Most philosophers seem to agree that there are two main things philosophy does:
make arguments and critique things. Analytic and continental philosophy do them
differently and to different extents, but they still seem to be the two main
kinds of activities. You argue for a position, find holes in an argument,
critique a widespread assumption, critique societal practices, etc.

An interesting development is people who don’t think these two things are
enough! Mostly in continental philosophy, but a bit in analytic as well. I
haven’t seen the various currents all summarized in one place, so here’s a sort
of narrative annotated bibliography (for my future reference, if no other reason).

Not just critique

A big pushback against critique as the dominant (sometimes only)
approach to philosophy and scholarship in the continental sphere started in the
early 2000s, largely from Graham Harman and Bruno Latour. Harman’s 2002 book,
Guerrilla
Metaphysics, advocated, as Robert Jackson nicely
summarizes it, a “philosophical style of fascination rather than critique”.
In Harman’s view, critique has its place, but “there is a sense in which the
great thinkers are always far more childlike and gullible, far more involved
with some mesmerising central idea than all of the wary, uncommitted,
replaceable critics”.

Latour’s 2004 essay “Why
has critique run out of steam?” took critique head-on, wondering if it
was still doing anything useful, or perhaps even actively being
harmful—he pointedly brought up the sort of conspiracy-theory version of
critique popular on the American right, which distrusts all appearances and
always sees shadowy hidden forces at work:

Of course conspiracy theories are an absurd deformation of our own
arguments, but, like weapons smuggled through a fuzzy border to the wrong
party, these are our weapons nonetheless. In spite of all the deformations, it
is easy to recognize, still burnt in the steel, our trademark: Made in
Criticalland.

He goes on to argue that it’s not just that critique is being popularized and
done badly, but that it isn’t addressing the right things anymore. One problem
he nicely analyzes is that critique seems to proceed via a dual set of gotchas.
In critical gesture move one, the critic unmasks a naive belief in
concepts like “nature”, “god”, “poetry”, and what have you, showing that people
who claim that those things actually cause anything are merely projecting; it’s
actually the people themselves who are causing things, and then projecting
other causes. But as soon as the hapless subject thinks this means they have
any free will, in critical gesture move two, the critic unmasks as naive
the belief that agents can do anything of their own accord, because in fact
society, capital, and other factors are at work, determining their actions.
Either way, the critic wi