The terms continental and analytic describe two different schools in philosophy that have been in conflict roughly since the beginning of the twentieth century. The distinction between them is notoriously hard to draw in clear and explicit terms, but philosophers usually have no problem assigning most of their colleagues into one of these two traditions. A provisional self-characterization of the analytic style of doing philosophy is the claim that the analytic approach "involves argument, distinctions, and . . . moderately plain speech." In one of the best historical accounts of the rise and development of analytic philosophy, this approach is described as being committed "to the ideals of clarity, rigor, and argumentation" and to the goal of "pushing rational means of investigation as far as possible." Basically, then, the trademarks of analytic philosophy would be clarity of thought, precision, and logical coherence, as well as the honest and persistent effort to avoid obscurantism, pretentious writing style and false profundity.
(Neven Sesardić, When Reason Goes on Holiday: Philosophers in Politics [New York: Encounter Books, 2016], 2 [parenthetical references omitted; ellipsis in original])
