Analytic vs. Continental Philosophy

Brian Leiter's take on the two major traditions of philosophy in the western world: Analytic and Continental philosophy:

"Analytic" philosophy today names a style of doing philosophy, not a philosophical program or a set of substantive views. Analytic philosophers, crudely speaking, aim for argumentative clarity and precision; draw freely on the tools of logic; and often identify, professionally and intellectually, more closely with the sciences and mathematics, than with the humanities.... The foundational figures of this tradition are philosophers like Gottlob Frege, Bertrand Russell, the young Ludwig Wittgenstein and G.E. Moore; other canonical figures include Carnap, Quine, Davidson, Kripke, Rawls, Dummett, and Strawson...

"Continental" philosophy, by contrast, demarcates a group of (primarily) French and German philosophers of the 19th and 20th centuries.... The foundational figure of this tradition is usually thought to be Hegel; other canonical figures include the other post-Kantian German Idealists (e.g., Fichte, Schelling), Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Marx, Nietzsche, Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Sartre, Gadamer, Horkheimer, Adorno, Marcuse, Habermas, and Foucault. Continental philosophy is sometimes distinguished by its style (more literary, less analytical, less reliant on formal logic), its concerns (more interested in actual political and cultural issues and, loosely speaking, the human situation and its "meaning"), and some of its substantive commitments (more self-conscious about the relation of philosophy to its historical situation).

Read more. Additional views here, here, here, and here. Not everyone agrees there is a sharp division anymore.

Comments

[Namit]

I ran across William Blattner's sensible rejoinder to Brian Leiter, in which he argues that there isn't a meaningful stylistic or philosophical difference between Analytic and Continental philosophy. Blattner is a professor of philosophy at Georgetown University.

... the so-called Continental-analytic division within philosophy is not a philosophical distinction; it's a sociological one. It is the product of historical accident. It is unreasonable to cleave to it, and the insistence on remaining closed to work that is either presumptively "analytic" or presumptively "Continental" is irrational and unphilosophical. Further, rejecting or refusing to consider positions one has not studied and consequently does not understand is not a philosophical stance. It is, if anything, the very antithesis of the philosophical attitude. In light of this conclusion, I prefer to the extent possible not to use the terms "Continental philosophy" and "analytic philosophy." They perpetuate the divisions of the past, divisions that it behooves us to overcome...

[My hope is] for the widespread diffusion of the philosophical attitudes of open-mindedness, the suspension of judgment until arguments and evidence have been considered, and hospitality towards those bearing alternative perspectives, ideas, and arguments. Specifically, it is a hope that these philosophical attitudes will be applied across the received sociological divisions within the profession, divisions that are no longer either doctrinally or methodologically motivated.