“First philosophy”, in the sense of mere metaphysics, is common to both traditions: analytic and continental philosophers reflect on the nature, structure and inhabitants of the world. But “first philosophy” has also been taken to be the view that such metaphysical/ontological enquiry is to precede empirical enquiry, common sense or the deliverances of the sciences, and this has always been contested within the analytic tradition. Important worries about such first philosophies were expressed at the outset and subsequently, and partly because of the premium placed on avoiding nonsense or tautology through careful linguistic or conceptual analysis, analytic philosophy has tended to more piecemeal projects in this field. Even if contemporary analytic philosophy has considerably broadened its metaphysical horizons, many analytic philosophers would nonetheless contend that this kind of caution remains a necessary safeguard against speculative metaphysics and/or nonsense. On the other hand, the positivist thread within analytic philosophy can be overstated; abstract metaphysics has obviously been revived since the “modal revolution” in philosophical logic and philosophy of language, and much contemporary analytic work is influenced by “analytically co-opted” metaphysicians such as McTaggart.

By contrast, it seems evident that continental philosophers by and large (even with the declarations of the death of philosophy as any kind of ultimate arbiter of knowledge) retain a strong commitment to first philosophy and to ontology, at least in the minimal sense that a preoccupation with Being is part and parcel of the scene (even where it is contested). We should not conclude, however, that continental philosophy is entirely blind to analytic philosophy's worries about first philosophy.