One way to understand the legitimacy and value of non-analytic philosophy is first to realize that the unmeasurable complexity of the world defies complete exposition by rigorous analytical methods. We must then ask ourselves, are we to bury our heads in the sand and consider only what is provable and what yields to such methods? There is certainly a great deal of value in doing this, modern civilization is built upon brilliant scientists and technicians who have done just that. But to deny the very existence of things outside the scope of analytical methods is to deny fundamental truths about the world.
Ok, if we want to pick our heads up and look around, what are we to make of what we see? How are we to navigate in this strange environment where grotesque and beautiful things undulate, merge, unmerge and dance almost tauntingly all around us at a frenetic pace? The first thing is to give up any hope of tracing this process by unambiguous cause and effect, which in turn means giving up on proof or replicability. Crucially however, one need not give up on truth, for there is a world out there and things are really happening, and it is possible to describe the action you observe, in spite of it not being reducible to neat and tidy chains of reason.
The difficulty with this is that we cannot necessarily share our findings and observations with others and expect them to agree, or hope to build a stable consensus, because the sorts of truths we are concerned with are not trivially derived in the way that mathematical truth is, in its exposition, trivial. Thus in occupying ourselves with these things, we condemn ourselves in a way to perpetual conflict, both internal and external. But the important things to remember is, reality is still out there, it's still happening in a particular way at a particular time, whether we can agree on it or not.
Ok, if we want to pick our heads up and look around, what are we to make of what we see? How are we to navigate in this strange environment where grotesque and beautiful things undulate, merge, unmerge and dance almost tauntingly all around us at a frenetic pace? The first thing is to give up any hope of tracing this process by unambiguous cause and effect, which in turn means giving up on proof or replicability. Crucially however, one need not give up on truth, for there is a world out there and things are really happening, and it is possible to describe the action you observe, in spite of it not being reducible to neat and tidy chains of reason.
The difficulty with this is that we cannot necessarily share our findings and observations with others and expect them to agree, or hope to build a stable consensus, because the sorts of truths we are concerned with are not trivially derived in the way that mathematical truth is, in its exposition, trivial. Thus in occupying ourselves with these things, we condemn ourselves in a way to perpetual conflict, both internal and external. But the important things to remember is, reality is still out there, it's still happening in a particular way at a particular time, whether we can agree on it or not.