There Are More Things Than Are Dreamt of in Your Analytic Philosophy

A (Probably Apocryphal) Story of An Epic Philosophy Trolling

Diogenes the Cynic and philosophical troll

I love analytic philosophy. I also hate analytic philosophy. I hate continental philosophy. And I’m learning to love continental philosophy. Are these contradictory statements? I told you, I’m learning to love continental philosophy.

I know many people claim that the analytic/continental divide is passé or forced or something, but I love it. I love to press on it to see what’s really there. I love the tropes and canards of both sides because they are sometimes instructive and many times hilarious.

I started my autodidact education with analytic philosophy of religion and continental inspired Christian apologetics. Then I went to seminary where we got a face full of continental philosophy, a good helping of historical philosophy, and I even took a couple classes in analytic theology. After completing two Master’s in seminary, I earned a third MA in analytic philosophy of religion with a prof who slipped in a lot of early phenomenology.

So, I’ve run the gambit and now as I find myself reading more and more classical philosophers, I’m finding it more and more fun to poke fun at my continental and analytic friends—and even the classical/history of phil. folks. Mostly, I think it’s a virtue to not take yourself too seriously and I’m happy to help my friends with that—even while admitting that most of them know way more than me and are totally brilliant.

I’ve done some decent gadflying on my philosophy & theology podcast, Parker’s Pensées, with folks like Michael Huemer from time to time. Here’s our best episode on that:

But recently Bentham's Bulldog reignited the analytic/continental beef here on Substack and on Twitter and it’s great to occasionally check in on the progress. There are some really profound replies to his analytic attack on continentals and there are some really funny ones. It’s great.

So, in light of this, and the fact that the analytics might be winning those exchanges, I wanted to share one of my favorite non-analytic trollings of an analytic philosopher.

I’m not making any claims about Sidney Morgenbesser’s view on analytic philosophy or anything, but he trolled J.L. Austin in the story below with tools from Jewish witticism and not from the analytic philosophy of language that Austin was one of the progenitors of. I don’t think it’ll add any heat or light to the divide debate, but hopefully it adds some more laughs. And the joke actually is pretty profound when you contemplate how it works.

So here’s the story:

Sidney Morgenbesser, a Jewish philosopher at Columbia, was confronted at Oxford by John Austin, the British logician, who said to him, “Mr. Morgenbesser, I am told that you believe that two affirmatives can make a negative. Now that is just not possible in English. In our language two negatives can make an affirmative, but two affirmativws cannot make a negative.” To which Morgenbesser replied, “yeah, yeah”.

Peter Kreeft, C.S. Lewis for the Third Millenium, pg. 147