I'm just getting into philosophy, thanks in no small part to this site! I was discussing it with a friend recently - a friend I admire as hard-working, intelligent and someone who challenges himself - and found out that he was actually a philosophy major in college (now he's a businessman). Naturally I was excited, but I was quickly discouraged as he explained that he had given up doing philosophy long ago and had no interest in it. When I asked him why, I received the following explanation, which confused me and I'm hoping to gain some clarity on it from this site. I hope it's not offensive to any of the professional philosophers who read this site, though it is of course anti-philosophy, since it was his reason for abandoning it. In any case, he said that he gave up reading/doing/thinking about philosophy - and he specified "analytic philosophy" as the culprit - saying that, although he found that the material he read was highly intelligent, he was nagged by a persistent feeling (one he ultimately couldn't shake off, try as he might) that somehow the central issues being explored in the readings - issues such as the nature of friendship, or love, or reality - were somehow deeply alien to the writings themselves. He said he never got the sense from their writings that any of the writers he read actually understood the lived human experiences of those central issues or that the highly intelligent discussions from the writings had anything meaningful to do with those issues in real life. He warned me against bringing this up to philosophers, saying that, although he frequently could not put into words anything "wrong" or "illogical" about their writings, he simply had this persistent feeling that the writers didn't understand these issues, though they may have written an entire book on the subject, any better (and possibly worse than) than anyone else. He told me that if I raised this issue with a philosopher, they'd just call him a quitter. Is that how you see him? I've known him many years and he works very hard - I can't see him as a quitter. He also mentioned to me that there were many others like him, and that he finds intellectual sustenance elsewhere. Sorry for the long question - as a neophyte to this field, I'm trying to make sense of this and having trouble. Thanks in advance!