Continental Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions) by Critchley Simon

Author:Critchley, Simon [Critchley, Simon]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2001-02-21T16:00:00+00:00

12. Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863), ‘Liberty Leading the People’, 28 July 1830

An appeal to tradition that is in no way traditional

So, Continental philosophy is inseparable from a relation to its tradition. Indeed, this is a thought that we have already encountered in Mill’s categorization of Bentham and Coleridge in terms of the distinction between progessive and traditional. But Mill is far too hasty in his association of tradition with conservatism. It is indeed true that a relation to tradition can be socially conservative, as in the mature Coleridge or in the classical political conservatism of Edmund Burke. However, the appeal to tradition need not at all be traditional, insofar as what the notion of tradition is attempting to recover is something missing, forgotten, or repressed in contemporary life. As such, the appeal to tradition need not be some conservative acquiescence in the face of the past, but can rather take the form of a critical confrontation with the history of philosophy and history as such. Such a critical conception of tradition is what Heidegger calls the Destruktion (de-structuring) or Abbau (dismantling) of the history of metaphysics, words that the young Derrida sought to render into French as déconstruction. The controversial concept of deconstruction should be approached uncontroversially, then, and thought of as an attempted critical dismantling of the tradition in terms of what has been unthought within it and what remains to be thought by it. In this sense, one can speak of a radical experience of tradition. Let me try and make this a little more concrete by turning to two notable ways of thinking of tradition radically, those of Husserl and his most celebrated student, Heidegger.

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