I have heard it said by English academics that the continentals, particularly the French, are too rationalist and "tidy-minded".
A Cambridge sociologist used those precise words - "tidy-minded" - to me with regard to Maurice Duverger the French political scientist.
This view could perhaps see this French tendency as maybe not empirical enough - too logical and systematic. The continentals supposedly don't allow for the imperfections and exceptions of the real world etc.
Yet then at the same time it is contended that the continentals are not logical enough because they have space for existentialism and literature as philosophy and other such irrationality, whereas the English-speaking world is devoted to analytic philosophy with all its precision and logic.
The conventional view is that the Analytical philosophers are logical and the Continentals illogical.
Whereas - the Continentals see themselves as rational and the English as irrational; and the English think the French are "tidy-minded" and over-rational.
How to make sense of this tangle of apparent contradictions?
The English seem to think the Coninentals and/or French are over-logical or illogical and the French and/or Continentals think the English are not logical or perhaps over-logical as well.
The English think the French are irrational because of things like existentialism.
Yet the French are regarded as rationalists as opposed to English empiricism; and the French tend to think that the English are not intellectual.
I think there are things to be said in defence of both sides of this dispute.
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I parade myself here as a rationalist. Yet I have obvious sympathies with existentialism.
I think that it is impossible to entirely separate philosophy from life, as we live it.
I think that good philosophy should help people how to live.
A contradiction? Not necessarily. Existentialism is not always entirely irrational.
Existentialism is still an interesting philosophical tendency.
Also, according to Sartre, "Existentialism is a humanism".
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....
A Cambridge sociologist used those precise words - "tidy-minded" - to me with regard to Maurice Duverger the French political scientist.
This view could perhaps see this French tendency as maybe not empirical enough - too logical and systematic. The continentals supposedly don't allow for the imperfections and exceptions of the real world etc.
Yet then at the same time it is contended that the continentals are not logical enough because they have space for existentialism and literature as philosophy and other such irrationality, whereas the English-speaking world is devoted to analytic philosophy with all its precision and logic.
The conventional view is that the Analytical philosophers are logical and the Continentals illogical.
Whereas - the Continentals see themselves as rational and the English as irrational; and the English think the French are "tidy-minded" and over-rational.
How to make sense of this tangle of apparent contradictions?
The English seem to think the Coninentals and/or French are over-logical or illogical and the French and/or Continentals think the English are not logical or perhaps over-logical as well.
The English think the French are irrational because of things like existentialism.
Yet the French are regarded as rationalists as opposed to English empiricism; and the French tend to think that the English are not intellectual.
I think there are things to be said in defence of both sides of this dispute.
.....
---
I parade myself here as a rationalist. Yet I have obvious sympathies with existentialism.
I think that it is impossible to entirely separate philosophy from life, as we live it.
I think that good philosophy should help people how to live.
A contradiction? Not necessarily. Existentialism is not always entirely irrational.
Existentialism is still an interesting philosophical tendency.
Also, according to Sartre, "Existentialism is a humanism".
...
....