Analytic Philosophy:

There is a style of philosophy that came to dominate the English speaking countries in the 20^th century which is broadly called Analytic philosophy. Majority of philosophy departments in various universities identified themselves as “analytic” departments in Canada, United States, Australia, Scandinavia and New Zealand. Sometimes even analytic philosophy is comprehended as something that is in contrast to Marxism, Thomism, and continental philosophy.

There are various outcomes of this analytic philosophy. It can refer to the favoring of close attention to common sense, detail, or ordinary language and thereby rejecting the sweeping philosophical systems. It can refer to the view that the analysis of the logical form of philosophical propositions is the only means to achieve the logical clarification. It can even refer to the view of the positivist that the object of philosophy is the logical clarification of thoughts and there are no specifically philosophical truths. This stands in contradiction to the traditional foundationalism which gives more importance to philosophy and views philosophy as some highest sort of science that experiments and investigates the principles and the fundamentals of everything.

The work of English philosophers Bertrand Russell and G.E. Moore carried the analytic program in philosophy in the earlier part of the 20^th century. To search for the conceptual clarity has been the core mantra of the analytic philosophy from the beginning. They accused Hegelianism for the obscurity. The analytic philosopher strongly believed that showing the simple constituents of complex notions can easily solve the problems of philosophy.

To this quest for clarity against difficulty Jacques Derrida, the French philosopher has come up with a counter argument telling that "the difficulty of a discourse is not a sin--nor is it the effect of obscurantism or irrationalism. And that it is often the contrary that is true: obscurantism can invade a language of communication that is seemingly direct, simple, straightforward."

Analytic philosophy has its origins in Russell, Frege and Whitehead. Russell is the one next to Alfred North Whitehead who was very much influenced Gottlob Frege. He helped to develop predicate logic that in turn permitted a much wider range of sentences which are parsed into logical form. In the philosophy of mathematics Gottlob Frege has been the key figure during the 20^th century in Germany.

The contemporary philosophers frequently rejected the basic premises by which the analytic movement before 1960 was defined since they had widely divergent interests, assumptions and methods though they claimed themselves as analytic.

Questions

• What is Analytic philosophy?
• What is the core mantra of Analytic philosophy?