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According to Leiter and his handbook, “Continental” refers to all of the currents and critiques that sprang from Kant. On the other hand, The Oxford Companion defines the term more specifically as trends from post-war Europe that have only recently been discussed and accepted in Anglophonia.

In this regard, we can all agree that crossovers are great. So if Leiter wants to see his Nietzsche as part of a longer theme –as opposed to a rupture—that’s okay. He’s worked really hard to demonstrate that his guy’s ‘perspectivism’, racist eugenics, and a general dismissal of science falls within personalized, pre-set canonical boundaries.

What really isn’t, however, is his accusation that those who speak of “The Continental” are practicing a sort of anti-intellectual guerilla warfare based upon laziness and incompetence. Perhaps then, in this instance Leiter’s legal background has simply gotten the best of him. Rorty, for example, admires Derrida, and can hadly be considered a political blackguard.

Here in America, we speak freely of our own pragmatic tradition that began with Dewey, James, and Pierce; although some have argued that the roots reside with Emerson. Yet as a culture it would seem as if Americans deny the tradition/rupture motif in favor of a fluid, hybridizing approach. Whichever the case might be, these are only discursive conveniences which, when taken more seriously, are bemusedly looked upon by those with a scientific background   as yet another example of navel-studies within the humanities.

For me, “continental” describes an epistemic state of affairs in which truth criteria vary enormously from those set within the Anglo-American philosophical world. (This is sort of like discussing Italian legal rules for submitting DNA evidence in the Amanda Knox trial: ‘The D is over here, the N is over there, and the N is in the next room’). Of course, not everyone on ‘the continent’ would agree…

What we do, then, is to alter--or some would say, ‘suspend’!-- our truth-criteria to modify our readings of , for example, a certain Deleuze, who hated Wittgenstein and was openly dismissive of logic. And this, of course, has everything to do with our willful suspension of veracity in front of a silver screen. In short, we go continental in the same way we go filmic.

This, of course, is the erotics of cinema which defies analysis. One can indeed do both, but not at the same time; which is somewhat akin to what in physics is called ‘compatibilism.’ To paraphrase Deleuze, the phenomenal/scholastic endeavor of how meaning is achieved via semiotics is incommensurate to the discussion of meaning within any particular film.

BH