The origins and early years of the divide have been explored from several angles (e.g. Ansell-Pearson 2002; Beaney 2007; Cobb-Stevens 1990; Dummett 1993; Friedman 2000); here our concern is simply to provide an overview of some of the main performative encounters between (what are now thought to be) canonical representatives of analytic and continental philosophy, which also have some historical resonance at present. In roughly chronological order, we shall focus here on the encounters between: Husserl and Frege; Henri Bergson and Bertrand Russell; Heidegger and Carnap; Max Horkheimer against logical positivism; Karl Popper and several major targets of his thought – Sigmund Freud, Karl Marx and Theodor Adorno (in relation to the “Positivist Dispute” of the 1960s); the 1958 Royaumont discussions, including Maurice Merleau-Ponty, A. J. Ayer, W. V. Quine and Gilbert Ryle; and the sometimes vitriolic debate between Derrida and John Searle in the 1970s.

While this selection is obviously not all-encompassing, these encounters were historically important in laying the groundwork for (and in reinforcing) the analytic–continental distinction. Throughout the period we examine, it becomes increasingly less common for members of the analytic movement to enter discussions or contestations with philosophers from rival camps, if only because it becomes easier to talk directly to analytic philosophers alone. In late 1933, the journal Analysis was launched, edited by A. E. Duncan-Jones with the help of, among others, Ryle (at that time firmly a proponent of the linguistic turn) and Susan Stebbing (who had an explicit interest in the differing methods of analysis of the Vienna Circle and Cambridge).