Introduction

language as calculus vs. language as the universal medium

pp. 1-10

in: Martin Kusch, Language as calculus vs. language as universal medium, Berlin, Springer, 1989

Abstract

It is customary to distinguish two traditions of contemporary philosophical thought, often referred to as 'continental thought' and "analytical philosophy'. That these two traditions share several important problems and concerns has been suggested and defended in the last couple of decades in a number of influential studies.¹ This essay is an attempt to vindicate further the thesis that there is a common ground shared by the two traditions. The differences and parallels between Edmund Husserl's phenomenology, Martin Heidegger's "thought of Being" and Hans-Georg Gadamer's hermeneutics will be interpreted here with the help of a conceptual framework that has so far been applied only to the classics of the analytical tradition, such as Frege, Russell, and Wittgenstein. By using this framework I shall in the first place try to track down the roots of Husserl's and Heidegger's crucial disagreements over such key issues as semantics, possible worlds, relativism, and truth. Insofar as the same interpretational tools that have proved useful in studying the classics of the analytical tradition thus also turn out to be useful in the case of continental thinkers, this success in itself constitutes indirect evidence for significant parallels between these two strands of modern philosophy.