From PhilPapers forum Continental Philosophy:

2009-12-28
The analytic/continental divide
Hi Robert

I found your post very interesting.  There is a lot in it and I will only try to reply to one of your points for now.

You write: " Can philosophy (unlike the sciences) be done in an a-historical manner? I myself suspect that it cannot. (If it cannot, are analytics and continentals both doing "history" of philosophy, even though they would not usually recognize this or put it this way?) In short, your thread/question seems related to the question/thread: "What is philosophy?""

I agree. On the one hand, there is simply the need for historical awareness. Without knowledge of the historical context in which earlier philosophers wrote, there is a real danger they will be misunderstood - ie that we will ascribe ideas to them that they never held. The danger gets bigger of course the further back we go in time.

But a deeper problem (and probably closer to what you are suggesting?) is that, whether one wishes to or not, one is necessarily doing philosophy historically because one is always working with underlying assumptions rooted in, or in some way responding to, previous specific philosophical developments. I think some philosophers - especially perhaps some of the "analytic" persuasion - would like to deny this because they would like very much to think that their approach is totally assumption-free - wholly "objective". At this point the problem gets quite serious, I think, because it suggests an unwillingness to examine one's presuppositions - a major philosophical trap in my view.

(A final thought: Your post looks like the outline of a good article!)

DA