Continental philosophy is a term that arose after the Second World War in English-speaking countries as a name for philosophical approaches that take as their point of departure the work of certain nineteenth and twentieth centuries figures from Continental Europe, especially Germany and France, whose themes and methods were different from those of the analytical philosophy common at most leading British and American philosophy departments at that time. As a general term it includes movements such as phenomenology, existentialism, critical theory, hermeneutics, psychoanalytically oriented philosophy, structuralism, deconstruction, and postmodernism as well as feminist theory, race theories, and other critical social theories to the extent that they draw on one or more of these other movements. Its themes can range across all of the traditional philosophical areas—from epistemology, metaphysics, and ethics to aesthetics, philosophy of language, philosophy of religion, philosophy of science, and studies in the...