system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Why have the English (and the broader Anglosphere) historically been considered philosophically shallow, even ridiculed, by many French and German philosophers? If this meme is true, which cultural, linguistic or other factors explain this difference?

Asking as an East Asian who has recently read some very sneering remarks by German philosophers on the English philosophy, but also culture in general. From my personal, distant understanding, there may be some truth to this, for the English do appear to me as a bit too (for the lack of a better word) common-sensical and pragmatical, compared to their continental counterparts.  

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t wish to imply that the English are by any means intellectually inept relative to the continentals, if anything, they have achieved remarkable success in science and engineering… but, for instance, to quote Heidegger:   

„What, other than engineering and metaphysically paving the way for socialism, other than commonplace thinking and tastelessness, has England contributed in terms of ‘culture’?”  

If we agree that there is indeed something to these notions, what explains it in your opinion, far more knowledgeable than my distant speculations?  

There are no major racial differences between the three groups. The Germans are the most Germanic, the French the most Celtic of the bunch, but they intermixed racially and more importantly influenced one another culturally throughout the centuries, in addition to sharing influences from Greco-Roman and Christian thought. I do believe that Catholicism is far more intellectual than Protestantism, but I don’t know how consequential that remark even is for the question at hand.  

Can anyone answer my, probably clumsily formulated, though in good faith nonetheless, question?
gpt
There are a variety of reasons why, many of which have to do with Britain's early adaptation to liberal, capitalist modes of life, which intellectuals (on the left and right) have tended to view as crass and shallow. But there are other reasons which are peculiar to the way that Anglophone philosophy is done in the academy. Large swathes of the Anglo-American academy openly disdain history of philosophy, which they view as basically irrelevant to the essential aspirations of the discipline. A common critique of Anglophone analytic philosophy is that, for this very reason, it is not historically self-aware, and is therefore naive about its own presuppositions and contingency. Whether or not this critique is fair is up for you to decide, but it is part of the underlying motivation.

>I do believe that Catholicism is far more intellectual than Protestantism, 

I think this is a common prejudice today, but historically misinformed. The magisterial Protestant tradition is full of profound philosophers and theologians. All of the great German idealists - Kant, Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel - were Lutherans, and they are certainly among the greatest minds of modern philosophy.