The Past is a Foreign Country They View Things Differently There: The Perception of “The Invisible Empire of the Ku Klux Klan” as a Benevolent Secret Society from 1915 to 1965

Abstract

There are two main approaches to philosophy that make up philosophical discourse: continental and analytic. Analytic philosophy is concerned with true/false premises, and continental philosophy is concerned with how things came to be, without relying specifically on logic. Although philosophy started out uniformly, over time the analytic school of philosophy and the continental school of philosophy started to regard itself as being separate. This led to animosity and outright disrespect for each other. Because of this, continental and analytic philosophy have become separate playing fields where each team is trying to beat the other. But what happens when both are required? This paper focuses on the philosophy of language, particularly that of A.J. Ayer, an analytic philosopher, and Ferdinand de Saussure, a continental philosopher. It shows how Ayer's argument is defeated by its own logic, and Saussure’s argument is reduced to chaos because there is no reference to ground it. The focus then shifts to Edmund Husserl, who bridges Ayer's and Saussure’s philosophies of language, and thus a philosophy of language is constructed using both analytic and continental philosophy. From this, it is argued that both continental and analytic philosophy are necessary to make Philosophy relevant today and the arguments within Philosophy sound.