Issue 77 now out: Continental tales

[RickLewis]

Philosophy Now Issue 77 is now up on the website - hope you like it!

http://philosophynow.org

The issue has a Continental philosophy theme, with articles about Derrida, Barthes, Foucault, Habermas, Lyotard and Zizek. There is a focus on the human tendency to think of things in terms of stories ("narratives") and on what these Continental thinkers have to say about this.

[Arising_uk]

Well! I have to say that reading this issue takes me back to the 80's. Reminded me of me, my ex and her mates, in heated boozy argument.

Why? Because they were radical Polytechnic 'Critical Theorists' doing English Lit and I was a pleb doing Philosophy within their shadow as I was stuck in the past, so it was all Formalism, Structuralism this, Post-Structualism, Deconstructualism that(although I quite liked Saussure, Eco and Semiotics), but I had a secret weapon! I had chosen Continental Philosophy as an option(*shush...my analytic mates will hear*) so could hold my own by identifying their 'roots' and baffling them with Logic(although my come-uppance in the form of an attempted Msc in Computational Logic was upon the horizon, so at least 'karma' exists).

My point?

I think that the 'real' 'discovery' from 'Continental Philosophy' for Philosophy as a subject for 'real people' is Phenomenology as proposed by Husserl(who in some strange way I think is like C.S.Peirce) and Heidegger and, for me, Merleau-Ponty(not least for being nearly as impenetrable an English translation as Heidegger) and the fruitloops Gurdjieff and Ouspensky(why not! If Nietzsche and Schopenhaur are acceptable...), and its to find a common description of 'subjective' experience that more agree with than don't, or some such.

So thanks for the thoughts with this issue Rick and those who make PN.
p.s.
LOL at the 'row' between Plato and Aristotle and LMAO at the ending.

[RickLewis]

Well! I have to say that reading this issue takes me back to the 80's. Reminded me of me, my ex and her mates, in heated boozy argument.

Yes, I had quite a similar experience in 1988/9 when I was doing a philosophy MA at York and most of my friends were sociologists. They were all hugely into Foucault and kept telling me that my ideas about ethics ignored power relations. Also they were into the postmodern idea of competing realities none of which could be said to be truer than any other. Quite frustrating to argue against especially as they were very hazy about whether all these competing perspectives were perspectives on some objective underlying reality or not.

So thanks for the thoughts with this issue Rick and those who make PN.
p.s.
LOL at the 'row' between Plato and Aristotle and LMAO at the ending.

Glad you like it! Do you mean the ending of the Plato and Aristotle article, or the ending of the magazine, ie the short article about "the biggest number in the universe"? That one made me laugh out loud at one point.

[spike]

I was wondering what forum people think of this edition's subject, continental tales?

I got the impression from Rick's introduction in issue 77 that continental philosophy is about grand narratives and abstractions, whereas its opposite, analytical philosophy, is about philosophy that focuses on more immediate, concrete issues.