They’re busy with the great work of translation. Translating European philosophy into analyticese – analytic philosophy. Making it clear! Intelligible! Readable by a general audience!
No more obscurity. Nothing difficult. Nothing unnecessarily opaque.
They’re bringing it all into the light – the Analytic Philosophy light. That shines benignly upon us all.
The great work of translation. Necessary work, if European thought is ever to become really intelligible. And thereby accessible. And thereby useful.
If thought is ever to have impact, beyond the academe … If it is ever to connect, to tell its story … If it will ever contribute to funding bids … to impact case studies …
If it is ever to be known outside the humanities. To the broader public … If it is to be introduced properly, contextualised properly … If it is ever to have a plaque by its name, like contemporary art … If it’s ever going to be explained (and explained away) … It needs to be translated into a neutral vocabulary (which is to, an analytic vocabulary.)
And with all the advances in Analytic Philosophy to help. To assist. All the latest developments in Analytic Philosophy at hand.
The analytic philosophers have been working hard for this. Writing their papers. Gathering at conferences. With a sense of mission.
You know what they’re like. Philosophical underlabourers. Modest. Scientist-like. A group project, really. A borg thing. Writing their papers. Quoting each other. An analytic wide web …
And the light, the Analytic Philosophy light everywhere. Shining into every corner and crack. Making things clear. Intelligible. Understandable.
Bringing European philosophy into mainstream debate. European philosophy won’t be on the philosophical margins. It can be part of the general conversation. In the name of diversity. Of equality. Of the honouring of the fact that there are other traditions. Other ways of doing philosophy.
We need to admit it. Continental thought needs to be updated. Reframed. Made clear. Made relevant!
If only Immanuel Kant had had the language of Analytic Philosophy at his disposal. If only he’d written in English. Good old English, the clearest of language. The most transparent.
Because Analytic Philosophy is, if nothing else, clear. Because Analytic Philosophy pretty much has the dibs on clarity. Analytic Philosophy, alone knows what clarity is. Has been working on clarity, in clarity, thinking of nothing but clarity.
Shining its light! The beneficent Anglo light! The great gift to the world: beneficent Anglo light! Bringing clarity! The light of the Analytic Philosophy sun. That will banish all shadows.
The Analytic Philosophy light standing still in the sky. There it is: the analytic noon. Obvious. And making everything obvious. Allowing everything to be revealed. Shown. For what it was. Banishing shadows. Darknesses. Obscurities. Mysticisms …
No more dubious religiosity. No more antediluviainism. None of the old stuff. A brave new Analytic Philosophy dawn. Things won’t be the same anymore.
General positivity. No more adolescent stuff. No more talk of nothingnesses and voids. No more fretting about the death of God, or death as God. Jettisoning once and for all the eternal return of Gnosticism. The idea that nature is evil. That there should be a horror at existence. No more angst. No more throwback existentialism.
Philosophy’s not to be the hideout of weirdoes. Conspiracy theorists. We need to weed out all the strange people. Clear out the eccentrics. Isn’t that the mission?
A general organising and managing. That takes the form of a sorting. Of a separation of the wheat from the chaff.
We need saner philosophers. Calmer philosophers. Philosophers with clear heads. With a sense of mission. Who know what’s to be done. Modest philosophers. Underlabourer philosophers. Who have the requisite philosophical taste.
This is not a time for fanaticism. For the ill-tempered. For excess, in general. For unregulated emotion. What’s needed is a cadre of the sensible – of the analytic philosophy sensible. Calm under pressure. Non excitable types! Cool headed types! Not all blood and fervour! Not all full of wild imaginings!
None of the religious madness! None of those European religious types,r religious without religion. None of the continental faithful who have nowhere to place it, their faith.
None of those passionate intensity types. Fervoured types. Febrile types, heads full of fever. None of the disturbed. The addled. The conceptually confused.
None of the mooded. Those prone to melancholy. To depressions. To general messianism. Forget the pathos-led. The mood-fuelled. Unbalanced types! Wayward types! The barefoot in the head!
And no more prose poem philosophy. Philosophy’s not about literary beauty. Written in clear, calm prose. Philosophy needs to be severed once and for all from the poetic. From dubious old literature. From every kind of rhetoric.
Philosophy, in calm prose. Unfebrile prose. Philosophy, written with a clear head. Not drunk! Not even hungover!
A new sobriety! The sobriety of Analytic Philosophy! Of Organisational Management!
There’s work to be done – sober work. Calm work. Measured work. Work that needs cool heads. There are meetings to be had. A careful division of tasks. Going into each branch of philosophy. Root and branch reform. The continental tinkers will need to be subject to analysis. Taken apart. Reassembled. Made bionic.
This will take time. And patience. Only the soberest and calmest need apply! Need analytic philosophers working on every part of continental philosophy. Extracting analytic value. Converting the most rebarbative formulations into clear declarative propositions. Labouring to make the obscure clear. Taking full advantage of the many advances in analytic philosophy. New advances in clarity!. New progress in the science of distinctness!
We might even be able to automate the process. Surely there’s help to be had from large language models … Surely they’ll develop a bring-Adorno-into-clarity app. A Hegel-in-plain English app.
Heidegger’s causing them particular problems. Let alone Hölderlin! Analytic Philosophy doesn’t do madness … Or poetry …
Al these names! These great European signatures! Of course, Analytic Philosophy has long since outgrown the celebration of individual genius. And the pathos of thought, capital T. All the European infantile fixations on Genius and Great Men. Which is really only a sign of the immaturity of thought. Of a kind of drunkenness in thought.
It’s what happens when you’re given too much rope. Europe, Old Europe, must be brought into line. Its delusions of grandiosity. That philosophy can actually Decide things. That philosophy matters. Queen of the Sciences, and so on.
All that metaphysics! Irrationality! We have to work out what is to be saved and what should to be jettisoned, from European philosophy. From Old Europe in general. And if it’s going to be judged, it has to be presented in a neutral vocabulary at least.
Only then might European philosophy’s contributions to epistemology, ontology, metaphysics be weighed up by analytic experts. Gauged! Carefully assessed! Placed alongside their Analytic contemporaries. By editors of Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society and Mind. No more hagiographies. No more hero worship. Ancestor worship. Cultic reverence for predecessors. No more uncritical veneration. No more laudatory essays. No more placing on a pedestal. No more mystique about thought. It isn’t helpful. No more general pathos. No more general hysteria. The age of Clarity is arriving.
Work in Progress 