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This article is not entirely bad, but I think it still overstates the distinction. It is true that there's something of a divergence, where analytic philosophe
by hyperpape 4y ago
This article is not entirely bad, but I think it still overstates the distinction.
It is true that there's something of a divergence, where analytic philosophers are much more likely to read Russell, Wittgenstein, Quine and Lewis, while continental philosophers are more likely to read Heidegger or Derrida. There are accompanying differences in style and "feel". But it is extremely hard to generate robust generalizations about differences. For any high level philosophical position, you can find authors on both sides arguing for or against it.
Additionally, while early in the 20th century, you could try to argue that analytic philosophy had a core of logical analysis (in the sense of Russell/early Wittgenstein, Logical Positivism, Carnap) and ordinary language, starting in the 1960s, the field increasingly fragments, and becomes more varied in the topics it studies, the approaches it takes, and so on. By the present day, we have "analytic philosophers" like Kieran Setiya writing a book on Mid-Life Crises, or Laurie Paul writing about whether one can anticipate the experience of parenthood (https://lapaul.org/papers/whatCantExpect.pdf https://lapaul.org/papers/whatCantExpect.pdf).
All in all, it's true that there are two relatively independent traditions, it's hard to say much more about them than "people tend to read different books, and that has some influence on how they approach matters."