ABSTRACT
This chapter attempts to show both the difficulty and the possibility of an analytical/non-analytical distinction. It shows that the structurally similar forgetting of history, shared by political liberalism and analytical approaches to philosophy of religion, could be a source of strength and renewal to the discipline, but only if the attendant limitations of the project are understood also. The importance and role ascribed to Kant would seem a good candidate for being the litmus test of a thinker’s deference to philosophical history, and so to analytical approaches. The Kantian doctrine about the limits of human knowledge was a big mistake; and analytic philosophy, unlike Continental philosophy, has liberated itself from that doctrine. The chapter suggests that a different story, where analytical philosophy is understood as important precisely because of its studied and deliberate lack of interest in the complex discourses which constitute our various roles and identities in the world.
