may have started coming to an end in the 1970’s.”
(4) “Analytic philosophy requires logical and/or linguistic analysis.”
While many philosophers today would be very surprised to hear somebody utter (3), something like it has been put forth by a number of prominent philosophers, whose work was collected together for an edited volume by John Rajchman and Cornel West with the suggestive title, Post-analytic Philosophy (Rajchman & West 1985). A number of these post-analytic philosophers come very close to something like (3) with thoughts such as “I think that analytic philosophy culminates in Quine, the later Wittgenstein, Sellars, and Davidson—which is to say that it transcends and cancels itself” (Rorty 1982, xviii) and “at the very moment when analytical philosophy is recognized as the ‘dominant movement’ in world philosophy, analytical philosophy has come to the end of its own project—the dead end, not the completion” (Putnam 1985, 28). Again, I claim that the explanation for this disagreement is that we have a merely verbal dispute. Those focusing on a potential truth expressed by (3) are noticing the fact that something significant in analytic philosophy—the historical movement—changed in the early 1970s, while those denying (3) are focusing on the fact that not much about the use of analytic philosophy—the method—changed here.
Something similar goes on with (4), as precisely how seriously to take, or how to understand, the “analysis” that is cognate to “analytic philosophy” has also been a point of contention. As Glock has argued, “many contemporary explanations of what analytic philosophy is are curiously silent on the issue of analysis. Yet the idea of putting the idea of analysis back into the definition of analytic philosophy is hardly far-fetched” (Glock 2008, 153). Summarizing the state of this debate, he considers Russellian, decompositional, logical, connective, constructive, and Quinean analysis, among others. Ultimately, he concludes that “while weightier and more specific notions of analysis no longer cover the whole range of analytic philosophy, the less demanding and wider notions are too indiscriminating” (Glock 2008, 159–60). On the other hand, the aptly titled textbook Philosophical Analysis: An Introduction to Its Language and Techniques—which was popular enough to go through three editions and multiple printings—set out to “provide the materials for a program of familiarization with the language and techniques of analytic philosophy” by introducing students to logical analysis, linguistic analysis, and the analytic/synthetic distinction (Gorovitz et al. 1979, ix). Hopefully my next move has become clear—there is no real disagreement here. Rather, (4) is true when “analytic philosophy” expresses a method and false when “analytic philosophy” expresses something about a particular historical movement.
§0.3 The Progression of Analytic Philosophy—the Five-Stage Picture
Given that this book is on social justice and the history of analytic philosophy, and that the main part of the book will involve a series of chapters connecting each of the stages of early analytic philosophy to concerns of justice and oppression, it will be important to give a picture of the way I see the development of early analytic philosophy, the historical movement. As my continued use of “early” when talking about the history of analytic philosophy should make clear, I take there to be multiple phases of analytic philosophy. As mentioned earlier, there is a significant prehistory that culminates in the beginning of the analytic movement by 1898. From there, I split the first ~100 years of the analytic movement into the early analytic period (1898–1970) and the middle analytic period (1970–1995). This distinction is justified by the weight given to the new directions in speculative metaphysics and grand normative theory that Kripke and Rawls are taken to have initiated around 1970 with Naming and Necessity and A Theory of Justice, respectively. In addition to (roughly) 1970 marking a rise in new trends, it also marks the culmination of various stories from the analytic tale. Around this time, (a) Paul Grice brought ordinary language philosophy down from the inside, (b) Marcus, Prior, Kripke, and others completed the modern logical revolution, and (c) Russell and Carnap died, just to name a few. This second phase, the middle analytic period, then comes to an end around 1995. By this point, Kripke and Rawls have published all of their most important works. This also marks the time at which there began to be a distinct subdiscipline of the history of analytic philosophy with publications like Coffa (1991), Dummett (1993), Hacker (1996), and Friedman (1999), followed by the formation of the Society for the Study of the History of Analytical Philosophy, the Journal for the History of Analytical Philosophy, and Palgrave Macmillan’s History of Analytic Philosophy series.
After breaking the history of analytic philosophy into the early period (1898–1970), the middle period (1970–1995), and the contemporary period (1995–present), the early period is further broken down into five stages. These five stages are characterized by the emergence of different torchbearers and a group of problems they focused on, which served as a background for debates. First, Moore and Russell led their critical revolt against British idealism (1898–1914), which, in the second stage, was built into positive, large-scale philosophical systems with Russell’s and Wittgenstein’s logical atomisms (1914–1926). The third stage then consisted of a less-than-heated debate between different evolutions of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus—logical empiricism and Cambridge analysis (1926–1940). Influenced by them, but distancing themselves from both groups, was the ordinary language philosophy of 1940–1960. This early period was then brought to a close with a decade of debate and fragmentation of the analytic movement caused, in large part, by Quine’s questioning of long-held principles before new paradigms were established by Kripke and Rawls.
With respect to this first stage, very little of what I have said about it so far is controversial. Stephen Schwartz, for example, starts his history of analytic philosophy with a chapter on Russell and Moore, arguing that “Bertrand Russell—aristocrat (3rd Earl Russell), anti-war activist, prolific writer, and brilliant philosopher and mathematician—is the father of Anglo-American analytic philosophy” (Schwartz 2012, 8) and “Russell’s wider outlook was shaped with his contact with G. E. Moore—a philosopher only slightly less significant in creating analytic philosophy than Russell himself” (Schwartz 2012, 27). Scott Soames’ history of analytic philosophy concurs, beginning with part one on Moore and part two on Russell (Soames 2003a). Ayer, too, begins his history of twentieth-century philosophy with a chapter on Russell and Moore entitled “the revolt from Hegel” (Ayer 1982, 19). Glock can be added to the chorus as well, saying “their revolt against [British idealism] marked a decisive moment in the emergence of analytic philosophy” (Glock 2008, 31).
Furthermore, an 1898 revolt against British idealism as a starting point for this process is rather standard as well. P. M. S. Hacker’s history of (Wittgenstein’s role in) analytic philosophy says both that “twentieth-century analytic philosophy has its twofold root in Cambridge at the turn of the century in the work of G. E. Moore and Bertrand Russell” (Hacker 1996, 5) and “Moore’s revolt against idealism began with his 1898 dissertation” (Hacker 1996, 6). In fact, 1898 as a significant date for this decisive step comes from Russell himself as well. In his intellectual autobiography, Russell says “it was towards the end of 1898 that Moore and I rebelled against both Kant and Hegel” (Russell 1959, 42). Hence, all we really need to explain here is the choice of 1914 as the time of transition between the first and second stages of early analytic philosophy.
This second stage of early analytic philosophy spanned roughly 1914–1926, or the early mid-1910s to the mid–late 1920s anyway. As mentioned earlier, this time was marked by the development and dominance of Russell’s and Wittgenstein’s logical atomisms. Again, claiming that this development was that which followed Moore and Russell’s move away from idealism is not particularly controversial, either. Part 2 of Soames (2003a) ends with a chapter on Russell’s logical atomism and part 3 is on Wittgenstein’s atomism developed in the Tractatus. Glock also follows up his section on the rebellion against idealism with a section on “the linguistic turn,” which claims this came to fruition in Wittgenstein’s Tractatus and discusses that “a similar type of logical atomism was developed by Russell” (Glock 2008, 34–35). So, evidence of the significance of 1914 comes from multiple fronts:
(1)
