section_path: Western/20th century/Continental
section_name: Continental
paragraph_text: Continental
  
  Phenomenology was an important early movement in the tradition of continental philosophy. It aimed to provide an unprejudiced description of human experience from a subjective perspective, using this description as a method to analyze and evaluate philosophical problems across various fields such as epistemology, ontology, philosophy of mind, and ethics. The founder of phenomenology was Edmund Husserl (1859–1938), who emphasized the importance of suspending all antecedent beliefs to achieve a pure and unbiased description of experience as it unfolds. His student, Martin Heidegger (1889–1976), adopted this method into an approach he termed fundamental ontology. Heidegger explored how human pre-understanding of reality shapes the experience of and engagement with the world. He argued that pure description alone is insufficient for phenomenology and should be accompanied by interpretation to uncover and avoid possible misunderstandings. This line of thought was further developed by his student Hans-Georg Gadamer (1900–2002), who held that human pre-understanding is dynamic and evolves through the process of interpretation. Gadamer explained this process as a fusion of horizons, which involves an interplay between the interpreter's current horizon and the horizon of the object being interpreted.
  
  Another influential aspect of Heidegger's philosophy is his focus on how humans care about the world. He explored how this concern is related to phenomena such as anxiety and authenticity. These ideas influenced Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–1980), who developed the philosophy of existentialism. Existentialists hold that humans are fundamentally free and responsible for their choices. They also assert that life lacks a predetermined purpose, and the act of choosing one's path without such a guiding purpose can lead to anxiety. The idea that the universe is inherently meaningless was especially emphasized by absurdist thinkers like Albert Camus (1913–1960).
  
  Critical Theory emerged in the first half of the 20th century within the Frankfurt School of philosophy. It is a form of social philosophy that aims to provide a reflective assessment and critique of society and culture. Unlike traditional theory, its goal is not only to understand and explain but also to bring about practical change, particularly to emancipate people and liberate them from domination and oppression. Key themes of Critical Theory include power, inequality, social justice, and the role of ideology. Notable figures include Theodor Adorno (1903–1969), Max Horkheimer (1895–1973), and Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979).
  
  The second half of 20th-century continental philosophy was marked by a critical attitude toward many traditional philosophical concepts and assumptions, such as truth, objectivity, universal explanations, reason, and progress. This outlook is sometimes labeled postmodernism. Michel Foucault (1926–1984) examined the relationship between knowledge and power, arguing that knowledge is always shaped by power. Jacques Derrida (1930–2004) developed the philosophy of deconstruction, which aims to expose hidden contradictions within philosophical texts by subverting the oppositions they rely on, such as the opposition between presence and absence or between subject and object. Gilles Deleuze (1925–1995) drew on psychoanalytic theory to critique and reimagine traditional concepts like desire, subjectivity, identity, and knowledge.