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Tiger Roholt concludes his discussion of the methodological divide between so‐called “analytic” and “continental” philosophy of music with the declaration of his hope that “shedding some light on the divide will hasten its dissolution” (, 56). I will preface what follows by clarifying that it is undertaken with the same hope. As is made clear at the end of the article, Roholt does not aim at providing a “definition of each tradition” (56). What apparently is meant by this is that he does not seek to provide an overall account of the divide, but rather focuses on methodological “tendencies” in the philosophy of music. By implication, Roholt does not consider an overall account of the divide between analytic and continental philosophy necessary for his project of identifying “analytic” and “continental” methodological “tendencies” in the philosophy of music. Yet, as I argue, if one hopes to be rigorous in the aforementioned task of seeing things in the right light, then what is in order is a further discussion of the relation between what Roholt says of the divide in the philosophy of music on the one hand and, on the other hand, what is left unsaid about the divide in general. Roholt (49–51) only mentions attempts at definition as examples of overall accounts of the divide. It should be clear to anyone familiar with the relevant literature that the essentialist attempt to provide definitions (for example, Dummett ), namely, to provide necessary and sufficient conditions for something to count as either analytic or continental philosophy, has been shown to be highly problematic. In place of such definitions, some scholars have opted for overall accounts of analytic (Glock ; Stroll ) and continental (Reynolds and Chase ) philosophy by appealing to broad family resemblances. The notion of “tendency” that Roholt has used in discussing methodological divides is analogous to the notion of family resemblance used in the aforementioned metaphilosophical context. According to Roholt (56), the fact that he only speaks of tendencies means that his distinctions apply to some but not every example of analytic or continental philosophy of music. Similarly, the notion of family resemblance has been employed in discussions of methodological, stylistic, thematic, and other characteristics that, though each inadequate as necessary and sufficient definitions, together give us a picture of the quasi‐unity of analytic philosophy. Roholt does not clearly state what he means by “characteristic tendencies”; yet he does clarify that this “means that not every example of analytic or continental philosophy of music will be cleanly categorized by my way of drawing the distinction” (56). Thus it can be surmised that he uses the term to refer to methodological characteristics that quasi‐unify (without being necessary and sufficient for) analytic and continental philosophy of music. ‘Family resemblances’ was put to similar use in the metaphilosophical literature. Family resemblances differ from tendencies in that the former rely on a kind of (Wittgensteinian) theoretical grounding that the latter lack. Though a reconstruction of Roholt's account that substitutes ‘tendencies’ with ‘family resemblances’ may render things clearer, in what follows I use the two terms interchangeably. As I show, talk of either “tendencies” or “family resemblances” inevitably leads to a series of problems that remain unresolved in Roholt's account. One of these problems concerns “continental philosophy,” which, as Roholt points out (57n1), purportedly comprises a manifold of conflicting schools. ‘Continental philosophy’ is a term that has been used to denote “German idealism, Marxism, critical theory, phenomenology, existentialism, post‐structuralism, post‐modernism, and so on” (Roholt, 57). It is difficult enough to provide an account of the unity of the phenomenological tradition (see, for example, Glendinning ), let alone to establish a typology of philosophy that includes a group that unifies all of the above schools. Between some of these schools, there exists a divide as rigid as that between analytic and continental philosophy. One of the defining characteristics differentiating between “continental” schools is their preference for different methods, such as phenomenological methods, hermeneutics, critical (rather than traditional) theory, genealogy, psychoanalysis, deconstruction, and so on. Thus, though there may be some similar tendencies in (or family resemblances between) various methods employed by “continental philosophy,” their connections may be thought to be much looser than in the case of analytic philosophy. As declared in his article, Roholt's typology of methods in the philosophy of music is one that has skipped the larger (and harder) question of a general typology of philosophical methods. In other words, Roholt's account has provided no criterion for distinguishing between analytic and continental philosophy in general. Roholt does not deem such a criterion necessary for the task of distinguishing between methodological tendencies in the philosophy of music. Given this lack of criterion, however, the following question ensues: how is it that Roholt knows how to distinguish between analytic and continental philosophy of music if he has not told us how to distinguish between analytic and continental philosophy per se? In other words, what is it, according to his account, that makes analytic philosophy of music analytic and continental philosophy of music continental? Clearly it would be unfair to state that in Roholt's account certain tendencies in the philosophy of music are simply arbitrarily named “analytic” or “continental.” Though he does not clarify this, one might more charitably construe him as engaged in the thought process that Wittgenstein (, §§66–67) describes using the example of seeing a family depicted in a photograph: because of the network linking several of the depicted persons through resembling characteristics, I come to see a family. To put it in Roholt's terms: because I see certain “characteristic,” that is, quasi‐unifying, methodological “tendencies,” I come to see an analytic and a continental camp in the philosophy of music. Like in the case of seeing the family, the quasi‐unity of analytic or continental methodologies in the philosophy of music will, or should be, intuitive for the majority of philosophers of music and not one that is purely an invention by Roholt. Do we, upon closer inspection, recognize something in Roholt's typology that allows us to divide the philosophy of music into either analytic or continental? In order to answer this, let us examine his case studies one by one. The first case is that of Scruton versus Bourdieu and involves the question of the autonomy (versus social embeddedness) of aesthetic judgements. An objection might be raised with regard to Roholt's choice of example for a continental philosopher. Is Bourdieu's discussion of taste a paradigmatic continental philosophical view, or is it rather an empirically minded take on an issue in the sociology of aesthetics? What Roholt is pointing to here might simply regard the question of the relevance of the sociology of aesthetics for aesthetics. It is not clear how siding with Bourdieu's sociological reduction of aesthetics would be equivalent to being a continental philosopher.1 It is also not clear why analytic philosophers, in the face of empirical evidence provided by sociology, are bound to remain proponents of the view put forth by Scruton. It might further be noted that Scruton's view of the centrality of aesthetic disinterestedness is not, in fact, an uncontested view in contemporary analytic philosophy of art (see, for example, Carroll ); rather, as Roholt himself notes, it “could be considered impurely analytic” (57n7). It is an interesting question whether empirical data coming from sociology (or, for example, psychology, anthropology, or biology) is relevant to, or even necessary for, aesthetics or for the philosophy of art. There is no distinctively analytic or continental answer to such a question. There can be disagreement over such topics among the members of each camp, and the answers of members of one camp might overlap with those of another.2 A similar question of disciplinary boundaries arises with Roholt's second case study, involving the opposition between Levinson's ahistorical ontology of the work of music and Goehr's genealogy of the concept of “work” in the history of music. The methodological divide pointed to by Roholt here is familiar from discussions of analytic philosophy's relation (or lack thereof) to history (Sorell and Rogers ). Analytic philosophy, broadly speaking, has tended to favor ahistorical modes of discourse. Whether correctly or not, it has stereotypically been seen as paying little heed to the history of philosophy (including the history of analytic philosophy) as well as history tout court. Some gap between systematic philosophy and the history of philosophy has existed throughout the history of the discipline, which the advent of analytic philosophy may be thought to have widened. This, however, does not mean that all work that is not ahistorical must automatically be branded continental. There are historians of philosophy who are neither continental nor analytic, not to mention analytic historians of philosophy.3 The analytic–continental divide does not, by necessity, apply to someone who works in the history of ideas or the history of music. Nor is it necessary for analytic philosophy to ignore the history of philosophy or of music. Roholt notes this himself when he clarifies that “there are a number of recent analytic philosophers of music who do not seek to detach their target of investigation from musical practice” (56). Goehr's involvement of history in the philosophy of music happens to be accompanied by an interest in ideas by philosophers associated with “continental” schools; yet this does not in any way imply that an analytic philosopher of music is automatically transformed into a continental philosopher once her account is informed by the history of music. The third example of a methodological divide that Roholt raises differs from the previous two in that it is not about disputes over disciplinary boundaries. It is, rather, a dispute over philosophical accounts of perception in relation to the emotions. As Roholt shows, Kivy argues that emotion can be “an emergent, perceptual property that music possesses in virtue of the music's formal properties” (55). By contrast according to Bowie (who follows Merleau‐Ponty in this), it is particular contextual factors (ultimately derived from the background of our shared human world, as Merleau‐Ponty thinks) that allow us to have emotional responses to music.4 Roholt does not clarify how this dispute over the nature of perception is a methodological dispute; the danger (also elsewhere noted by Roholt himself (57n2)) is that this case entails a shift from methodological disputes to disputes about conflicting philosophical views of perception. Perhaps one way to avoid this shift would be to claim that the disagreement relies on the use, by Merleau‐Ponty, of the phenomenological method in order to reach the particular views about perception that he espouses. Yet there is no reason why variants of Merleau‐Ponty's opposition to the empiricist “myth of the given” could not be formulated and defended without recourse to phenomenological methodology. It is furthermore clear that the analytic–continental divide is not reducible to disagreements over particular philosophical doctrines or views (rather than methods), given the variety of overlapping doctrines and views defended by analytic and continental philosophers (see, for example, Glock , 115–150). In the disagreements over method (and content) Roholt discusses, he gives an otherwise excellent treatment of genuine disagreements about the philosophy of music. But these are not disagreements between analytic and continental philosophy. In other words, none of the positions taken with regard to these disputes are defensibly associable with either “analytic” or “continental” philosophy in general. Thus the question persists: what is it that makes us stereotypically associate some views with analytic or nonanalytic philosophy? Why do these “tendencies,” or family resemblances, persevere? The answer to these questions is complicated and requires a more elaborate reply than can be undertaken in the context of a discussion of the philosophy of music.5 What we have seen so far is that Roholt's article, with the proposed clarifications set out above, gives ample reason why we should no longer pay much heed to the divide when it comes to the philosophy of music. Roholt shows that the methodological differences discussed above are simply philosophical differences, open to debate like any other. They are not, in some exceptional manner, reasons for not engaging with others’ work (because it does not belong to the same camp as one's own). There is, however, a further issue to raise here regarding the limitations of the type of approach that Roholt and others have employed by talking of “tendencies” or family resemblances. It is easy to see how an attempt at giving a necessary and sufficient definition for philosophy might fail. Dummett (), for example, proposes that the linguistic turn is a necessary and sufficient condition for someone to be an analytic philosopher. This would exclude Russell and Moore from membership in the set of all analytic philosophers, while it might allow us to include Foucault and Derrida. Thus it fails as a definition. When it comes to accounts of analytic (or continental) philosophy that employ family resemblances, it is not clear how analogous failure can be detected. Under which conditions can a claim that “x is a ‘tendency’ or ‘family resemblance’ characteristic of (but not necessary or sufficient for) analytic (or continental) philosophy” be falsified? Here lies a certain danger to warn against: once the shift to talk of “characteristic tendencies” is made, it becomes much more difficult to accomplish the task of dissociating stereotypes from our accounts of either side.6 This ensures that the stereotypes become entrenched and unchangeable, allowing some (mis)conceptions of the divide to linger on.
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