Postmodernists were actually a small minority within Continental philosophy. post-structuralism was huge tho, and conties absolutely rule at phenomenology
Much of current continental phil. is actually sort-of leaning towards types direct realism.

but yeah, it's mostly atheistic as well

This post was edited by Gastly on Sep 18 2016 01:33pm

Then it's especially worthless as it ignores science entirely.

Phenomenology should become a branch of empirical study, using the methodology pioneered by Sasha Shulgin in PiHKAL.

This post was edited by Voyaging on Sep 18 2016 01:36pm

lmao no. Types of direct realism in the spirit of Heidegger's instrumental phenomenology & Deleuzian shit.

What's up with the fact that criticisms of continentals almost universally seem to amount to the problem of "not having read any of it at all"?

This post was edited by Gastly on Sep 18 2016 01:46pm

If it's direct realism it ignores science. I was just going by your word. It's no different than a philosopher who claims atomism is correct. I don't have to read it to know it's already been falsified.

The most common criticisms are ime are typically either 1. Ignores science or 2. Is deliberately obfuscatory (e.g. Heidegger)

This post was edited by Voyaging on Sep 18 2016 01:52pm

"Types of direct realism" was what I said tho. If you want to go by my word then you should go by it.

I'm not aware of conties dismissing science, and Heidegger actually has valid reasons for his weird use of language (once you get the gist of it it ain't that hard to read though). I don't see anyone criticising German idealists for obfuscatory language (apart from Schopenhauer) even though they inherited their use of language from Kant.
Is Wittgenstein obfuscatory as well?

Wittgenstein is crystal clear as is Schopenhauer imo. Two of my favorites and my views closely resemble many of theirs, especially my metaphysics and overall pessimism is Schopenhauerean.

I've read Kant without much trouble, but couldn't get almost any understanding of Heidegger or Husserl, and even less from Derrida or Foucault.

I apologize for misrepresenting your statement. What did you mean by types of direct realism?

I guess I'm kind of being unfair because I'm using continental to mean "anything that's not analytic" and I call analytic anything that uses language clearly and with attention to logical detail and is informed about updated science. So in that sense i see both Wittgenstein and Schopenhauer as analytic (technically I think Schopenhauer is pre-analytic philosophy in general but I mean his methodology and attention to clarity). So maybe my terminology is biased.

This post was edited by Voyaging on Sep 18 2016 03:07pm

Schopenhauer is a masterful stylicist, but reading either early or late Wittgenstein is a real chore. I really can't get into Wittgenstein's style at all.

Kant's a terrible writer and I've always had trouble trying to read his Critiques. At least Prolegomena was somewhat accessible. Husserl is hard to read, but mostly so because of his Kant-ish style of writing. Heidegger has his own brand of neologisms, but imo he's pretty much a revolutionary character in the history of philosophy.
Never bothered with Derrida really. If there's anyone that can be accused of a deliberately obfuscational style it would be him. Foucault never seemed half-bad at this regard.

In modern continental philosophy the "direct realism" that I was referring to would refer to a sort of anti-Kantianism and it would have to do with an "instrumental view" in Heideggerian phenomenology. That is that we can gain direct access to the objects of the world because of the ways that we generally gain access to any object at all, though our access at the objects' nature wouldn't "exhaust" them ontologically.

Check out Dreyfus' lectures on Heidegger

This post was edited by Gastly on Sep 18 2016 03:51pm

I'll check that stuff out and truthfully I am ignorant about the field.

I guess my distaste for a lot of it is that, from my naive understanding, it seems a lot of the philosophers make claims about the world that are in the purview of the scientific method, but without using science, evidence, or empirical analysis to demonstrate their truth.

Now I might be completely misunderstanding, but for example I mentioned Foucault because he seems to me to be making truth claims about things that are far better explained by e.g. the social sciences. It seems like a bunch of shit he just made up with no good reason to believe any of it. I get the same feeling when reading a lot of the philosophers outside the analytic tradition. Marx is another great example of a person seemingly making scientific claims without scientific evidence. When I read stuff like that I always just think to myself "none of this has anything to do with reality!" None of it is falsifiable or verifiable.

Like I said, could just be my own ignorance.

This post was edited by Voyaging on Sep 18 2016 04:54pm

Foucault actually works a lot withing the social sciences. His scholarship has been criticised a lot, but he's still a great writer..
Much of Foucault's etc. philosophy could be read in comparison with Analytic Anti-foundationalism
Marx's work predates the analytic-continental distinction. The Capital is actually filled with his examples of empirical evidence, which partially makes it for such a heavy read.

yeah you're pretty ignorant, that handegg avatar is still etched in my mind