Contemporary Philosophy

We tell you what contemporary philosophy is, its background and the most influential thinkers. Furthermore, what are the philosophical traditions: analytical and continental.

What is contemporary philosophy?

Contemporary philosophy is the philosophy produced during the 20th and 21st centuries. It is the fourth period in the history of philosophy and the most recent, since it is a period in development. With the 19th century as a background, the works and works produced during the 20th and 21st centuries make up the set of thoughts of this stage.

The 20th century was characterized by a significant polarization between analytical philosophy, produced in the Anglo-Saxon world, and continental philosophy, produced in Europe. Within this framework, different philosophical traditions emerged, such as logical positivism, hermeneutics, phenomenology, structuralism and post-structuralism, existentialism, materialism or deconstruction.

The central axis of 20th century philosophy was language. This did not mean that language was the way to explain reality, but rather that understanding the phenomenon of language, from a philosophical point of view, helped to think about the world in a different way than before. This change is known as the “linguistic turn.” Some of the philosophers who starred in it were Ferdinand de Saussure, Martin Heidegger, Jacques Derrida, Roland Barthes, Saul Kripke and Ludwig Wittgenstein.

For its part, the 21st century, driven by the latest works of the previous century, turns its efforts to themes of postmodernism, such as posthumanism or animal studies.

19th century: Background of contemporary philosophy

Contemporary philosophy must be understood as a continuity of modernity and not as a rupture. However, during the 19th and 20th centuries, a diversity of philosophical schools and currents emerged such that exposing the passage from one period to another in a linear manner is not a simple task.

There is a precedent for two thinkers whose work deeply influenced the way of doing philosophy today: Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) and Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900). Hegel's omnicomprehensive system (that is, his claim to be a total system), on the one hand, and the break that the rupture of Nietzschean nihilism meant to metaphysics, on the other, resulted in a series of divergences and positions whose effect was all the philosophy of the 20th century.

In addition to Nietzschean thought, the works of Karl Marx (1818-1883) and Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) must be added. The philosophical investigations of these three thinkers ended up diluting Hegelian thought, in parallel with the emergence of other currents of the time such as nineteenth-century positivism (19th century positivism), neo-Kantianism, historicism or utilitarianism.

In particular, and with regard to continental philosophy, Nietzsche's work generated a series of effects comparable to those of other great thinkers in history, such as Immanuel Kant, René Descartes, Saint Augustine or the philosophers of Greek classicism.

The particularity of Nietzschean thought lay in its explicit struggle against all forms of rational and metaphysical thought. He accused this type of thinking of decadent nihilism, and attributed it to a history of philosophy that he traced from Socrates to Kant, highlighting the role of Christianity in the middle. This resulted in the fall of fundamental metaphysical figures, such as that of the logosGod or grammar (understood at a metaphysical level), and the prevailing values ​​of the time.

The influence of Nietzschean thought, as well as other philosophers who are similar in tone and theme, can be seen in the later works of thinkers such as Martin Heidegger (1889-1976), Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), Jacques Derrida (1930- 2004) or Roland Barthes (1915-1980).

20th century

The 20th century is the core century of contemporary philosophy. Based on the work of Kant, as well as Nietzschean thought and some readings of Hegel's work, Western philosophy was divided into analytical philosophy and continental philosophy. Although both ways of doing philosophy share Kant as a starting point (whether for or against), the way in which they approach him, as well as the way in which they develop their thinking, differ substantially.

The common point of the 20th century is the preponderance that the study of language acquired, which went from being seen as an instrument of analysis to being considered a fundamental structure of the world. This means that it stopped being a neutral tool, existing separately from the world, and began to be perceived as something intrinsic to it. From the early developments of the continental philosophy of Husserl and Heidegger, to the analytical analyzes of Gottlob Frege and Ludwig Wittgenstein, many authors have stopped at the study of language to take one path or another of thought.

The study of language, known as the linguistic turn, was accompanied by the emergence of a series of philosophical currents throughout the continental wing that resulted in a complex and rich framework of dialogue and philosophical contrasts. Thus, the 20th century was the scene for the development of currents such as phenomenology, existentialism, hermeneutics, structuralism and post-structuralism, deconstruction, feminism, critical theory, Marxism, psychoanalysis, formal logic, positivism. logic, normative ethics and philosophy of mind thinkers.

Analytical philosophy

Analytical philosophy is the name given to a set of 20th century philosophical traditions developed in the English-speaking Western world (the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and others). All of them agree on the use of a work methodology that applies the analytical method to the study of language. This is known as the linguistic turn, but focused on the clarity and rigor of the arguments of formal logic and the use of mathematics.

The origin of analytical philosophy is usually located in the works of Bertrand Russell, Gottlob Frege and Ludwig Wittgenstein, as well as in some thinkers of the Vienna Circle, a philosophical body formed in Austria by the philosopher Moritz Schlick (1882-1936) in 1921. .

Analytical philosophers developed an interest in the study of language and the logical analysis of concepts, as can be seen in Principia Mathematica of Russell, or in the Logical-Philosophical Treatiseby Wittgenstein. They also shared a clear skepticism towards traditional and continental metaphysics, which they considered unclear and, in many cases, obscurantist. This is observed in some statements by the thinkers of the Vienna Circle, especially in Otto Neurath and Rudolf Carnap.

Some of the most influential thinkers in analytical philosophy were:

• Gottlob Frege (1848-1925). He was a German philosopher, logician and mathematician. He is considered the father of mathematical logic and one of the founders of analytical philosophy. He was a professor at the University of Jena and developed a complex work around the use of language and its relationship with logic and mathematics. One of his most read works today is About meaning and reference.
• Bertrand Russell (1872-1970). He was a British philosopher, logician and mathematician. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1950 and is one of the founders, along with Frege, of analytical philosophy. Public Principia Mathematicaa monumental work dedicated to the development of classical logic, and exhaustively worked on the link between logic and language. About the latter you can read his article About the denotation.
• Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951). He was an Austrian philosopher, who worked on the philosophy of mathematics, language and the mind. Many thinkers consider him the greatest philosopher of the 20th century. His two most important works are the Logical-Philosophical Treatise and their Philosophical Investigations.
• Rudolf Carnap (1891-1970). He was a German philosopher and logician, who dedicated himself to the study of language and was a member of the Vienna Circle until 1935, the year he emigrated to the United States. He studied the mathematical logic of Frege, Russell and Whitehead and adhered to logical positivism. He dedicated much of his work to the study of the logical concepts of “meaning” and “truth.” Among his works stand out Testability and meaning, Fundamentals of logic and mathematics and Introduction to semantics.
• Karl Popper (1902-1994). He was an Austrian philosopher who became a British citizen. He is known for having contributed to the philosophy of science the theories of falsifiability (the possibility of a theory being subjected to evidence that contradicts it) and the demarcation criterion (how to define the limits that should configure the concept of “science”). ). He published numerous works not only on philosophy of science but also on political philosophy.
• WVO Quine (1908-2000). He was an American philosopher and logician, and is recognized as one of the most influential philosophers of the 20th century. He developed numerous logical and mathematical systems, as well as several studies dedicated to the reality of mathematical entities. He is known for claiming that the way someone uses language determines what kinds of things they can say exist.
• Saul Kripke (1940-2022). He was an American philosopher and logician, who worked on metaphysics, philosophy of language, and philosophical logic. He made numerous contributions to modal logic (a type of formal logical system). He also made a consistent criticism of the descriptivist theory of Frege and Russell, published under the title Naming and necessity.

continental philosophy

Continental philosophy is the name given to a set of 20th century philosophical traditions developed in Europe. It gets its name from the contrast with the English-speaking analytical philosophy movement. Most continental philosophers developed in Germany and France, and almost all took the works of Nietzsche and Kierkegaard as background.

Being a set of traditions, it is difficult to give a precise definition of what continental philosophy is beyond its geographical origin. The truth is that there exists in all these traditions a more speculative tendency in relation to analytical philosophy. Many of his philosophical proposals have been attempts to continue (for or against) many of Kant's ideas. Nietzsche's criticisms of the history of philosophy were also worked with dedication. A paradigmatic case is Nietzsche's idea that “God is dead” (which means, roughly speaking, that there are no longer totalizing foundations).

Another of the common points that the currents of continental philosophy share is the attempt to overcome metaphysics in one way or another. Some of these currents can be interpreted as critical positions towards the metaphysical tradition that, however, do not cancel it, but rather take it up again with vigor and innovation.

Continental philosophy began from the works of Edmund Husserl. Phenomenology, a philosophical movement founded by Husserl, occupies a canonical place in the philosophical history of the 20th century. The same has happened with the work of Martin Heidegger, a disciple of Husserl, today considered one of the most important philosophers of the 20th century. His work Being and time It is a turning point for any philosophical proposal that has been made after the fact. Philosophers such as Jean Paul Sartre, Emmanuel Levinas, Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Derrida and Jean-Luc Marion have spoken out as debtors (if not continuators) of Husserlian-Heideggerian thought.

Given the large number of currents and thinkers that identify with continental philosophy, constructing an impartial list of the most relevant names is, most of the time, impossible. However, some of the most important are:

• Edmund Husserl (1859-1938). He was a German philosopher and mathematician. He is considered one of the most important philosophers of the 20th century. A disciple of Franz Brentano and teacher of Heidegger, he founded phenomenology and introduced the concepts of noema, noesis and gegebenheitwhich together help define the object. Among his most important works are Logical Investigations and Ideas I.
• Martin Heidegger (1889-1976). He was a German philosopher, probably the most important of the 20th century. A disciple of Husserl and later his critic, he published in 1927 Being and timeone of the decisive works of contemporary philosophy. There he developed the concept of dasein (“be-there”) and devised existential mental dispositions. In addition to Being and time public The fundamental concepts of metaphysics and forest pathsamong others.
• Walter Benjamin (1892-1940). He was a German philosopher, cultural critic and essayist. His work extends to topics as diverse as philosophy, art, history, politics and literature. He was a Marxist thinker and one of the most prominent members of the Frankfurt School. Among his most notable works are The work of art in the era of its technical reproducibility and Philosophy of history thesis.
• Theodor B. Adorno (1903-1969). He was a German philosopher, sociologist, musicologist and composer. Author of one of the most prolific and extensive works of the 20th century. He was a member of the Frankfurt School, a Marxist and a follower of dialectical materialism in the form of “negative dialectics”, he wrote on many topics, especially on aesthetics and aesthetic theory. Among his main works are aesthetic theory, Minimal morality and Negative dialectic.
• Hans-Georg Gadamer (1900-2002). He was a German philosopher, especially recognized for having been one of the most relevant disciples of Heidegger. He renewed the idea of ​​hermeneutics, as well as the idea of ​​the inheritance of Europe (published in Europe's heritage). One of his most important works, on aesthetics, is Truth and method.
• Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961). He was a French philosopher and one of the first French phenomenologists, often branded an existentialist for his friendship with Sartre and for his conception of being close to Heidegger. He worked on the idea of ​​perception together with the idea of ​​meaning, and incorporated studies from other disciplines such as biology and natural sciences into phenomenology. Among his most important works stands out Phenomenology of perception.
• Emmanuel Levinas (1906-1995). He was a Franco-Lithuanian philosopher and writer who spent World War II imprisoned in a German concentration camp. From that experience, and after reading Being and timeby Heidegger, as well as his approach to Husserlian phenomenology, he dedicated his life to revaluing ethics as the primary philosophical discipline, giving a primary place to the figure of otherness in philosophical thought. Among his works stand out Totality and infinity and Among us: essays to think about another.
• Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980). He was a French philosopher, activist, literary critic, playwright and novelist. He is probably one of the most recognized philosophers of the 20th century, even outside the philosophical field. Father of existentialism and partner of the philosopher Simone de Beauvoir, he renewed the idea of ​​freedom and personal responsibility, and gave the search for meaning a new direction that a large part of the youth between the wars adopted as a generational banner. Among his works stand out Being and nothingness and Existentialism is a humanism.
• Hannah Arendt (1906-1975). She was a German philosopher, writer and political theorist, and is one of the most important philosophers of the 20th century. A disciple of Heidegger in her youth, she was persecuted by the German National Socialist regime until she managed to become an American. He wrote against Nazism, war and forms of total rule. She is also recognized for having provided live media coverage of the trial of Nazi leader Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem, an experience from which her famous book emerged. Eichmann in Jerusalem, a report on the banality of evil.
• Paul Ricoeur (1913-2005). He was a French philosopher. He is known for having combined phenomenological description with hermeneutics, resulting in phenomenological hermeneutics. It is located within the tradition inaugurated by Martin Heidegger, Hans-Georg Gadamer and Gabriel Marcel. Additionally, he developed a theory of textual interpretation for metaphor theory, mythology, and historiography. Among his works stand out From text to action, History and truth and Interpretation theory.
• Roland Barthes (1915-1980). He was a French critic, literary theorist, philosopher and semiologist. He wrote about philosophy of language, linguistics, theory of signs, photography and literary criticism. Relying on the work of several thinkers, such as Jacques Derrida, Phillippe Sollers and Jacques Lacan, he reinvented the way of doing literary criticism, becoming more like a form of literary creation. Among his works stand out The pleasure of the text, Fragments of a loving speech and The zero degree of writing.
• Michel Foucault (1926-1984). He was a French philosopher, sociologist and psychologist, and is one of the most radical thinkers of the French 20th century. He wrote about sexuality, societies of control, forms of power, knowledge, biopolitics, madness and forms of discourse, among other topics. Of his works, the following stand out: The words and the things, History of madness in classical times, Monitor and punish and history of sexuality.
• Gilles Deleuze (1925-1995). He was a French philosopher and literary critic, and is one of the most influential thinkers of the 20th century. He wrote about metaphysics, politics, cinema, literature, the history of philosophy and other philosophers, such as David Hume, Friedrich Nietzsche, Baruch Spinoza and Henri Bergson. Due to his way of doing philosophy, he is considered the “creator of concepts”, which is his own conception of what a philosopher should do in society. Of his works, the two volumes written with Féliz Guattari stand out (a thousand plateaus and The anti-oedipus), Difference and repetition, What is philosophy? and his two books on cinema: Motion image and Image time.
• Jacques Derrida (1930-2004). He was a French philosopher of Algerian origin, and is one of the most controversial thinkers of the 20th century. Father of deconstruction, which is a critical way of doing philosophy, he has written numerous works on various topics. Some thinkers consider him the most revolutionary author of the 20th century, comparing him to figures such as Immanuel Kant or Friedrich Nietzsche. In his thinking he dealt with different topics of the philosophical canon such as meaning, truth, being, logos, beings, language, life, death and the body. Influenced by Hegel, Nietzsche, Husserl, Freud and Heidegger, among others, even today, almost twenty years after his death, seminars and unpublished works of his authorship continue to be published. Among his most notable publications are From grammatology, Writing and the difference, The voice and the phenomenon, Specters of Marx, Friendship politics, Give (the) death, Give (the) time), glass and the seminars The beast and the sovereign II and II.
• Giorgio Agamben (1942-.). He is an Italian philosopher, and one of the most renowned living contemporary philosophers. Mainly known for the concepts of emergency, homo sacer and biopolitics (although he shares this with Foucault), he has written numerous works on the subject. Friend and collaborator of the filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini, he has also written about cinema and various arts. Among his best-known works are homo sacer, What remains of Auschwitz, The open, The power of thought and Childhood and history.

21st century and postmodernism

The thought of the 21st century is characterized by being a form of philosophy still in development. Starting in the second half of the 20th century, and after the fall of attempts to create total systems of thought (such as Hegelianism or Kant's thought), and with the precipitation of capitalism and its global consequences, many thinkers are turning to their efforts to think about those elements that are usually located on the margins.

An example of this is usually social groups that for some reason do not end up being accepted in the normative canons of Western society, such as different feminisms, LGTB+ communities or those individuals who do not belong to ethnic groups of hegemonic power. The same happens with movements that try to recover the rights over non-human forms of life, including those self-proclaimed “plantist” movements, or with ecological, ecofeminist or posthumanist movements.

In relation to posthumanism, there is a current current of thinkers that tries to think about human and non-human forms of life beyond the centrality of the human. This implies, for example, some current controversies that have to do with technological implants that question what it means to be “human”, the idea of ​​the cyborg or speciesist hybridity.

At the same time, environmental movements, together with feminisms and divergent forms of thought, try to think of ways of life that try to overcome production systems that are harmful to the planet.

The vast majority of these studies cross their research in a multidisciplinary manner, encountering along the way works that come from sociology, history, physics, biology, politics or anthropology.

Those who write from philosophy have incorporated many of Derrida's premises into their ideas, as deconstruction is a critical way of attacking the canon, as well as some of Deleuze's premises and concepts, which allow us to think about a broader conceptual hybridization than usual. .

Authors such as Donna Haraway, Judith Butler or Paul B. Preciado, who began publishing at the end of the 20th century, around the 80s and 90s, are completely valid today, especially because of the impulse they have given to many of these movements and currents when generating new ways of thinking.

References

• Muguerza J., The analytical conception of philosophy, Madrid, Alianza, 1974
• Passmore J., 100 years of philosophy, Madrid, Alianza Universidad
• Romero, F. (1936). Contemporary philosophy.
• King, G. (1997). Contemporary philosophy of mind: A contentiously classical approach.
• Bochenski, J. M. (1969). Contemporary European Philosophy. Univ of California Press.
• Placencia, L. (2017). Considerations on the distinction between “analytical philosophy” and “continental philosophy.” Mutatis Mutandis: International Journal of Philosophy, 1(9), 7-14.