Show-Me the Argument

In an earlier post, I reflected on the difference between analytic and continental philosophy, and tried to explain how members of each camp view their respective differences.  Here, I want to focus on one particular issue: why continental philosophy frustrates many analytics. 

Analytics who read or have read some continental philosophy typically complain that they can’t understand it, or it’s opaque, or otherwise too difficult to grasp.  But so is a lot of analytic philosophy.  A lot of analytic philosophy is very difficult to understand, opaque, and difficult to grasp.  So what’s going on here? 

I think that, to the analytic, there’s a difference in the nature of the difficulty with respect to analytic and continental philosophy.  In brief, the difference is that the analytic thinks there’s something gratuitous about the difficulty found in many instances of continental philosophy.  On the other hand, he thinks that the difficulty found in analytic philosophy is inherent in the nature of what’s being talked about (at least ideally).  (more…)