Probbaly not a problem on this list -- my guess is rather the reverse. As the below indicates, most hereabouts would far rather spend time with Schopenhauer or Hegel or Nietzsche than with Quine, Rawls, or Davidson.
> Is it simply
> something in the water that makes British, American,
> and Nordic
> philosophers better philosophers? Or the bad food? I
> highly doubt it.
As a fairly nonprejudiced result of an analytical philosopy training, I'd say the the two styles have different virtues. Anglo-American philosophy, so-called, prizes (but often fails to attain) clarity, precision, thoroughness, exactness, comprehensiveness and depth of argument -- the virtues Hegel would associate with the Understanding. This can be boring unless you get your head into that space. So-called continental philosophy aspires to profundity, breadth, meaningfulness, vision -- the things that initiallya ttract people to philosophy. I guess these are related to the virtues Hegel associated with Reason, though he wanted that to include rigor and exactitude as well. At its best, this kind of philosophy can be poetry or literature -- Nietzsche and Kierkegaard. At itsd worse it can be just obscurantist.
> ---
>
> I don't think there has been a really interesting
> Anglo-American philosopher since David Hume. Maybe
> William James. (They're not necessarily _wrong_,
> just
> _boring_.)
Interesting to whom? The general public? John Dewey, a boring writer, was probaly as widely read as Sartre. I mean in America. Rawls is a boring writer, but very widely read and also quite influential. Nozick is not a boring writer, also widely read, and quite influential. Kuhn is bad writerr, though not a boring one, and very influential. Feyerabend is a good and exciting writer . . . .
Then there is Bernard Williams -- I just got his book Shame and Necessity -- just shimmers -- if you find him boring, you aren't sentient, IMHO.
A lot of analytical philosophy is boring -- even to me, and I include the stuff I write. That is because it is tedious work to do the work of the Understanding, define your terms, lay out the premises explicity, carefully consider the objections. This is so no matter how brilliant and exciting the initial inspiration.
>
> 2. I'm not sure Wittgenstin qualifies as a good
> example of a
> continental philosopher, since he is largely
> recognized as one who worked in the
> Anglo-American-analytic tradition (and this
> Anglo-analytic tradition,
> if you are interested in the history of philosophy,
> also owes a lot to
> the Vienna Circle and other thinkers out of Austria
> and Europe).
> ---
Right, and that is why the term "Anglo-American" philosophy is a misnomer. Whom we include -- Hempel, Reichenbach, Frank (Berlin), Tarski and Adjukawisz (Warsaw), Carnap, Feigl, Schlick, Goedel, Neurath (a Marxist), Popper (no Marxist) == all from Vienna? OK, we got them here in America courtesy of Hitler and Stalin. But they were European philosophers.
There is a loose "analytical" -"Continental" divide, but is more beauracratic than anything. Where do we put Merleau-Ponty, who writes exactly like any analytical philosopher and had many of the same preoccupations. Or Wittgenstein. Or Kuhn. Or Rorty. Or Habermas. Etc.
jks
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