system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Overview of Continental Philosophy vs Analytic Philosophy?

Lately I've been having a lot of questions about Continental Philosophy. I guess I'm looking for some general overview about continental philosophy and how it differs from analytic philosophy. Also, where do empiricism and rationalism fit in with continental philosophy?
gpt
Analytic philosophy is heartless wordplay, divorced from any issue of even the slightest relevance to anyone but analytic philosophers, and written by people with severe Asperger's.  Continental philosophy is a branch of literature which aims to produce the longest series of rhetorical flourishes interconnected without the support of any remark of substance, it is usually practiced while inebriated on opium.

Or, that's what their partisans will tell you.  Actually, analytic and continental philosophy are two loosely connected movements which together describe most of the philosophy done during the twentieth century.  Analytic philosophy has its origins in various events of the early twentieth century: in Russell and Moore's reaction to British Idealism, in Russell and Whitehead's appropriation of Frege's innovations in logic, and in the reaction to German philosophy worked out in the Vienna Circle and Berlin Circle.  Continental philosophy has its origins likewise in the early twentieth century, especially in the existential reaction to Husserl worked out by Heidegger, Sartre, and Merleau-Ponty.

Analytic and continental philosophy are, then, the traditions of philosophy which continue through the twentieth century from these two starting points.  Around the mid twentieth century, both traditions were deeply affected by internal events.  In analytic philosophy, this was a series of criticisms of the logical positivism which had become its dominant expression; criticisms associated with Quine, Goodman, and Sellars.  In continental philosophy, this was, similarly, a series of criticisms of phenomenology; criticisms offered under the rubric of post-structuralism, by figures like Foucault, Derrida, and Lyotard.

Rather unclearly, any twentieth century tradition of philosophy which is not analytic--especially if it has origins on the continent--is sometimes grouped under the label of continental philosophy.  So that the Frankfurt School is often called continental philosophy, even though it represents a tradition of philosophy quite different from that which begins in phenomenology and extends through post-structuralism.

While there are a number of well-known caricatures of analytic and continental philosophy, it's not particularly easy to give an accurate account of their differences aside from the complicated one I've introduced here.  They're both interested in the big concerns of philosophy--in epistemology, ethics, aesthetics, and metaphysics; they're both interested in philosophical reflection on the other institutions of culture--on science, religion, politics, and art; and they're both interested in philosophy's own history and methodology.  They're both interested in pursuing a well-founded philosophical methodology suited to the aims and problem-situation of philosophical inquiry.  They're both interested in being relevant and substantial.

Rationalism and empiricism are movements which dominate early modern philosophy, from around the mid seventeenth to mid eighteenth centuries.  They're in the historical background of both analytic and continental philosophy.  This period in history has been particularly influential for the self-conception of philosophers, so that one continues to hear references to rationalism and empiricism, indicating some positions with a family resemblance to those positions worked out by these movements in the early modern period.  This is true in analytic and continental philosophy both.