A Brief History and Critique of Analytic Philosophy
Although brief, analytic philosophy has done to philosophy what Copernicus did for science. At a time when philosophy seemed stagnant, and when much of the world turned to science for life’s big questions, a revolution needed to occur within philosophy to keep the practice relevant. For philosophy, this revolution came at the turn of the 20th century when British Idealism governed philosophic studies. Known today as analytic philosophy, this practice and its major contributors challenged the thinking of classical British empiricists and developed a new wave of philosophy focusing on logic and the structure of language. My goal for this paper is to provide an overview, and history of analytic philosophy through the points of view of Bertrand Russell and Ludwig Van Wittgenstein and touching briefly on their theories. Finally, I will offer my own critique on analytic philosophy as I believe the study of analytic philosophy plays a vital role in the development of new philosophy and language moving forward.
The study of analytic philosophy began at the turn of the 20th century with Bertrand Russell an aristocrat, anti war activist, prolific writer, and brilliant philosopher and mathematician. Like many analytic philosophers, his work began in response to the dominant philosophy of the time- British empiricism. Russell argued against British empiricism claiming the main flaw in empiricism is its vagueness and lack of clarity. Russell’s main focus was on the development of symbolic language, which in turn gave birth to his greatest contribution to the study of analytic philosophy: Principia Mathematica. In Principia Mathematica, Russell and Alfred North Whitehead founded and ...
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...ave reached a point in human evolution where philosophy needs another make over. For thousands of years philosophers and scientist alike have tried tirelessly in many attempts to figure out who we are, where we came from, and what is our exact purpose on this earth. Maybe we have reached a point in philosophy where these life questions seem “meaningless”, but maybe that is the point. Maybe life is meaningless, but I have found beauty in that. If there is one thing I have learned from this class and the philosophers we have studied it is that life is meaningless… that does not mean we cannot give it meaning.
Works Cited
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There are obvious and important ways in which analytic and continental philosophy differ, but this should not make us overlook their thematic and historical similarities. Both traditions had their roots in phenomenalistic theories that attempted to reduce all meaning to the immediately given. Even though phenomenology was more generous in construing what was immediately given, neither phenomenology nor logical positivism could do justice to our understanding of the subjectivity of other people. Heidegger and Wittgenstein each dealt with this problem in unique but complementary ways.
The universe we inhabit is by all accounts an atypical one; a few people manage its foolishness by encompassing themselves with faith, while others disregard all its significance. Existentialism, nonetheless, ushers us down a remarkable course that darkens these perspectives toward one of a kind belief structure. Despite the fact that we can experience circumstances that are out of our control, we do have the ability to control how we manage said circumstances and regardless of whether we decide to create significance from them. The chase for our actual importance is primitive as are the answers that have maintained it throughout history. Certainly, life does not have an unmistakable settled intending to it; it is up to every person to find their own particular relative target and accomplish their own joy. This is absolutely what existentialism suggests, that it is not prone to know reality,
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The views which are put forward in this treatise derive from the doctrines of Bertrand Russell and Wittgenstein.
Many people wonder: what is the meaning of life? What is the human purpose on this earth? At least one time in our lifetime, we all look at ourselves and wonder if we are living our lives the way we were meant to live them. Sadly, there is not a definite answer to the principles of human life. Every human comes from different backgrounds and different experiences throughout their existence.
Atomic sentences have truth-values that evaluate the application of a concept to an object that is being referred. To find what the sentence refers to, the referent of the predicate must be applied to the referent of the subject. Connectives are vocabulary like “and”, “if”, and “not” that are functions from truth-values to truth tables. Each of these provide the basis for Frege’s language system such that we are able to speaking in our ordinary language, but still maintain the mathematical connection he attempts to establish early. Frege’s use of language and sentences being functions with variables is consistent with how he defines the basic constructs of what are needed in a human language.
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This essay is written to introduce the Russell’s Theory on Definite Description. The main content of this essay including: the definition of definite description, the puzzles concerning definite description, Russell’s Theory on Definite Description, how this theory solves the puzzles, Strawson’s objection to this theory, my evaluation on the convincingness of Strawson’s objection and my evaluation on the convincingness of Russell’s Theory of Definite Description.
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Moore, Brooke Noel., and Kenneth Bruder. "Chapter 6- The Rise of Metaphysics and Epistemology; Chapter 9- The Pragmatic and Analytic Traditions; Chapter 7- The Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries." Philosophy: the Power of Ideas. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill, 2011. Print.
For majority of life I’ve gone through the motions and have done as I have been told to do. Naïve and ignorant to how amazing life really is and refusing to question how things work or what my true purpose is other then surviving. For centuries there have been numerous philosophers to question what our purpose is and have developed different theories to help us get as close as we possibly can to finding the meaning of life. One thing I’ve learned since opening my eyes to the reality of the world is that in our lifetime the closest thing we will have is theories and ideas but we will never know the true meaning of life.
Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) produced two commonly recognised stages of thought in 20th century analytic philosophy, both of which are taken to be central and fundamental in their respective periods. His early philosophy in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, first published in 1921, provided new insights into relationships between the world, thought, language and the nature of philosophy by showing the application of modern logic to metaphysics via language. His later philosophy, mostly found in Philosophical Investigations, published posthumously in 1953, controversially critiqued all traditional philosophy, including his own previous work. In this essay I will explain, contrast and evaluate both stages of his philosophy, highlighting strengths and weaknesses and concluding that Wittgenstein’s late philosophy has provided an interesting explanation for the meaning of language.
Melchert, Norman. The Great Conversation: A Historical Introduction to Philosophy. 4th ed. Toronto: McGraw Hill Companies, 2002.