Analytic Philosophy
Treating philosophical problems as knots to : what exactly are we saying, and what actually follows from our words and our reasons?
1900 – …
Born at the turn of the twentieth century from the revolt of and against the then-reigning idealism, and armed with the new logic of , analytic philosophy makes the logical analysis of language and concepts its method, and clarity its ideal. To the building of grand systems it prefers the patient examination of precise arguments; at its sharpest, it holds many philosophical problems to be confusions of language, to be dissolved rather than solved. illustrates its two ages: he first dreams of a language with strict logical contours, in which one would say only what can be clearly said, before turning to everyday language, whose sheer variety of uses makes, on his account, many philosophical problems evaporate. More a method-tradition than a shared doctrine, it gathers widely divergent positions and has dominated English-language philosophy ever since, from epistemology to ethics.
Philosophy's task is not to build systems but to : to analyze language and concepts, and to dissolve pseudo-problems.
Justification
What unites the analytic tradition is not a thesis about the world but a conception of the philosophical task: to . To philosophize is to analyze concepts and arguments, to test their grounds and untangle confusions, often lodged in a misleading grammar. Clarity here is not a preliminary to the work: it is its goal. From 's logic to the later 's attention to ordinary language, method takes precedence over system.
Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language.Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, § 109
Russell, "On Denoting" (1905) · Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations