know what the impetus is for a reading group seeking to bridge the analytic-continental gap. But to the degree that SPEP reproduces patriarchal hegemony, white supremacy, and heteronormativity, I think you should want your reading group to resist that. Now, that isn’t to say SPEP particularly reproduces those things. The SPEP people I know, for the most part, don’t. But we all know there are plenty of continentalists who manage to write books and articles that basically cite zero women and philosophers of color, and any dialogue between different ways of doing philosophy should not be a dialogue with the worst aspects of those approaches.
I can’t really help a lot with concrete suggestions. I know very little about the core areas of Anglo-American/analytic philosophy. If you were all interested in social and political, ethical theory, environmental/animal, or philosophy of science, I could probably help.
New APPS has been great about challenging the ways that philosophy reproduces itself in male and white ways. But it is always so easy to fall back into that habit. So, this is, as I put, a vote to consciously put diversity as a higher priority that getting SPEP right. Because if you don’t consciously put diversity as part of the intellectual program, it just won’t happen.

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Ed Kazarian

February 19, 2014

Gotta jump in in support of the same list of folks Scu did above.
If bridging the analytic-continental divide can only be accomplished in a way that reiterates the exclusion of Feminist or Africana perspectives, I have to wonder what the point is (and yes, I know this goes beyond ‘being comfortable at SPEP,’ but SPEP also needs a bit of an ass kicking in some of these regards). That might seem harsh, but I think the threat to the future health and relevance of philosophy from internecine methodological warfare pales in comparison to the damage done by our continued reiteration of a narrow and exclusionary foundation story.
Not only that, but some of the best, richest pluralist work I know — i.e., work that elides and supersedes the ‘analytic-continental’ business — comes from precisely folks working in aesthetics, philosophy of gender and sexuality, and Africana philosophy. In a sense, the way to deal with being marginalized for many of those folks was to constitute spaces of affinity where the traditional continental and analytic power structures (and theoretical impasses) were set aside or suspended. They’ve already done a lot of the work of overcoming the divide. Why not embrace that and learn from it?
For a concrete suggestion that might help with the Hegel thing too, why not something of Lewis Gordon’s? “Bad Faith and Anti-Black Racism,” could do a whole lot of good in a number of ways.

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Robin James

February 19, 2014

Thanks and YES! to Peter, sk, Scu, Matt.
Jon, to sum it up, I am concerned that the way you discuss “the analytic/continental divide” treats only non-feminist, non-CRT, non-Africana, basically, non-white-dude theory as the center/core of each tradition. Isn’t it PRECISELY the problem that what is taken to be canonical by ‘practically everyone at SPEP’ is only work by white dudes? Isn’t that exactly what we should try to avoid reproducing, ESPECIALLY with respect to teaching students? I mean, sure, that means you’re not giving them the so-called ‘foundations,’ but as Descartes said, if the foundations are broke you gotta knock ’em down and rebuild.
On this general point you might look at Uma Narayan’s article here: http://www2.law.columbia.edu/faculty_franke/Gender_Justice/Narayan.pdf
The same way that the “western women”/”non-western women” distinction only works to reproduce relations of privilege within each group, your formulation of the analytic/continental divide just reproduces relations of privilege within each group. (Note the irony that this article was published in Hypatia 15 years ago).
FWIW, for myself, and probably/maybe for the people I talk with at SPEP, Maria Lugones is waaay more foundational for us self-identified ‘continental’ philosophers than Heidegger is. That’s just an example. I think it would be seriously difficult to find any figure or set of figures most people at SPEP thought were foundational to their own work.

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Cynic

February 19, 2014

No one under the sun has all the time in the world to read everything. It’s just typical that what we DO have time to read are all white dudes and their problems, and hence the refrain, pluralism indeed. It’s the actual selection that is revealing (regardless of whatever disclaimer). A true pluralism reading group would, in practice, challenge the idea of pluralism, especially the idea that pluralism means “a mixture of analytic and traditional continental.”
I must confess that the entire idea that the “foundational” authors consist of entirely white men is a further entrenchment of false pluralism, as if in order to be pluralist your foundations need be utterly non-pluralist. Of course many marginalized thinkers are responding to Kant, Hegel, Marx, etc. But what usually happens is that we get the “core” thinkers, and then move on, or worse, treat the responding authors as extra, boutique, that is, non-core or supplemental. “If you’ve got Hegel, then you’ve got the basics,” which is utterly false. The claim seems to be that “well, in order to start doing pluralism, we need to get into ‘core’ thinkers.” Foundational for who? “Core” to who? The same habits prevail in the selection.

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sk

February 19, 2014

and in that vein, Lugones’ “On the Logic of Pluralist Feminism” is totally apposite here. pluralism! theorized! boom.

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Carl Sachs

February 19, 2014

I think the points raised here about the exclusion of non-traditionally-privileged voices from “the analytic/Continental divide” is well worth taking seriously. There’s something to be said for teaching each other (and our students) to read (and write) across this divide, but all of the other philosophical styles and problematics must be included in order for us to get to a point where the very idea of “the analytic/Continental divide” is a thing of the past.
That said, one way of getting the privileged voices both on the table and out of the way would be to focus on the debate on metaphysics in German philosophy in the 1930s. One could read (preferably in this order?) Heidegger’s “What is Metaphysics?”, Carnap’s “The Overcoming of Metaphysics Through the Logical Analysis of Language” (which responds polemically and directly to Heidegger and has a lovely enconium to Nietzsche at the end), and then Horkheimer’s “The Latest Attack on Metaphysics” (which is a polemical response to Carnap). That gives you three canonical texts, all historically (and personally) linked together.
Once that’s out of the way, one could move on to the stuff that’s actually relevant to contemporary needs.

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Scu

February 19, 2014

Ed, that book by Lewis Gordon teaches really well. I think that is a good suggestion. Depending on what this group is into, they might be more interested in his, Fanon and the Crisis of European Man: An Essay on Philosophy and the Human Sciences. That explores questions of phenomenology and metaphysics in a more thorough way. Regardless, excellent suggestion.
Robin and SK, Maria Lugones is a good point. Despite her training in Anglo-American philosophy, and her connection with a SPEP-y school, she would be horrified to be seen as either an analytic philosopher or a a continental philosopher. Horrified might be too gentle of a word, too. There is no good reason to see Deleuze (as much as I love him) as being more foundational than Anzaldúa (though I probably would not suggest Anzaldúa for this reading group). However, Maria’s work is very clear, and very intelligent. (And SK, your comment made me laugh out loud, good job).
This goes back to the post here on New APPS about citation practices, as well. The names that we immediately think of, and think of as important, are bound up with a whole history that ignores why we cite some names instead of others. I agree with Robin James, sometimes we got to knock ’em down and rebuild.
So Jon, I am not really sure exactly what sort of subjects you want for the reading group. Like, if you are interested in metaphysics, philosophy of language, etc. Or, if you are interested in clearly written works on continental figures. And maybe Fanon or Arendt or whomever are not as canonical (maybe?), but how cool would it be if your reading group just pretended they were? What if one of the analytic folks were talking to a SPEPer one day and said, “Well, I haven’t really read Husserl, but I read this great book on Fanon, and I was wondering…”, or “you mention Derrida on play and difference, and I haven’t read him, but Maria Lugones argues…” that would be a better philosophical world. And if the SPEPer hadn’t read seriously Fanon or Maria as important intellectual figures, it would be a great kick in the rear.

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G

February 20, 2014

I’d like to second the suggestion of the Phenomenology and the philosophy of Mind The philosophy of mind is a huge issue in contempt. analytic philosophy, yet few of these philosophers recognize the value of phenomenology, except in the minimalist version: “It is like something to see red
http://www.amazon.com/Phenomenology-Philosophy-David-Woodruff-Smith/dp/019927245X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1392930949&sr=8-1&keywords=phenomenology+and+the+philosophy+of+mind

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Eric Brown (Budapest)

February 21, 2014

A. W. Moore, Points of View …
Bernard Williams on Nietzsche…
and I second (third?) Mills’ Racial Contract.

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Addison Ellis

February 21, 2014

Paul Redding’s /Analytic Philosophy and the Return of Hegelian Thought/ is excellent

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M. T. C. Shafer

February 24, 2014

This thread is mostly dead, I know, but NDPR had an interesting review today of a monograph that engages in the project of “re-articulating phenomenological insights in close proximity to the language of Pittsburgh neo-pragmatism.” The monograph is “Normativity and Phenomenology in Husserl and Heidegger,” by Steven Crowell.
Here’s the review: http://ndpr.nd.edu/news/46384-normativity-and-phenomenology-in-husserl-and-heidegger/

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