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The Convergent Conceptions of Being in Mainstream Analytic and Postmodern C ontinental Philosophy
Author(s) -
Barris Jeremy
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
metaphilosophy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.475
H-Index - 35
eISSN - 1467-9973
pISSN - 0026-1068
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-9973.2012.01771.x
Subject(s) - mainstream , postmodernism , epistemology , meaning (existential) , philosophy , analytic philosophy , convergence (economics) , sociology , contemporary philosophy , theology , economics , economic growth
This article argues that there is ultimately a very close convergence between prominent conceptions of being in mainstream A nglo‐ A merican philosophy and mainstream postmodern C ontinental philosophy. One characteristic idea in A nglo‐ A merican or analytic philosophy is that we establish what is meaningful and so what we can say about what is, by making evident the limits of sense or what simply cannot be meant. A characteristic idea in C ontinental philosophy of being is that being emerges through contrast and interplay with what it is not, with what has no being at all and so is beyond sense. The two traditions consequently conceive being in significantly related ways. As a result, what the C ontinental tradition gets at with “the meaning of being as such and in general,” and how it gets at it, has much in common with what the A nglo‐ A merican tradition gets at, and how it gets at it, by establishing “what can be meaningfully said.”