I heard it said that the difference between Continental and Analytic philosophies was that the former focused on depth at the expense of clarity, whereas the latter focused on clarity at the expense of depth. Is this a valid description?

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J. B. Atken
John Knox PCA
Layman, M.A. student at Louisiana College

Hello SD,

My answer is inspired by a t-shirt I saw from a link you provided in another thread. One might classify the two schools in the following manner...

Analytic: Narrow and Deep
Continental: Shallow and Wide

This does not really capture things, but it does say something about approach. The Continental Philosophers tended to be more sweeping in their philosophies trying to capture complete worldviews whereas analytics tended to take a particular point and dive very deep with that one issue. Analytic philosophers try to eat the elephant one bite at a time, but only end up eating one piece in a very thorough manner. Continental philosophers eat the whole elephant at once, but may never get passed the skin. Continental - General...Analytic - Particular, etc....These are very broad generalizations and may not hold up in any particular case.

Brian

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Brian Bosse
Faith Community Church
Tucson, Arizona
Scientiam Dei

I would be more harsh on analytic philosophy. I just can't see a philosophical system built on the philosophy of language getting one to where they want to go.

Another way of thinking of the differences is in term of Ockham's Razor: In terms of explaining phenomenon, when all things are equal, choose the simplest explanation.

You go for simple and clear when all things are equal. So the question is if all things are actually equal.

CT

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Hermonta Godwin
Christ The King PCA
Raleigh, NC