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A Defense of the Continental Tradition

  Once again, as happens every few years, "continental" philosophy is under attack.  I would say that this is another round in the war between "analytic" philosophers and "continental" philosophers, but I think that would give the attackers too much credit.  I've written about "analytic" and "continental" philosophy before, for instance here and here , and in those brief articles I hope I actually had something interesting to say.  Instead, in the present essay, I'll simply rehearse what everyone with half a brain should already know. The charge against "continental" philosophy is that it is hard to understand.  In order to make this charge, someone who calls himself " Bentham's Bulldog " takes quotes from Judith Butler out of context and challenges anyone to defend her writing style.  I'm not going to defend Judith Butler here.  I'm just going to say: Yes, if you don't bother to read somethi...
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  Postmodernism means at least 5 different things, though they are not unrelated: Step 1. A vague term for anything that comes after modernism - for instance architecture that no longer fits into what might be called "modern architecture"; Step 2. As Lyotard would have it, a condition characterized by incredulity towards metanarratives; Step 3. As Jameson emphasizes, an aesthetics and a "cultural logic" of pastiche - which can be understood either as a multiplicity of partial and incompatible narratives, or as an ironic repetition, or both; Step 4. An end to belief in nature; Step 5. An end to belief in truth. 
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After reading a syllable of Wittgenstein I know what kind of personality he has and immediately understand that if a problem is solved for him, it isn't solved for me.
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Sartre's work could be described as an untethered Hegelianism. In other words, Sartre takes Hegel's writing style and surgically detaches it from Hegel's overall philosophical project. The literary motive force that takes Hegel from point A to point B is still in operation, but there is no plan and no destination.  The engine is running, but no one is at the steering wheel, and so the vehicle wanders randomly around the map. 
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 AI isn't just stealing our jobs, it's stealing our skills.
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How to Read Nietzsche Badly - By Seeing Him as an Existentialist

    Perhaps the most common definition of existentialism is the one given by Sartre- the idea that, as he puts it, “existence precedes essence” or, in other words, that there is no given meaning for experience, and therefore you have a responsibility to create meaning for your own experience. There is a long tradition that this comes from - most notably Kierkegaard - or you could go further back and look at Schelling’s call for a “philosophy of existence”.  Arguably one can find similar sentiments expressed throughout history.   Briefly, I don’t think this definition fits Nietzsche very well. In fact I think he would have seen some unexamined Kantian vestiges in Sartre’s definition. Sartre was an avowed humanist, and Nietzsche was contemptuous of humanism. He thought that the death of God also implied the end of humanism. And I think Kierkegaard and Nietzsche are as different as night and day. Sartre famously opined that we are all "doomed to be free" - ...
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    To translate into language these people can understand: capitalism, especially in its later phases, by marketizing everything, results in a low-trust society, which in turn undermines the conditions that make capitalism possible.    
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