As much as I dislike Analytic philosophy and like Continental philosophy, I can't let this criticism pass without defending the Analytics.
Some Analytics have been very involved with society and be "daring public intellectuals". Bertrand Russell, a seminal figure in Analytic philosophy, was famously politically active and outspoken. Daniel Dennett is a contemporary example, but I'm sure there are others. Analytics just don't tend to make social or political criticism a part of their professional philosophical work unless they're explicitly doing political philosophy.
I would agree that the subject matter that many Analytics tend to focus on, like the philosophy of language and preoccupation with trivial philosophical puzzles is, ahem, pretty academic and not exactly of burning concern to most people outside of Analytic philosophy departments. They're far from alone in this, however, as the same could be said of much of the rest of academia in all sorts of disciplines, including a lot of Continental philosophy -- how many non-philosophers would be interested in Derridian deconstruction or Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology of perception? Even among philosophers, it takes a special breed to be interested in that stuff.
Some Analytics have been very involved with society and be "daring public intellectuals". Bertrand Russell, a seminal figure in Analytic philosophy, was famously politically active and outspoken. Daniel Dennett is a contemporary example, but I'm sure there are others. Analytics just don't tend to make social or political criticism a part of their professional philosophical work unless they're explicitly doing political philosophy.
I would agree that the subject matter that many Analytics tend to focus on, like the philosophy of language and preoccupation with trivial philosophical puzzles is, ahem, pretty academic and not exactly of burning concern to most people outside of Analytic philosophy departments. They're far from alone in this, however, as the same could be said of much of the rest of academia in all sorts of disciplines, including a lot of Continental philosophy -- how many non-philosophers would be interested in Derridian deconstruction or Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology of perception? Even among philosophers, it takes a special breed to be interested in that stuff.