Analytic and Contintental Philosophy (Means and Methods)

There has been much talk lately amongst my philosophy friends about “analytic” vs “continental” philosophy.  Analytic is characterized as desiring clarity of terms and exactitude of expression; continental as desiring fuzzy multi-dimensional terms and wholism of expression. They say that analytic philosophy elevates reason above personal experience and disdains emotion and inattention to detail; continental elevates personal meaning above clear truth and disdains attention to detail.

But it is not ‘clarity vs vagueness’ or ‘argumentation vs appeals to emotion’ that characterizes the difference between “analytic” and “contintental philosophy.” Anyone who proceeds from biased and unreflective assumptions towards glorious and gaseous speculation will not earn the title of philosopher at all, but propagandist, sophist, dolt, or (worse yet) an average intellect.

Analytic philosophy, since Kant and Descartes, has become focused on method. Philosophy must be concerned with methods, but this is not all. It must also be concerned with starting points and ending points. That is, it must examine it’s own unquestionable foundations upon which all her questions stand and it must consider those every-day decisions towards which it tends.

The mind goes from conclusion #1 to a question, and examination to conclusion #2. Conclusion #1 we call an assumption or postulate or presupposition or hypothesis; conclusion #2 we call a theory, an idea, a system, a schema, a possible truth, a ‘philosophy’, or oftentimes simply ‘the next hypothesis.’ The question and examination in between is often called analytic philosophy. If this is truly what ‘analytic philsophy’ is, then ‘continental philosophy,’ which encompassess all three stages of inquiry, from hypothesis, to examination, to renewed hypothesis, (thesis, dialectic, synthesis), is obviously superior. But this distinction does not hold.