Issues:

1-What is Contemporary Ethics?

2-Do you remember some Philosophers? Which ones?

3-What are the three problems of Contemporary Ethics?

Philosophers of contemporary Ethics.

Some philosophers of contemporary Ethics are

-Nietzsche -Kierkegaard

-Freud -Stirner

-Marx -Hegel

Problems of Contemporary Ethics.

Some of the problems of contemporary Ethics are:

-Human freedom

-The problem of the end and the means.

-The difference between Ethics

and moral.

Dissertations on contemporary Ethics regarding the

Church.
Modernity and postmodernity.
Faced with the monopoly of the Catholic, Apostolic and Roman
Church in Spain, voices appeared on which a new Ethics of more
positive and tolerant values was built than the one that the
Catholic Church represented at that time, ideas that did not intend
to end or confront the Catholic Church, or separate it, but place it
in the place and place that, as a belief, corresponds to any
religion.

Ethics cannot be genuinely understood except through history.

This statement becomes relevant for us inhabitants of this end of
the millennium not so much because four numbers on the calendar
change from 2000 onwards, but because this coincides with a
change of era.

Characteristics.
Within Contemporary Ethics we include not only current ethical
doctrines, but also those that, despite having emerged in the 19th
century, such as the ideas of Kierkegaard, Stirner or Marx.

The ethical doctrines that come after Kant and Hegel appear in a
social world that, after the revolution of 1789, has not only known
the establishment of a social order that is presented in
accordance with the rational nature of man, but also a society in
which contradictions emerge and become more acute.

What is contemporary Ethics?

Contemporary Ethics is characterized by being an ethics that
seeks secular values that promote citizen coexistence from the
perspective of freedom of belief and respect for the diversity of
cultures, religions, and non-dictatorial human ideologies.

Contemporary Ethics is the part of philosophy included in the

Contemporary Era.

Contemporary ethics.
Made by: Arnaldo, Ismael, Joaquín, Pablo, Bryan and Javier.
4ºB-ESO
 CONTEMPORARY ETHICAL THEORIES: Review
Contemporary ethical theories
Percy Cayetano Acuña Vigil [ ]

In this writing I present an updated overview of contemporary ethics with the purpose of
organizing recent informative material.

1. Ethics. Definition.
Ethics is one of the branches of philosophy. It studies things by their causes, what is
universal and necessary, it constitutes a level of reflection about codes, judgments or moral
actions and in it the relevant question is why should I, that is, ethics has to give reason
through philosophical reflection (conceptual and with claims to universality) of morality,
has to embrace the moral world in its specificity and reflexively give reason for it. (Cortina,
1996:31, 2000:29 and 221/Höffe, 1994:99) [ ].

Morality is the set of codes or judgments that seek to regulate the concrete actions of men
referring to either individual, social behavior or with respect to nature, offering for this
norms with content, it tries to answer the question what should I do ( Cortina:
1996:89/Höffe, 1994: 190);
The first is moral thought; the second is lived morality (Aranguren, 1997: 3, 58-60).

According to a “classical” current, ethics has as its object the acts that human beings carry
out consciously and freely. It is not limited only to seeing how these acts are carried out,
but seeks to make a judgment about them, which allows us to determine whether an act
has been ethically good or ethically bad [ ]. This implies establishing a distinction between
what is good and what is bad from an ethical point of view, and whether or not ethical good
and evil coincide with what good and evil themselves would be.[ ]

Ethical theories are those proposals that seek to explain the form of morality.

These ethical theories require a reflective ethos, which according to Maliandi [ ] has three
levels:
Descriptive ethics, whose task is not to think about the moral foundations or to criticize
them or evaluate them, only to describe them.
Normative ethics , which deals with "ought" and makes judgments about the moral fact.
Metaethics , developed by philosophers of language and deals with analyzing moral
language.

2. The conceptions of ethics:

Angel Rodriguez Luño in General Ethics [ ] exposes five conceptions of ethics that are
currently of great importance.

2.1. Ethics as an investigation into the type of life that is best for man. It is the approach
common to almost all Greek philosophers and, with some transformations, also among
medieval philosophers ( Saint Augustine , Saint Thomas Aquinas ).
 Thomas Aquinas

2.2. Ethics as an inquiry into the moral law that must be observed. This figure of ethics was
born in the 14th century, with J. Duns Escoto and G. of Ockham , in the context of
serious and complicated theological controversies. It develops and diversifies in at least
two directions: in the field of post-Tridentine Catholic moral theology, as casuistic
morality; in the realm of the Enlightenment, as secularized ethics of law (rationalist
natural law and Kant 's ethics of duty).

2.3. Moral philosophy as a search and foundation for the rules for coexistence and social
collaboration. This approach, of which Hobbes can be considered its first representative,
leads one to consider reflection on the supreme good as inappropriate and even illusory,
and advises concentrating all efforts on the more modest, but also more realistic and
urgent, objective of avoiding the supreme good. evil. (Rawls, Habermas, Apel).

2.4. Ethics as a naturalistic explanation of human behavior. Hume could be its most
significant classical representative.
2.5. Ethics as knowledge ordered to the production of a good (or the best) life situation for
the individual or the community. This figure of ethics is represented by the various
utilitarian doctrines, with which the ethical currents that we today call consequentialism
and proportionalism are related.

3. Ethics since 1900

If we refer to the beginnings of moral thought since 1900, analytical ethics, axiological
ethics, and existentialist ethics are recorded.

3.1. Analytical ethics.

Consult my writing on: Philosophy of language

Consult my writing on: Meaning of the term Analytics
Consult my writing on: Logic and philosophy of language: Saúl Kripke.

3.2. Axiological ethics

Max Scheler
 Nicolai Hartmann

With phenomenology the issue of values becomes relevant. The works of Max Scheler
and Nicolai Hartmann (Ethik, 1926) gave the theory of values the methodological tools
that allowed it to find its essence.
The contribution of the ethics of values is to have highlighted their importance in the moral
life and in the lives of people.

Scheler used phenomenology to study emotional phenomena and their respective

intentions (values) and from them he developed a very solid and original personalistic
foundation of ethics: the realization of values is concretized in human models that invite
their follow-up. These models would be the hero for vital values, the genius for spiritual
values and the saint for religious values.

His most famous work , Formalism in Ethics and the Material Ethics of Values
(1913-1916), is a treatise in two volumes that attempts to give a new personalist foundation
to ethics, from this new foundation the merely formal ethical approach is criticized. of the
German philosopher Immanuel Kant and changes it to a study of values as specific
contents of ethics, which are presented in a direct and immediate way to the person and
not to conscience as Husserl maintained.

The main thesis presented by Hartmann in the Foundations of Ontology is that all
ontological differences are articulations of being, not differences between being and non-
being. The Parts and the whole are both authentic aspects of the self, the independent and
dependent entities are equally aspects of the self, the physical, biological, psychological and
spiritual types of the self are all manifestations of the self, and none of them is "more
being" than the other.

Consult my writing on: What is Axiology?

3.3. Existentialist ethics

 Frederick Nietzsche

The most representative philosophers of this approach are Pascal, Jean Paul Sartre,
Soren Kierkegard and Frederick Nietzsche.
It is not a homogeneous or systematized school, and its followers are mainly characterized
by their reaction against traditional philosophy. These philosophers focused on the
analysis of the condition of human existence, freedom and individual responsibility,
emotions, as well as the meaning of life.

One of his fundamental postulates is that in the human being "existence precedes essence"
(Sartre), he maintains that there is no human nature that determines individuals, but
rather their acts are what determine who they are, as well as the meaning of their lives.
Existentialism defends that the individual is free and totally responsible for his actions.
This incites in human beings the creation of an ethic of individual responsibility, separated
from any belief system external to them. In general terms, existentialism seeks an ethics
that overcomes moralities and prejudices.

Consult my writing on the work of: Federico Nietzsche

4. Contemporary ethics

Regarding the term contemporary ethics, we refer here to the proposals that have been
unfolding little by little from the seventies to the present day.
Currently the ethical discussion seems to focus fundamentally between substantialists
and proceduralists .

In an initial characterization, while proceduralism considers that the ethical task lies in
discovering the legitimizing procedures of the norms (Cortina, 2000: 75-78),
substantialism maintains as an ethical task the search within the concrete praxis of the
rationality immanent to the same.

This classification includes in the proceduralist proposals the work of: Karl Otto Apel ,
Jürgen Habermas and Adela Cortina , all of them with proposals inscribed within
discursive ethics, Enrique Dussel defender of an ethics of liberation and John Rawls
who is inscribed within neocontractualism.

Adela Cortina

Substantial ethical theories usually include the proposals of Charles Taylor, neo-
Hegelianism, Alasdair MacIntyre, neo-Aristotelianism, and Richard Rorty ,
neopragmatist.

4.1. Substantialism
Substantialism presents a marked rejection of modernity and believes it is necessary to
return to stages prior to modernity and to a substantive reason. His proposal is that of a
moral philosophy that pays more attention to the plurality of forms of good than to a
conception of rational definition (Thiebaut, 1992: 40).
Substantialism criticizes the modern distinction between the good and the just and
subscribes to the thesis that the just is only thinkable as a form of good (Taylor, 1996: 102-
106) and that the latter always and ultimately has a contextual reference. and that in this
sense the concrete forms of moral good are those that actually determine the ethical point
of view.

In 1981, in Behind Virtue , the British philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre presented a

substantialist ethical proposal that is considered, along with that of Charles Taylor, as
the most representative of this current of thought.

Alasdair MacIntyre

4.2. Proceduralism
Proceduralism assigns ethics the task of discovering the legitimizing procedures of norms
(Cortina, 2000: 75-78). It is these rationally structured procedures that allow individuals
to distinguish which norms from those arising in the life world are correct.

Proceduralism attempts to give reasons for the claim of universality of morality and
therefore appeals to cognitive structures and procedures that exhibit universality in their
form, and thus legitimizing procedures can be described without depending on the various
contexts, and therefore aims justifiably universality.
Proceduralism also highlights the importance of being able to abstract from the world of
life in order to carry out the review and criticism of this same world through a rational
procedure.

Adela Cortina is part of proceduralism and discursive ethics, presenting as a theoretical

framework fundamentally the work of Kant, Hegel, Habermas and Apel .

Discursive ethics constitutes a theoretical model aimed at substantiating the validity of

moral statements and judgments through the examination of the presuppositions of
discourse. Contemporary discursive ethics has been developed by the German
philosophers Jürgen Habermas and Karl-Otto Apel , who are considered the basic
and unavoidable references.

Habermas's discourse ethics is an attempt to explain the implications of

communicative rationality in the realm of moral intuition and normative validity.

The starting point of discursive ethics is not ontological -of being-, it has as its starting
point a linguistic factum of philosophy and considers language from the triple dimension
of the sign -syntactic-semantic-and transcendental programmatics, under a transcendental
situation of dialogue and not from the empirical practice of factual consensus.

Discursive ethics is cognitive, in the sense that it believes the foundation of moral
judgments is possible. It is universalist, because the criteria must be applied universally. It
is deontological, in the sense that it abstracts from the issues of the good life, limiting itself
to the case of what is obligatory according to the parameters of justice of the norms and
forms of action. Discursive ethics is also classified as formalist [ ].
 Jurgen Habermas

5. Other contemporary ethics

Ethics of alterity developed by Emmanuel Levinas , Ethics of responsibility by Hans
Jonas , Postmodern ethics by Gianni Vattimo .

Furthermore, private life, professional, economic and political life, as free activities, are
equally moral realities. Along with personal ethics, there are also professional ethics,
economic ethics and political ethics.

Thematic areas of special interest and difficulty:

Moral epistemology : This is the theory of moral knowledge.
Moral anthropology : It is the theory of the moral subject.
Normative principles : It is the theory of ethical criteria for the direction and
assessment of behavior.

6. Positive ethics and active ethics

Positive ethics is one that man knows but if the practice is only to satisfy his particular
interest, it is limited to compliance with the principles that govern good individual
conduct, but does not concern itself with converting those principles into a value of
applicability. social.

Simplifying, it would be to adopt as the object of ethics the opposition in acts between good
and evil, always understanding that the perception of evil is never radical and absolute but
that evil is done because it results in at least the perception of a some subjective benefit.

To consider the scope of ethics exclusively in the operational distinction of good and evil
would be to considerably reduce its significance as a scale of the judgment of our
conscience. Ethics as a value would be subject to the evaluation of the evil that could arise
from our actions and to direct our actions in a way that avoids possible evil.

This ethics considered in the opposition between good and evil, in addition to only serving
a small scope of our operations, is essentially constituted as a negative ethics, that of
avoiding evil, which for centuries has marked, at least, the aspect of social ethics. Avoiding
and punishing evil has prevailed over the genuine value of ethics as the regulator of human
acts for their own purpose, which is the exercise of good.

Active ethics is one that, adjusting to principles of good conduct, works in favor of these
principles with the purpose of generalizing them within the social group.

7. NATURAL LAW AND POSITIVE LAW.

Renaissance ethics: Towards the 13th and 14th centuries, ethical reflection took two
different paths. The first tries to continue with the Aristotelian proposal and the
Thomistic theory . The second is directed, rather, by a reaction against
scholasticism and the predominant tradition until now.

As for the first movement, it had two directions:

a) In Italy: a group of writers and natural scientists based in the city of Padua went back to
the works of some Averroists and in turn to Aristotle himself where they found the source
of an ethical theory totally congruent with their way of seeing the world. Its main
representative is Pietro Pomponazzi.
b) In the Iberian Peninsula: the Thomistic tradition persists in this territory with a group
of Catholic neo-scholastic thinkers. The theory developed in this part of the hemisphere
was to expound and comment on the work of Saint Thomas and Aristotle . The work of
Francisco de Vitoria stands out .
 The second movement aimed to act against Aristotelianism and its later reflections. He
leaned towards a return to Platonic doctrines. The root of this movement lies in the rise of
empirical science and the fragmentation of unity in the Catholic Church. At the same time,
there is a rediscovery of ancient authors and a greater availability of their texts.
Highlights include the work of Nicholas of Cusa, Cosimo de' Medici, Marsilio
Ficino and Giovanni Pico della Mirrla.

7.1. THE THOMIST ETHICS

Thomistic ethics begins with the distinction of four laws that explain and give purpose to
the world, man and society.
• Eternal law, the very reason of God as creator and organizer of all beings, movements and
actions.
• Natural law projection of eternal law in the world and in the rational creature. In the
world they manifest as physical laws and in man as moral laws.
• Positive law requires the continuation of natural law in the legal norms that govern the
order of society, they are norms always aimed at achieving the common good and
formulated by the ruler in accordance with the moral principles of natural law.
• Law of divine revelation that God makes of himself through sacred texts. Its mission is to
consolidate the religious faith of the believer and complete those aspects of the only truth
that cannot be reached through reason.
There is an interrelation between these laws and they are complementary in nature.

7.2. THE NATURAL LAW

It is the foundation of ethical ideas. Take the Aristotelian distinction between theoretical
understanding (this one thinks that its object is the knowledge of the truth) and practical
understanding, (its maximum aspiration is the knowledge of the good in the moral order)
The content of natural law, its principles and secondary norms are known by practical
understanding based on the analysis of human nature and the set of natural tendencies or
inclinations that belong to them.

Beginning:
• Of man as a being or substance. Deduces the moral principles related to the right to the
preservation of existence and the conservation of life
• Of man as a living being or animal. Deduces the moral principles related to sexuality,
procreation, education of children and family life
• Of man as a rational living being. Deduces the moral principles related to the search for
truth based on the encounter with God as the ultimate goal of man.

Characteristics.
• Unique: since there is only one natural law, ethical pluralism is not admissible.
• Evident: its principles are discovered unequivocally by practical understanding
• Universal: it is valid without exception for all men, all societies and all times.
• Immutable: it cannot be modified in the essence of its principles but its scope of
application can be expanded and perfected based on the interpretation of the revealed texts
(divine law) and its legal development (positive law).
• Formal: its principles have a high degree of generality, so the secondary or specific rules
that follow from them are not always exact, but rather interpretable, and their margin of
interpretation must be within the limits of natural law.

Opposition is virtue, which Sto. Thomas understands it in the Aristotelian sense as the
habit or permanent disposition of acting in accordance with the principles and norms of
natural law.

Distinguishes between intellectual virtues (typical of theoretical understanding) and moral

virtues (typical of practical understanding)

INTELLECTUAL VIRTUES
Intelligence (habit of true concepts)
Science (habit of correct reasoning)
Wisdom (habit of first principles or causes)

MORAL VIRTUES. Primitive, those that serve as the origin and foundation of the others
(cardinal virtues)
Prudence (habit of knowing and deciding correctly in each case)
Justice (habit of giving each person what they deserve)
Fortitude (habit of control and mastery of passions)
Temperance (habit of moderating sensitive appetites)

In addition to these inherent to human nature, we must add theological virtues. They are
exclusively Thomists since there is no precedent in Greek philosophy. It is a free and
mysterious gift that God grants to men for their salvation, which is the ultimate goal of
human life.
Are:
• FAITH. Believe in God and his revealed word
• Hope. Trust in divine grace for the realization of happiness in eternal life.
• Charity. Love God above all things and our neighbors as ourselves.

Civil society.

The natural law ended with the requirement of the realization of the ethics of the person
within a framework of social and political coexistence. Positive law, as a set of legal norms,
has as its mission the rational regulation of coexistence in civil society with a view to
obtaining the ultimate goal: the common good. It is a necessary extension of natural law,
since the moral realization of man has its culmination in civil society. It is something
required by the social and political nature of man.

Thomas Aquinas

7.3. THE POSITIVE LAW

It is a law made and codified (lex scripta) by a legitimate authority: God for the revealed
positive law; a legislator or a legislative assembly for positive human law.

The revealed positive law consists of prescriptions formulated in the Bible, or of natural
law or of various obligations. The latter are of a ceremonial-cult and socio-judicial order in
the Old Testament, and related to the sacraments, evangelization and the life of the Church
in the New Testament.

Positive human law - or simply human law - can occur on a strictly ethical level or on a civil
and legal level. On the ethical level, it consists of prescriptive determinations of the natural
law by a moral authority in order to the natural or supernatural good of people.

Of this type are the moral laws enunciated by the magisterium of the pope and the bishops,
as well as the promulgations of the rights of man and their particular determinations by
the work of legislative assemblies and their reception in the constitutional charters of the
States.

Strictly moral human laws, which look at the ethical good simply, command all good and
prohibit all evil, Civil-legal laws, which look at the common good, command good and
prohibit evil relating to associated life. They have, as such, a more limited and non-
exhaustive ethical importance of the demands of the moral good.
Contemporary philosophy
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Friedrich Nietzsche criticized the metaphysics and objectivity of knowledge and reason of dominant
Western philosophical thought. 1 2 Painting by Edvard Munch .

Contemporary philosophy is the current period in the history of philosophy . By

extension, philosophy produced by philosophers who are still alive is also called by
this name. It is the period that follows modern philosophy , and its beginning is
usually set at the end of the 19th century or the beginning of the 20th century .
The most significant and encompassing philosophical traditions of the 20th century
were analytical philosophy in the Anglo-Saxon world , and continental philosophy in
continental Europe . 3 The 20th century also saw the emergence of new
philosophical currents, such as logical positivism , phenomenology , existentialism ,
poststructuralism , and philosophical materialism .
In this period most of the most important philosophers worked from universities,
especially in the second half of the century. 3 Some of the most discussed topics
were the relationship between language and philosophy (this fact is sometimes
called "the linguistic turn"). The main exponents of this "turn" were Martin
Heidegger in the continental tradition and Ludwig Wittgenstein in the analytic
tradition . 4

Index
  1 19th century

 2 20th century

o 2.1 Analytical philosophy

o 2.2 Continental philosophy

o 2.3 Postmodern philosophy

o 2.4 Ibero-American philosophy

 3 Branches

o 3.1 Metaphysics

o 3.2 Epistemology

o 3.3 Gnoseology

o 3.4 Ethics

 4 See also

 5 Notes and references

 6 External links

19th century
This section is an excerpt from Modern Philosophy [ edit ]

René Descartes , father of modern philosophy. 5 6

Modern philosophy is that philosophy developed during the modern age and
associated with modernity . It is not a specific doctrine or school (so it should not
be confused with specific movements such as Modernism ), although many
authors of this era share certain common assumptions, which helps to distinguish it
from earlier and later philosophy. 7
The 17th century marks the beginning of modern philosophy, while the beginning
of the 20th century roughly marks its end. How much of the Renaissance should be
included as part of modern philosophy is a controversial issue: the Early
Renaissance is often considered less modern and more medieval compared to the
later High Renaissance. 8 It is also debated whether or not modernity has ended in
the 20th century and whether it has been replaced by postmodernism . How one
decides these questions determines the extent of use of the concept of "modern
philosophy." Another of these uses is to date modern philosophy from the "Age of
Reason," where systematic philosophy became common, which excludes Erasmus
of Rotterdam and Niccolò Machiavelli as "modern philosophers." Another way is to
date it, in the same way that most of the modern period is dated, from the
Renaissance . For some, modern philosophy ended in 1800 with the rise of
Hegelianism and idealism . A general view would then have Erasmus of
Rotterdam, Francis Bacon , Niccolò Machiavelli and Galileo Galilei as
representatives of the rise of empiricism and humanism .
During the 17th and 18th centuries, important figures in philosophy of mind ,
epistemology , and metaphysics could be roughly divided into two main groups.
Rationalism , dominant in France and Germany, which argued that all knowledge
has to begin from innate ideas in the mind. Important rationalists were René
Descartes , Baruch Spinoza , Gottfried Leibniz , and Nicolas Malebranche .
Empiricism , on the other hand, defended that knowledge always begins with the
sensory experience that we receive through the senses. Important figures in this
line of thought were David Hume , John Locke and George Berkeley . Ethics and
political philosophy are not generally subsumed within these categories, although
all of these philosophers worked on ethics in their own distinctive styles. Other
important figures in political philosophy are Thomas Hobbes and Jean-Jacques
Rousseau .
In the late 18th century, Immanuel Kant established an innovative philosophical
system that sought to reconcile rationalism and empiricism. Whether he was right
or not, the philosophical dispute continued. Kant strongly influenced German
philosophical works in the early 19th century, thus beginning the tradition of
German idealism . The characteristic theme of idealism was that the world and the
mind must be understood according to the same categories. German idealism
culminated in the work of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel , who, among many other
things, said that “the real is rational; "the rational is real."
The 19th century was characterized by being largely a reaction to the philosophy of
Immanuel Kant , 9 and in the last third to the publication of The Origin of Species . It began
with the development of German Idealism (mainly Fichte , Schelling , and Hegel ), but
continued with a number of other movements, 10 most of which were created by
philosophers working from outside academia. 11 In Germany, the metaphysical excesses of
idealism gave rise to a neo-Kantian movement. Arthur Schopenhauer led idealism to the
conclusion that the world was nothing more than a useless game of images and desires,
and defended atheism and pessimism . Nietzsche , on the other hand, considered that this
did not lead to pessimism, but to the possibility of a new type of freedom, proclaimed the
death of God and together with Kierkegaard laid the foundations for existentialist
philosophy. 12 Auguste Comte coined the term « positivism » and popularized the school of
the same name. 13 14 In ethics, Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill developed
utilitarianism , according to which the right action is that which produces the greatest
amount of general happiness. 15 Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels inverted Hegelian
philosophy to lay the foundations for dialectical materialism . In the United States, Charles
Sanders Peirce , William James , and John Dewey gave rise to the pragmatist school. 16
By the end of the century, Edmund Husserl initiated the school of transcendental
phenomenology . In the last third of the century, Gottlob Frege began his work in
mathematical logic , which would provide the tools for analytical philosophy , but which
would remain unknown until the 20th century. 19th century British philosophy slowly
became dominated by neo-Hegelian thought and as a reaction against this, figures such
as Bertrand Russell and George Edward Moore created the analytic philosophy
movement, which is essentially an update of traditional empiricism to accommodate the
invention of modern logic by the German mathematician Gottlob Frege .

20th century
The 20th century is responsible for the upheavals produced by a series of conflicts
in the philosophical discourse on the bases of knowledge, with classical certainties
overthrown, and with new social, economic, scientific and logical problems.
Twentieth-century philosophy was determined to try to reform and preserve, and to
alter or abolish, old systems of knowledge.
Seminal figures include Søren Kierkegaard , Sigmund Freud , Friedrich Nietzsche ,
Ernst Mach and John Dewey . Epistemology and its basis was its central concern,
as can be seen in the work of Martin Heidegger , Karl Popper , Claude Lévi-
Strauss , Bertrand Russell and Ludwig Wittgenstein . Phenomenologically oriented
metaphysics supported existentialism ( Jean-Paul Sartre , Simone de Beauvoir ,
Karl Jaspers , Albert Camus ) and finally poststructuralist philosophy with Jean-
François Lyotard , Michel Foucault , Gilles Deleuze , Jacques Derrida . Also
notable was the rise of "pop" philosophers who promulgated systems for coping
with the world. Conversely, some philosophers have attempted to define and
rehabilitate old philosophical traditions, such as Hans-Georg Gadamer and
Alasdair MacIntyre who have revived the tradition of Aristotelianism.
Analytical philosophy
This section is an excerpt from Analytical Philosophy [ edit ]

Analytical philosophy is a branch of philosophy developed in the early 20th century

from the works of Bertrand Russell , George Edward Moore , Gottlob Frege ,
several members of the Vienna Circle , and Ludwig Wittgenstein , among others.
By extension, analytical philosophy also refers to the subsequent philosophical
development influenced by these authors, 17 and which prevails with particular
hegemony within the Anglo-Saxon academic sphere (especially in the United
States , 18 United Kingdom , Canada , Australia and New Zealand ) and the
Scandinavian countries , where the vast majority of university philosophy
departments identify themselves as "analytical" departments. 19 The term generally
refers to a broad philosophical tradition. 20 21
Analytical philosophy developed mainly in the Anglo-Saxon world and owes its
name to the emphasis it initially placed on the analysis of language through formal
logic . 22 In the second half of the century, however, analytical philosophy stopped
focusing only on language, and the unity of the tradition fell on the demand for
clarity, on the rigor of logical argumentation and the very justification of what which
arises, in attention to details, respect for natural sciences, 23 24 25 and distrust
towards great philosophical systems. 22
Many philosophers and historians have attempted to define or describe analytic
philosophy. These definitions often include an emphasis on conceptual analysis:
AP Martinich draws an analogy between analytical philosophy's interest in
conceptual analysis and analytical chemistry, which analyzes chemical
compositions. 26 Steven D. Hales described analytical philosophy as one of three
types of philosophical method practiced in the West: "in approximately inverse
order by their number of practitioners, phenomenology, ideological philosophy, and
analytical philosophy." 27
Scott Soames agrees that clarity is important: analytic philosophy, he says, has "an
implicit—if hesitant and imperfect—commitment to ideals of clarity, rigor, and
argument" and that it "aims at truth and knowledge, and not to moral or spiritual
improvement [...] the goal in analytical philosophy is to discover what is true, not to
provide a useful recipe for how to live. Soames also mentions that analytic
philosophy is characterized by "a more gradual approach. There is, I think, a
widespread presumption within the tradition that it is often possible to make
philosophical progress by intensively investigating a small, circumscribed range of
philosophical issues, while leaving broader, more systematic questions waiting." 28
Although difficult to determine exactly, 29 30 broadly speaking, analytical philosophy
is a way of approaching philosophical problems mainly characterized by:

 A special interest in the study of language and the logical analysis of concepts,
considering both formal logic and ordinary language . This feature is found in
practically all the most representative works of Analytical Philosophy since its
origins, such as in Principia Mathematica (1910-1913) by Russell and
Whitehead, or in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921) by Wittgenstein.
 A rather skeptical position regarding the metaphysical tradition. This
characteristic found its highest point in the neopositivism of the Vienna Circle of
Otto Neurath and Rudolf Carnap , who came to adopt the strong position that
metaphysical statements are meaningless, once subjected to logical analysis.
31

 A connection with the empiricist tradition, both in spirit, style, focus, and
philosophical analysis (see Logical Empiricism ).
 A self-proclaimed affinity with scientific research . In particular, with the
concepts of physics as a paradigm for understanding reality. This quality finds
 its most obvious place in Physicalism , but it is a very widespread trait within
the analytic tradition. (However, philosophers such as Steven Horst and Noam
Chomsky and neuroscientists Gerald Edelman and Vilayanur Ramachandran
have noted that scientific research, which occurs in the natural sciences, does
not adopt physicalism or the concept of "science" that characterizes analytical
philosophy. ). 32 33 34 35
 A contrast with other philosophical traditions. Mainly in relation to the so-called
Continental Philosophy , although also to the different forms of Eastern
Philosophy .
Currently, along with the early Philosophy of language , new topics have been
added within Analytical Philosophy, such as the Philosophy of Mind , the
Philosophy of science , the Philosophy of Mathematics , Epistemology and
Metaphysics . This has greatly enriched the analytical tradition that began at the
beginning of the last century, but it has also blurred the characteristic principles
and limits of this philosophical current, which is why it is very controversial to try to
draw a precise definition of the term at the present.
Some early thinkers who are associated with the analytic tradition are Gottlob Frege , G.
AND. Moore , Bertrand Russell , Ludwig Wittgenstein , Karl Popper , Isaiah Berlin and the
members of the Vienna Circle , and later Willard van Orman Quine , Saul Kripke , John
Searle and Donald Davidson , among many others.

Continental philosophy
This section is an excerpt from Continental Philosophy

Continental philosophy is a set of philosophical traditions from the 19th, 20th, and
21st centuries of continental Europe . 36 37 In this sense, the term originated among
English-speaking philosophers in the second half of the 20th century, who used it
to refer to a variety of thinkers and traditions outside the analytic movement .
Continental philosophy develops mainly in Continental Europe (hence its name),
especially in France and Germany, while analytical philosophy has its origins in the
Anglo-Saxon countries of Great Britain and the United States. Continental
philosophy is characterized by being more speculative and by giving more
importance to history than analytical philosophy. 2 Continental philosophy includes
German idealism , phenomenology , existentialism (and its antecedents, such as
the thought of Kierkegaard and Nietzsche ), hermeneutics , structuralism ,
poststructuralism , deconstruction , French feminism, psychoanalytic theory, critical
theory of the Frankfurt School and branches of Western Marxism . 38 Some of the
most influential authors of the tradition were Edmund Husserl , Martin Heidegger ,
Jean Paul Sartre , Maurice Merleau-Ponty and José Ortega y Gasset in the first
half of the century, followed by Michel Foucault , Albert Camus , Jacques Derrida ,
Hannah Arendt and Gilles Deleuze in the second. The Frankfurt School had as
prominent exponents Theodor Adorno , Walter Benjamin , Max Horkheimer ,
Herbert Marcuse and Jürgen Habermas .
It is difficult to identify statements common to all these philosophical movements.
The term continental philosophy , like analytical philosophy , lacks a clear definition
and may simply mark a family resemblance of disparate philosophical views.
Simon Glendinning has suggested that the term was originally more pejorative than
descriptive, and functioned as a label for types of Western philosophy rejected or
despised by analytic philosophers. 39 However, Michael E. Rosen has sought to
identify common issues that characterize continental philosophy. 40

 First, continental philosophers generally reject the view that the natural
sciences are the only or most accurate way to understand natural phenomena
(see scientism ). This contrasts with many analytical philosophers who consider
their research as continuous or subordinate to that of the natural sciences.
Continental philosophers often argue that science depends on a "pre-
theoretical substrate of experience" (a version of the Kantian conditions of
possible experience or the phenomenological " lifeworld ") and that scientific
methods are inadequate for understanding completely such conditions of
intelligibility of the world. 41
 Second, continental philosophy usually views these conditions of possible
experience as variable: determined, at least in part, by factors such as context,
spatiotemporal location, language, culture, or history. Thus, continental
philosophy tends towards historicism . While analytical philosophy tends to
treat philosophy in terms of discrete problems capable of being analyzed apart
from their historical origins (just as scientists consider the history of science not
essential to scientific inquiry), continental philosophy generally suggests that
"the philosophical argument cannot be separated from the textual and
contextual conditions of its historical emergence." 42
 Third, continental philosophy generally holds that human agency can change
these conditions of possible experience: "if human experience is a contingent
creation, then it can be recreated in other ways." 43 Continental philosophers
therefore tend to show great interest in the unity of theory and praxis, and often
consider their philosophical investigations to be closely related to personal,
moral or political transformation. This tendency is very clear in the Marxist
tradition (" Philosophers have done nothing more than interpret the world in
various ways, but what it is about; the point, however, is to change it "), but it is
also central in the existentialism and poststructuralism.
 A final characteristic feature of continental philosophy is the emphasis on
metaphilosophy . In the wake of the development and success of the natural
sciences, continental philosophers have often sought to redefine the method
and nature of philosophy. 44 In some cases (such as German idealism or
phenomenology), this manifests itself as a renewal of the traditional view that
philosophy is the first and foundational science, a priori . In other cases (such
as hermeneutics, critical theory, or structuralism), philosophy is held to
investigate a domain that is irreducibly cultural or practical. Some continental
philosophers (such as Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, the late Heidegger , or Derrida )
doubt that any conception of philosophy can coherently achieve its stated
goals.
Ultimately, the above theses derive from a broad Kantian thesis that knowledge,
experience, and reality are linked and shaped by conditions that are best understood
through philosophical reflection rather than exclusively empirical research. 45
Postmodern philosophy
This section is an excerpt from Postmodern Philosophy [ edit ]
Postmodern philosophy is a philosophical current that assumes that the ideas that
have characterized modernity and the Enlightenment have been surpassed.
Postmodern philosophy emerged especially in the 1960s, especially in France
(what the Americans called French theory 46 ). This name groups thoughts that
develop a strong criticism of the tradition and rationality of Western Modernity.
Postmodern philosophy proposes new ways of questioning and reading texts and
history, influenced above all by Marxism , Kierkegaard and Nietzsche's criticisms of
rationality, the phenomenology of Husserl and Heidegger , the existentialism of
Sartre , the psychoanalysis of Freud and Lacan and the structuralism of Lévi-
Strauss , as well as by linguistics and literary criticism . 47 The term was
popularized especially by Lyotard in his work The Postmodern Condition .
Included behind this name are philosophers such as Foucault , Derrida or Deleuze , 48 as
well as Althusser , Castoriadis , Lyotard , Baudrillard , Guattari , Irigaray , Badiou , Nancy
or Kristeva in France ; Feyerabend , Cavell , Rorty , Jameson , Butler in the United States ;
Vattimo , Perniola or Agamben in Italy ; Sloterdijk in Germany or Žižek in Slovenia , as well
as many others. They maintain in common a position of criticism, distrust and freedom and
even rupture with the ideological traditions of Western modernity. However, both the unity
of these thoughts and the name under which they are grouped raise numerous
disagreements.