That's an eloquent and very even-handed presentation of what's wrong with the analytic/continental divide in contemporary philosophy. The distinction itself fails any sort of standard for philosophical cogency, so it may not be surprising that people who don't bother with philosophy very much (nothing wrong with that, of course - there's lots to be bothered about) would use it as a short-hand way to orient themselves on the cultural landscape, but it is odd that so very many Anglo-American philosophy professors subscribe to it. I've rarely run into a European philosopher who is contemptuous or dismissive of analytic methods, even where they strongly disagree with them. But in an American graduate program in philosophy, for instance, any respect for the other approach is hard to come by. And the "arguments" against continental discussions tend to be little more than: "Can you believe he wrote that! And people even read it!" In other words, the distinction is not imposed on philosophers from outside, but rather is imposed on philosophy by certain philosophers, particularly when they are not being very philosophical, but rather are more than usually invested in their professional status. Which brings me to my response to your sensible corrective: as a philosophical distinction, analytical vs. continental philosophy is vapid, but as a sociological distinction within a professional field, it is all too real, and it weakens the transmission of philosophical traditions to the next generation. (You can probably tell I have a dog in this fight.) The problem with "analytic" directions in philosophy as they're practiced not by the leading lights of the discipline, by Quine or Lewis or Davidson, but by the host of tenured "Universitätsphilosophen" as Schopenhauer called them, is precisely a lack of methodological rigor. Any intuition that will help you through a step in an argument, any metaphor that will illustrate a conceptual move, any implicit scope restriction that will render a universal true is fine, as long as the discussion never drifts too far from the "common sense" with which everyone started, and as long as any substantive question gets handed off to an empirical science. It's true that analytic philosophy is extremely academic, and I would suggest that by now there isn't much more left of it than that. Its great strength is that it is entirely congruent with the institutional imperatives of a modern capitalist university; and what started out so many years ago as a merciless modern critique of 19th century self-involvement has now mutated into the last bastion of unreconstructed intellectual self-satisfaction. For many Anglo-American philosophers, philosophy itself is the explication - in great formal detail - of utter complacency. Which is why, I think, the allergy to deconstructive whimsy (against which a great deal of intelligent and interesting things can be said - many of them by Jacques Derrida himself) leads them to such defensive inanity. We remember the (forgotten) Cambridge dons harrumphing "non placet!" at Derrida's honorary degree. Nonetheless, even as French and German philosophy from Habermas to Badiou continues to investigate analytical approaches, analytic philosophy at its vital edge finds more and more reasons to distrust its own absolutes, and may begin to regain the skeptical energy that informs all philosophy. I imagine in a couple of generations the distinction, like that between forgotten medieval heresies, won't exist anymore, and the contemporary philosophical world will appear to have much more in common than it does today. One can hope.

By the way, the "Philosopher's Song" by Monty Python is actually a satire of Australia, not philosophy. In true (and very funny) British style, the idea that hicks from Down Under could even have a department that discussed the European philosophical tradition is held up for mockery. It's all the funnier when one considers that Australian philosophy departments are very well respected - though they are all pretty solidly analytic. I close with the sketch because it's good to remember what made analytic philosophy so attractive in its day: the idea that a healthy intelligence, without being schooled in any elite tradition of Greek, Latin or German reflection, should be enough to gain access to the most profound human questions. That's what I'd like to discover: the point at which continental and analytic philosophy converge on the image of Eric Idle with corks dangling from his hat-brim.

That's the Mad Hatter from Alice in Wonderland, isn't it? Perhaps Tom wasn't sure how to make a "rodeo clown" generally recognizable (I know I wouldn't be). The Mad Hatter works. And perhaps we can have Joshua Goldberg as Humpty-Dumpty:`When I use the word "fascism,"' Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, `it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less.' `The question is,' said Alice, `whether you can make words mean so many different things.' `The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, `which is to be master - - that's all.'