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Continental philosophy is an umbrella term covering a plurality of philosophical traditions that have historically emanated from the continent of Europe towards the English-speaking world (an emanation that is now bi- and multi-directional, rendering the appellation "Continental" at best nominal). Indeed, Continental philosophy has never been so plural, for the number of these traditions has accumulated since its emergence in the 1970s. The question of what unifies the Continental umbrella lies beyond the scope of this introduction. No doubt, it would be simpler to define Continental philosophy in the manner that its detractors originally coined it: not analytic philosophy.¹ Nevertheless, any positive attempt to define the idiom would have to proceed politically as well as philosophically — that is to say, in its post-1968 context. What was required was a philosophy that would change the world and not merely interpret it. In this respect, that which has unified these traditions concerns, on the one hand, a recognition of the limitations of an academic philosophy that disingenuously duplicates the "rigour" of the positive sciences; and, on the other hand, an attempt to think beyond these limitations, to bring philosophy into contact with the world both as it is and as it ought to be. In order to respond to this "ought", philosophy is compelled to engage with that which positivist philosophy rejected: metaphysics, understood as the question of the whole.

DOI: 10.1057/9781137487254_1

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