The
history of continental philosophy (taken in the narrower sense of "
late modern /
contemporary continental philosophy") is usually thought to begin with
German idealism. Led by figures like
Fichte,
Schelling, and later
Hegel, German idealism developed out of the work of
Immanuel Kant in the 1780s and 1790s and was closely linked with
romanticism and the revolutionary politics of the
Enlightenment. Besides the central figures listed above, important contributors to German idealism also included
Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi,
Gottlob Ernst Schulze,
Karl Leonhard Reinhold, and
Friedrich Schleiermacher.As the institutional roots of "continental philosophy" in many cases directly descend from those of phenomenology,
Edmund Husserl has always been a canonical figure in continental philosophy. Nonetheless, Husserl is also a respected subject of study in the analytic tradition. Husserl's notion of a
noema, the non-psychological content of thought, his correspondence with
Gottlob Frege, and his investigations into the nature of logic continue to generate interest among analytic philosophers.
J. G. Merquior argued that a distinction between analytic and continental philosophies can be first clearly identified with
Henri Bergson (1859–1941), whose wariness of science and elevation of
intuition paved the way for
existentialism. Merquior wrote: "the most prestigious philosophizing in France took a very dissimilar path [from the Anglo-Germanic analytic schools]. One might say it all began with Henri Bergson." Moreover, Carnap claimed that many German metaphysicians of the era were similar to Heidegger in writing statements that were syntactically meaningless.
19th-century German philosophy Other major theorists and philosophers during this period include
Sigmund Freud and
Friedrich Nietzsche, whose work decisively influenced the Continental tradition.
Sigmund Freud was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis. His theoretical framework became very influential in twentieth-century Continental philosophy, critical theory, and cultural analysis.
Friedrich Nietzsche was a German philosopher whose radical critique of morality, truth, and metaphysics made him one of the most decisive figures in Continental philosophy, especially his influence on existentialism, phenomenology, and post-structuralism. With the rise of
Nazism, many of Germany's philosophers, especially those of Jewish descent or leftist or liberal political sympathies (such as many in the
Vienna Circle and the
Frankfurt School), fled to the English-speaking world. Those philosophers who remained—if they remained in academia at all—had to reconcile themselves to
Nazi control of the universities. Others, such as
Martin Heidegger, among the most prominent German philosophers to stay in Germany,
aligned themselves with Nazism when it came to power.
20th-century French philosophy Both before and after
World War II there was a growth of interest in
German philosophy in
France. A new interest in
communism translated into an interest in Marx and Hegel, who became for the first time studied extensively in the politically conservative French university system of the
Third Republic. At the same time the phenomenological philosophy of Husserl and Heidegger became increasingly influential, perhaps owing to its resonances with French philosophies which placed great stock in the first-person perspective (an idea found in divergent forms such as
Cartesianism,
spiritualism, and
Bergsonism). Most important in this popularization of phenomenology was the author and philosopher
Jean-Paul Sartre, who called his philosophy
existentialism. Another major strain of continental thought is
structuralism/
post-structuralism. Influenced by the
structural linguistics of
Ferdinand de Saussure, French anthropologists such as
Claude Lévi-Strauss began to apply the structural paradigm to the humanities.
Jacques Lacan, the French psychoanalyst, is also influenced by Saussurean linguistics. In the 1960s and '70s, post-structuralists developed various critiques of structuralism. Post-structuralist thinkers include
Michel Foucault,
Jacques Derrida and
Gilles Deleuze. After this wave, most of the late 20th century, the tradition has been carried into the 21st century by
Quentin Meillassoux,
Tristan Garcia,
Francois Laruelle, and others.
Recent Anglo-American developments From the early 20th century until the 1960s, continental philosophers were only intermittently discussed in British and American universities, despite an influx of continental philosophers, particularly
German Jewish students of Nietzsche and Heidegger, to the United States on account of the persecution of the Jews and later
World War II;
Hannah Arendt,
Herbert Marcuse,
Leo Strauss,
Theodor W. Adorno, and
Walter Kaufmann are probably the most notable of this wave, arriving in the late 1930s and early 1940s. Recent Anglo-American developments gained far greater visibility through influential theorists such as
Slavoj Žižek, who drew on Hegel, Marx, and Lacanian psychoanalysis to develop a critique of ideology, and
Judith Butler, whose work in feminist philosophy and queer theory, shaped by post-structuralism and the legacy of Foucault, became central to debates on subjectivity, power, and performativity. == Contrast with analytic philosophy ==