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To analyse means to break something down into its constituent parts. Analytic
philosophy attempts to clarify, by analysis, the meaning of statements and
concepts. Analytic philosophy has been important in the in the English
speaking academic world since the beginning of the 20th century. Following
Kant a split occurred between Anglo-American academic philosophy and the
philosophy practised on the European continent. 'Continental' philosophy
took off in an Idealist direction with Hegel, took an existentialist turn via
Nietzsche and Heidegger and entered a less certain phase with post-
structuralism.
Analytic philosophers on the other hand, saw the German philosopher Gottlob
Frege (1848-1925) as the most important thinker since Kant. Frege wanted to
put a rigorous logic at the heart of philosophy. He was influential in the
philosophy of mathematics, logic and language. He thought that the basis for
mathematics could be securely derived from logic and that a rigorous analysis
of the underlying logic of sentences would enable us to judge their truth-value.
There is a radical break between the early and the later works of Wittgenstein.
In his earlier work Wittgenstein saw language as picturing the world, in his
later philosophy he understands language by using the metaphor of a game.
This change in direction spurred the development of 'Linguistic philosophy', in
the mid 20th century. Linguistic philosophers such as Gilbert Ryle (1900-76)
thought many of the traditional problems of philosophy could be dissolved by
the careful study of language as it is used.
Russell thought that terms such as 'the average man' could lead to confusion.
In the sentence, 'The average woman has 2.6 children'; the term 'average
woman' should be understood as a logical construction. The term is not an
atomic fact but a complex mathematical statement relating the numbers of
children to the numbers of women. Russell thought that terms like 'the State'
and 'Public Opinion' were also logical constructions and that philosophers
were mistaken in treating these concepts as though they really existed.
If only statements which picture the world, i.e. statements about facts, are
meaningful then statements about ethics, religion and much of philosophy are
not, strictly speaking, meaningful. This applies as much to Wittgenstein's
ideas in the Tractatus as other philosophical ideas. As he says at the end of the
Tractatus, "My propositions serve as elucidations in the following way: anyone
who understands me eventually recognises them as nonsensical, when he has
used them - as steps - to climb up beyond them. He must, so to speak, throw
away the ladder after he has climbed up it."
The logical positivism that the Circle practised can be seen as a development
of Wittgenstein's Tractatus. Only verifiable statements were meaningful, as
Schlick put it: "The meaning of a proposition is the method of its verification".
Anything that was not empirically verifiable was meaningless. Statements
about God, ethics, art and metaphysics, were, for the Circle, literally nonsense.
This emphasis on positivism was a reaction against the romantic Idealism
that had been influential in German philosophy. The role of philosophy was no
longer to outline the self-awareness of Geist; rather it was seen as a
handmaiden to science, content simply to clarify concepts.
Timeline
1922 Schlick awarded chair of Philosophy in Vienna, birth of the Vienna Circle