6 ms·

Is there a continental equivalent of SEP?

keiferski 6y ago
Not that I am aware of, probably because most centers of continental thought are in continental Europe (hence the name) and so are in French or German. I don’t speak those languages well enough to know if an equivalent encyclopedia exists, but I’d imagine a French encyclopedia of philosophy probably is quite continental in flavor. I have the Edinburgh Encyclopedia of Continental Philosophy but it’s just a book, not an online encyclopedia. Otherwise, Wikipedia is actually not bad on most important continental thinkers.
- chrisseaton 6y ago
  That’s interesting - has philosophy not settled on English as a working lingua franca like other fields?
  - keiferski 6y ago
    Different situation than in say, natural science. Philosophy is much more diverse in terms of inputs and outputs. When your source materials are in German (Marx, Adorno, Nietzsche, Hegel, Freud, Heidegger, etc.) or French (Deleuze, Badiou, Foucault, etc.) you end up needing to learn those languages to make any serious academic progress. Philosophy is much less fungible than physics, in other words. So while there are no doubt more papers in English, the tradition and institutions in German and French speaking countries are probably more influential.
  - a_humean 6y ago
    In western philosophy there was a divergence in both in style, lexicon, and method in the early 20th century that was exasperated by the two world wars. They share common ancestors (Kant basically), but to a certain extent are mutually incomprehensible (an exaggeration, but not exactly untrue). The philosophical world basically divides into Anglophone philosophy (the dominant flavour worldwide) vs everything else which cannot be neatly categorized into a single brand. Also, while there are non-western traditions none of them have the same degree of professionalisation and size (in terms of practitioners) as western philosophy. Some western philosophers would question whether all that many that do exist are doing the same activity - a curator/historian of philosophy or culture, vs actual philosophers trying to produce original work (again, broad strokes and exaggeration).
  - steveklabnik 6y ago
    Even the idea of "settling on English as a working lingua franca" has issues that display how deep this schism goes. When one of the questions you're exploring is "how exactly does language shape our thinking," for example, picking one language may be limiting what can be expressed, and therefore, thought. Some terms specifically have relationships to their meanings in the language they're written in, and so even English translations leave them in the original language and treat them as jargon.
    - steveklabnik 6y ago
      Okay, after writing this, I'm still drinking my morning coffee, let's pick a specific example of this to show you what I'm talking about. Derrida is someone who is often criticized by folks outside of the continental spheres for his writing. But there's specific reasons why the writing is this way, and it relates to what I'm talking about here. For example, take his term "différance." This is specifically a bit of wordplay in French that illuminates the concepts he's talking about in a deeper way. The regular spelling in French would be "différence", but there's also the verb "différer", and "différance" is "différence" spelled like "différer." My French is very poor (though I've always wanted to learn it, just haven't found a good way to do so...), but two things: * One of the things Derrida is concerned with is the relationship between speech and writing. That you cannot hear the difference (get it?) between these two words in speech, but you can when written, is interesting. Derrida is responding to the phonocentrism of Ferdinand de Saussure, arguing that the idea that speech and writing are in binary opposition is incorrect. * One of the things Derrida is interested in is how we come to understand meaning. "différer" means "to defer" as well as "to differ," and one of the things he talks about is how words always refer to other words. You cannot understand a word in vacuum, you can only understand them in relation to other words, and you learn them by understanding how they differ from other words. The difference is deferred, in other words. Anyway, the point is, you cannot really get at what he's talking about without understanding at least the surface-level French. It doesn't really work as well without it. If Derrida had been forced to write in English, his point wouldn't be as well made. And, if you find the above interesting, you may like continental philosophy in general. If you find it insufferable... you may not. Personally, I am very into it, though I'm more of a Deleuze guy than a Derrida guy.
diegocg 6y ago
There is filosofia.org for an Spanish equivalent. The looks are not the most modern in some places (it was created in 1996) but it's actively updated. Managed by the Gustavo Bueno foundation.

Not that I am aware of, probably because most centers of continental thought are in continental Europe (hence the name) and so are in French or German. I don’t speak those languages well enough to know if an equivalent encyclopedia exists, but I’d imagine a French encyclopedia of philosophy probably is quite continental in flavor. I have the Edinburgh Encyclopedia of Continental Philosophy but it’s just a book, not an online encyclopedia. Otherwise, Wikipedia is actually not bad on most important continental thinkers.

chrisseaton 6y ago
That’s interesting - has philosophy not settled on English as a working lingua franca like other fields?
- keiferski 6y ago
  Different situation than in say, natural science. Philosophy is much more diverse in terms of inputs and outputs. When your source materials are in German (Marx, Adorno, Nietzsche, Hegel, Freud, Heidegger, etc.) or French (Deleuze, Badiou, Foucault, etc.) you end up needing to learn those languages to make any serious academic progress. Philosophy is much less fungible than physics, in other words. So while there are no doubt more papers in English, the tradition and institutions in German and French speaking countries are probably more influential.
- a_humean 6y ago
  In western philosophy there was a divergence in both in style, lexicon, and method in the early 20th century that was exasperated by the two world wars. They share common ancestors (Kant basically), but to a certain extent are mutually incomprehensible (an exaggeration, but not exactly untrue). The philosophical world basically divides into Anglophone philosophy (the dominant flavour worldwide) vs everything else which cannot be neatly categorized into a single brand. Also, while there are non-western traditions none of them have the same degree of professionalisation and size (in terms of practitioners) as western philosophy. Some western philosophers would question whether all that many that do exist are doing the same activity - a curator/historian of philosophy or culture, vs actual philosophers trying to produce original work (again, broad strokes and exaggeration).
- steveklabnik 6y ago
  Even the idea of "settling on English as a working lingua franca" has issues that display how deep this schism goes. When one of the questions you're exploring is "how exactly does language shape our thinking," for example, picking one language may be limiting what can be expressed, and therefore, thought. Some terms specifically have relationships to their meanings in the language they're written in, and so even English translations leave them in the original language and treat them as jargon.
  - steveklabnik 6y ago
    Okay, after writing this, I'm still drinking my morning coffee, let's pick a specific example of this to show you what I'm talking about. Derrida is someone who is often criticized by folks outside of the continental spheres for his writing. But there's specific reasons why the writing is this way, and it relates to what I'm talking about here. For example, take his term "différance." This is specifically a bit of wordplay in French that illuminates the concepts he's talking about in a deeper way. The regular spelling in French would be "différence", but there's also the verb "différer", and "différance" is "différence" spelled like "différer." My French is very poor (though I've always wanted to learn it, just haven't found a good way to do so...), but two things: * One of the things Derrida is concerned with is the relationship between speech and writing. That you cannot hear the difference (get it?) between these two words in speech, but you can when written, is interesting. Derrida is responding to the phonocentrism of Ferdinand de Saussure, arguing that the idea that speech and writing are in binary opposition is incorrect. * One of the things Derrida is interested in is how we come to understand meaning. "différer" means "to defer" as well as "to differ," and one of the things he talks about is how words always refer to other words. You cannot understand a word in vacuum, you can only understand them in relation to other words, and you learn them by understanding how they differ from other words. The difference is deferred, in other words. Anyway, the point is, you cannot really get at what he's talking about without understanding at least the surface-level French. It doesn't really work as well without it. If Derrida had been forced to write in English, his point wouldn't be as well made. And, if you find the above interesting, you may like continental philosophy in general. If you find it insufferable... you may not. Personally, I am very into it, though I'm more of a Deleuze guy than a Derrida guy.

diegocg 6y ago

There is filosofia.org for an Spanish equivalent. The looks are not the most modern in some places (it was created in 1996) but it's actively updated. Managed by the Gustavo Bueno foundation.