Whats the difference between continental and analytic?

http://www.reddit.com/r/askphilosophy/comments/1yzepr/overview_of_continental_philosophy_vs_analytic/

http://www.reddit.com/r/askphilosophy/comments/2mn259/continentalanalytic_debate_whats_up_with_it/

http://www.reddit.com/r/askphilosophy/comments/1xrgt5/can_someone_eli5_the_difference_between_analytic/

http://www.reddit.com/r/askphilosophy/comments/19x7hv/what_is_the_difference_between_continental_and/

http://www.reddit.com/r/askphilosophy/comments/1qbh4h/difference_between_continental_and_analytic/

This is very contentious. Many claim that there is very little difference, or that it's eroding (although they then turn around and proceed to hire only philosophers on their side of the supposedly non-existent divide). I suspect that most philosophers do not have the knowledge to accurately characterize the divide. I'll make some remarks here, but I take myself to be one of those without enough knowledge to be very reliable here.

In comparison to continental philosophers, analytic philosophers have been quite strongly influenced by formal methods in mathematics, especially logic. They tend to care a great deal about developments in science, and have more favorable attitudes towards a broadly scientific, or naturalistic worldview. Their prose tends to emphasize the development of short, deductive arguments. Very often they tackle less "deep" issues than continental authors, and they are not as often engaged in the sort of systematic philosophical theorizing that characterized much of historical philosophy (Kant, Aristotle, ... ). Analytic philosophers are much less widely read throughout the rest of the humanities than continental philosophers are, and many do not see themselves as providing the sort of paradigms for critical literary or social analysis which continental philosophers are often credited with developing. Analytic philosophers tend to have strong backgrounds in fields such as mathematics, physics, linguistics, and cognitive science, and often do work that engages directly with current developments in these fields. Although this is changing, anglophone departments tend to lean heavily analytic, and non-anglophone (or religiously affiliated anglophone) departments lean more continental.

I hope this helps! Sorry for the jumbled response. As you might have guessed, this is a delicate topic.

William Blattner has a pretty good piece on this issue. Basically, the divide is more sociological than philosophical.

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