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Contemporary Philosophy

Analytic Philosophy

A Companion to Analytic Philosophy (Blackwell Companions to Philosophy) edited by A. P. Martinich, David Sosa (Blackwell Publishers) (Paperback) is a comprehensive guide to over 40 of the significant analytic philosophers from the last hundred years. The entries in this Companion are contributed by contemporary philosophers, including some of the most distinguished now living, such as Michael Dummett, Frank Jackson, P. M. S. Hacker, Israel Scheffler, John Searle, Ernest Sosa, and Robert Stalnaker. They discuss the arguments of influential figures in the history of analytic philosophy, among them Frege, Russell, Moore, Wittgenstein, and Quine. The articles on each philosopher provide clear and extensive analysis of profound and widely encountered concepts such as meaning, truth, knowledge, goodness, and the mind. This volume is a vital resource for anyone interested in analytic philosophy.

Excerpt: Though analytic philosophy was practiced by Plato and reinvigorated in the modern era by Rene Descartes and Thomas Hobbes among others. we are concerned with it only in its twentieth-century forms. As such. it was revived in two centers. Germany and England. In Germany. Gottlob Frege was exploring the foundations of math­ematics and logic. His efforts introduced new standards of rigor that made their way into analytic philosophy generally. through the work of Bertrand Russell and Ludwig Wittgenstein. His discussions of the nature of language and reasoning have also become powerful tools in the hands of later philosophers. Among Frege's many books and articles, the Grundgesetze, Begriffsschrilt."On Sense and Reference" ("Uber Sinn and Bedeulung," 1892) and "'Thoughts" ("Gedanken," 1918) stand out as especially significant.

During about the same period in England, G. E. Moore led the way in opposing the then-dominant philosophy of British idealism. While "The Nature of Judgment" is an early criticism of a point in E. H. Bradley's Logic. the locus classicus of British analytic philosophy is likely "The Refutation of Idealism" (1901). a criticism of the formula esse est percipi ("to be is to be perceived"). A crucial part of that argument is Moore's claim that the concept of the sensation of yellow contains two parts: the sensation that is unique to each person and the yellowness that can be perceived by many people. Even when idealists conceded that there was some kind of duality here they insisted on a kind of inseparability.

To use a general name for the kind of analytic philosophy practiced during the first half of the twentieth century, initially in Great Britain and German-speaking countries, and later in North America. Australia, and New Zealand. "Conceptual analysis" aims at breaking down complex concepts into their simpler components. Successive analy­ses performed on complex concepts would yield simpler concepts. According to Moore, the process might lead ultimately to simple concepts, of which no further analysis could be given. The designation "conceptual" was supposed to distinguish the philosophical activity from various analyses applied to nonconceptual objects. Physics was famous in the twentieth century for breaking down atoms into protons, neutrons, and electrons, and these subatomic particles into an array of more exotic components. And analytic chemistry aims at determining chemical compositions. The analogy between philoso­phy and science inspired the name "logical atomism," a theory that flourished between

1920 and 1910. Both Wittgenstein and Bertrand Russell maintained that there must be simple, unanalyzable objects at the fundamental level of reality. Wittgenstein thought that the simples existed independently of human experience. Russell that they existed only for as long as one's attention was fixed on them.

Notwithstanding the analogy between scientific and philosophical analysis. most philosophers in the first half of the twentieth century maintained that philosophy was very different from science. In his 'Ira( talus Logico-Philosophicus (1921), Wittgenstein wrote: "Philosophy is not one of the natural sciences. (The word 'philosophy' must mean something whose place is above or below the natural sciences, not beside them.). This conveniently left open which was superior.

But if there is anything constant in analytic philosophy. it is change, and the oppo­site view of the relation between science and philosophy has dominated the second half of the century. Largely owing to the influence of VV. V. Quine. many philosophers have come to believe that philosophy is continuous with science. Yesterday's heresy is today's orthodoxy. Whichever view is correct. the division between the philosophical analysis of concepts and the nonphilosophical scientific analysis of nonconceptual objects should perhaps not be taken too strictly. Concepts and hence philosophy would be of no use if they did not make contact with the nonconceptual world. In addition, science uses concepts. many of which may he among the most fundamental of reality. To paraphrase Kant, perceptions without concepts are blind: concepts without percep­tions are empty.

Overlapping with the latter period of logical atomism is logical positivism. which may be dated from Moritz Schlick's founding of the Vienna Circle in 1924. One of its principal doctrines was that science is a unity: and one of its principal projects was to show how to translate all meaningful language into scientific language. in other words. to reduce meaningful nonscientific language to scientific language. This project cannot be successful unless something distinguishes meaningful from nonmeaningful expres­sions. A. J. Ayer probably devoted more energy and displayed more ingenuity in trying to formulate a criterion of meaningfulness than anyone else. His first effort was presented in Language, Truth and Logic (1936). The book that became the most widely known statement of logical positivism and which introduced that philosophy to the anglophone public. The basic idea is that a sentence is meaningful if and only if it is either analytic (or contradictory) or empirically verifiable. Various objections were raised to this. and to every revision of this criterion. Part of the problem was the status of the criterion itself. Either it would be analytic and hence vacuous. or it would be empirical but then not completely confirmed. Logical positivism had been dead for some time when it was buried by Carl G. Hempels "Problems and Changes in the Empiricist Criterion of Meaning") I950) and W. V. Quine's "Two Dogmas of Empiricism" (1951 ). Nevertheless. Ayer and others never abandoned the spirit of verifiability.

What had already begun to take the place of logical positivism in the 1 940s was ordinary-language philosophy, one strand of which emanated from Cambridge in the later philosophy of Wittgenstein. the other from Oxford. One of Wittgenstein's moti­vating beliefs was that philosophy creates its own problems, and that means that they are not genuine problems at all. The confusion arises from philosophers' misuse of ordi­nary words. They take words out of their ordinary context, the only context in which they have meaning, use them philosophically, and thereby discover anomalies with the displaced concepts expressed by these words: For philosophical problems arise when language goes on holiday." Wittgenstein questioned many of the assumptions of ana­lytic philosophy — from the nature and necessity of analysis to the nature of language — in a discursive and dialectical style so inimitable that it was as if Ludwig were talking to Wittgenstein. Ills oracular aphorisms, such as "Don't ask for the meaning, ask for the use" and "To understand a sentence is to understand a language" stimulated a variety of reactions, from the Fregean interpretations of Peter Geach and Michael Dummett. to the holism of Quine and Donald Davidson, to the deconstructivist approaches of O. K. Bouwsma and D. Z. Phillips.

The other strand of ordinary-language philosophy came from Oxford. under the leadership of Gilbert Ryle and J. L. Austin. These philosophers, more numerous than the Cambridge group (Antony Flew. J.O. UUrmson, and G. J. Warnock. deserve to be men­tioned), did not so much think that there were no philosophical problems as say that philosophical problems could be solved through the careful analysis of the distinctions inherent in ordinary language. The purpose of Austin's "Ifs and Cans" and "A Plea for Excuses" was to elucidate the problem of freedom and determinism, which arose from his understanding of Aristotle (see his Philosophical Papers, 2nd edition, p. 180). He said that while ordinary language was not the last word in philosophy, it was the first. Ile certainly was not opposed to philosophers developing theories.

Austin, who had been a closet logical positivist according to A. J. Ayer, coined the term "performative utterance" as part of his refutation of the central thesis of logical positivism, namely, that all sentences that were cognitively meaningful were either true or false. Austin pointed out that some straightforwardly meaningful sentences. sen­tences that did not contain suspicious words like "beautiful," "good." or "God." were not the kind of sentences that could have a truth-value: "I bequeath my watch to my brother," "I christen this ship the Queen Elizabeth Il," and "I bet ten dollars that Cleveland wins the pennant." Although the concept of performatives did the work it was designed to do. the distinction between performatives and "constatives" (roughly. statements) could not be sustained: and Austin replaced that distinction with another. between locutionary, illocutionary, and perlocutionary acts. In the 1960s, John Searle, who was trained at Oxford by ordinary-language philosophers. showed that Austin's latter theory was itself inadequate and replaced it with his own fully-developed theory in Speech its (1969) and Expression and Meaning (1979).

By the late 1960s ordinary language had lost its dominance. Some of the Oxford philosophers were instrumental in its demise. Searle, as mentioned developed a full-fledged theory of speech acts and then used it as inspiration for foundational work on the nature of intentionality and the social world. One of his teachers and a colleague of Austin's. H. P.Grice, developed his own theory of language use, a theory comple­mentary in many ways to Searle's.

A more dramatic cause of the demise of ordinary language philosophy is attribut­able to one of its chief practitioners. P. Strawson. In Individuals (1959), he resurrected metaphysics. an area of philosophy that was considered unacceptable by logical posi­tivism. Strawson distinguished between "stipulative" (bad) metaphysics and "descrip­tive" (good) metaphysics. His descriptive project to lay "bare the most general features of our conceptual structure," was supposed to differ from logical or conceptual analy­sis only "in scope and generality." At almost the same time the American W. V. Quine published Word and Object (1960). Ills approach differed from Strawson's primarily in emphasizing the genesis of the most general concepts and in accommodating itself explicitly to empirical psychology and physics.

Once metaphysics had been made respectable again. philosophers felt more com­fortable pursuing a large variety of problems in a variety of ways. Metaphysical systems became more elaborate when Saul Kripke used possible worlds to prove theorems about modal logic. Some subsequent positions can even be thought outlandish, such as David Lewis's view that every possible world exist, and exists in the same sense our own world does — outlandish but not disreputable. Some disciplines that had been relatively neglected between 1910 and 1960 were reinvigorated, for example, ethics and politi­cal philosophy by John Rawls. most notably in A Theory of Justice (1971); and some questions, such as the meaning of life, were mulled over by, for example, Thomas Nagel in an analytically respectable way. Perhaps two of the most salient characteristics of the period from 1970 onwards were first. the interest of analytic philosophers in the foundations of empirical sciences, from physics through biology to psychology, and second, their use of and contribution to artificial intelligence and cognitive science. Analysis was largely abandoned and replaced by a desire for philosophical doctrines that were variously more intelligible or intellectually respectable to physicists. logicians. or psychologists. This would explain the large presence of philosophers in cognitive science, linguistics, logic, and the philosophy of science: but has perhaps also led to what Searle has called "the rediscovery of the mind" in a book by that name.

There were other consequences of the revival of metaphysics. Some philosophers, respected for their work as early as the 1950s, for example Roderick Chisholm and Wilfrid Sellars, but not closely associated with any of the schools we have mentioned, grew in significance. Some philosophers turned to the history of modern philosophy, notably, Strawson and Jonathan Bennett on Kant. Bennett on Locke Berkeley and Hume. and Bernard Williams and Margaret Wilson on Descartes. Some philosophers who became important in the last quarter of the twentieth century. notably Richard Rorty. declared analytic philosophy misconceived. bankrupt, or similarly deficient. In making their position clear and in aiming at cogency. they are analytic philosophers in spite of themselves.

It is likely less helpful to talk about one or another movement in philosophy after 1965. No one method or doctrine dominated. Sometimes a philosopher championing a view became its most significant critic or at least moved on to something quite dif­ferent paradigmatically Hilary Putnam. What can be said about the last quarter of the twentieth century is that the original conception of analysis and most of its presuppo­sitions were abandoned by almost all analytic philosophers. Gone is the assumption t hat concepts of philosophical, importance are often composed of simpler sharply-defined concepts. Quine's arguments that there is no principled distinction between analytic and synthetic statements is just a special case of the broader thesis that language and hence thought are essentially indeterminate.

We have been explaining and illustrating analytic philosophy in the last century without defining it. It probably defies definition since it is not a set of doctrines and not restricted in its subject matter. It is more like a method, a way of dealing with a problem. but in fact not one method but many that bear a family resemblance to each other.

Once when Gilbert Harman was asked, "What is analytic philosophy he said (tongue firmly in cheek). 'Analytic philosophy is who you have lunch with." In general. analytic philosophy has become highly pluralistic and in many ways hardly resembles what was done in the first half of the century. The refectory of analytic philosophy is not as clubby as it once was. Many more people sit at the table, and many more differ­ent kinds of food, prepared in more ways. are served. Perhaps what makes current ana­lytic philosophers analytic philosophers is a counterfactual: they would have done philosophy the way Moore, Russell, and Wittgenstein did it if they had been doing phi­losophy-when Moore, Russell. and Wittgenstein were. The multiplicity of analytical styles is one reason for organizing the volume by individual philosopher and not by theme.

Over forty of the greatest analytic philosophers of' the last century are discussed in this volume. At least thirty of them, we believe, would be on virtually any sensible list of forty outstanding analytic philosophers. Many other philosophers have almost as good a claim to he included in this volume. To name only some of those who are not alive, the following were considered and finally, reluctantly, not included: Max Black. Gustav Bergmann, Herbert Feigl. Paul Feyerabend. Gareth Evans, C. I. Lewis, J. L. Mackie, Ernest Nagel, H. H. Price. H. A. Prichard. A. N. Prior. Hans Reichenbach. Moritz Schlick. Gregory Vlastos, Friedrich Waismann, and John Wisdom.

Some philosophers were excluded because they do not fit squarely within the tradi­tion of analytic philosophy as ordinarily understood: John Dewey, William James, Charles Sanders Pierce, John Cook Wilson, and, ironically. Alfred North Whitehead, co-author with Russell of one of the century's greatest works of logic, Principia Mathematica.

While the reputations of some of the philosophers included are as high as they ever were, e.g. Frege and Russell. those of others have declined, not always justifiably, for example those of C. D. Broad and Rudolf Carnap. In making our decisions we have tried not to be prejudiced either for or against any school, method, or time period, but to reflect the relative importance of various philosophers over the entire twentieth century.

We know that our selection will be controversial. even though it was influenced by the judgments of many colleagues. A referee of our proposal wrote that the editors seem to "aim at enraging the reader." Most analytic philosophers will believe that some other list of people would have been better. We are sympathetic. Neither of us com­pletely agrees with the final selection. Each believes that at least three other philoso­phers have a better claim to he included than some that were. In order to preserve "plausible deniability." we have agreed not to comment further on the lists in any written form, and not to appear together at any public gathering of' philosophers for five years.

 

Analytic Philosophy: An Anthology edited by A. P. Martinich, David Sosa (Blackwell Philosophy Anthologies: Blackwell Publishers) This substantial anthology comprises the most comprehensive and authoritative collection of readings in analytic philosophy of the twentieth century. It provides a survey and analysis of the key issues, figures and concepts.

The volume is divided into seven sections: philosophy of language, metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of mind, free will and personal identity, ethics, and methodology. It includes the most familiar texts of the analytic tradition, as well as several others that are less often anthologized. Several articles are logically related to each other. For example, Moore's Four Forms of Skepticism, appears together with selections from Wittgenstein's On Certainty; Langford's discussion of the paradox of analysis and Moore's reply are both included; and Quine's Two Dogmas of Empiricism is paired with Grice and Strawson's In Defense of a Dogma.

Analytic philosophy in the twentieth century is not easily defined by doctrine or method. Different philosophers of the period have held opposed positions and employed various methods, difficult to enumerate or to describe. Today, mans methods overlap. Notwithstanding the nay-sayers who have declared analytic philosophy (or even more indiscriminately, philosophy in general) dead, it is flourishing.

Analytic philosophy would be easier to define if it had kept to its early firm in Great Britain at the beginning of the century. Analysis, as it was originally understood, aimed at breaking down complex concepts into their simpler constituents, just as chemical analysis aimed at breaking down complex substances into simpler ones. For example, the concept of knowledge was decomposed into the concepts of truth, belief, and justification; knowledge was thus analyzed as justified true belief. Later, under the influence of Rudolf Carnap, explicit analyses were supposed to take the form of finding necessary and sufficient conditions for predicates or "open" sentences. Philosophers thought for decades that this analysis of knowledge was correct as far as it went. However, they were not completely satisfied because the relevant notion of justification was not clear. Consequently, for decades philosophers worked on the concept of justification.

In 1963 Edmund Gettier caused a major stir in epistemology by giving some examples in which a person would have satisfied all the specified conditions for knowing something, but would not really know it. Confronted with a counterexample to the traditional analysis of knowledge, philosophers realized that they had been wrong about the nature of knowledge; this inspired them to new analyses. Indeed, years earlier Bertrand Russell had given an example that could have been turned to similar effect; see, for example, The Problems of Philosophy (1912), chapter 13; but it was only with Gettier that philosophy appreciated the inadequacy of the traditional analysis.

Returning to its origins in Great Britain early m the twentieth century, analytic philosophy, in the hands of G. L. Moore, was a challenge to British Idealism. Ile defended the mind-independence of the external world, the multiplicity of the world as against the indivisible unity of the mind, and the fundamentality of' common-sense beliefs. Because Moore and Russell believed in multiple ultimately - irreducible objects, they thought of themselves as atomists, but because they were philosophers rather than physicists, Russell coined the term "Logical Atomism" for their general philosophy.

One of the greatest works of logical atomism was Ludwig Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, of which the main positions are presented in entry II). (Sec also entry 9.)

'Though so far we have been discussing how analytic philosophy sprung up in English-speaking countries, we should emphasize that German-speaking countries represent a second font. ("Anglo-Germanic" philosophy might he less misleading than the standard "Anglo-American"; Michael Dunnnett has plugged "Anglo-Austrian" as better representing the significance of philosophers such as Bernard Bolzano, Franz Brentano, and -AIexius Meinong.) Near the end of the nineteenth century, Gottlub Frege, a mathematician, revolutionized formal logic. This led him to study the foundations of language and thought (sec entry 1). In his 1918 article, "Thought" (entry 2), Frege introduced many of the standard conceptual tools and distinctions analytic philosophers have used since. His most famous student was Carnap, who emigrated to the United States to escape political oppression in Germany. Other brilliant philosophers Carl Hempel (sec selection 19) is another notable example - also left Germany and later settled in the United States.

Beginning with the powerful effects of Frege on Russell, and then of the latter on the Austrian-born Wittgenstein, the cross-fertilization of German and English philosophy was broad and deeply important. To cite another example, Moritz Schlick organized in Vienna a group ("the Vienna Circle"), consisting mostly of scientists turned philosophers. Both A. J. Ayer, a brilliant young Englishman, and W. V. Quine, a brilliant young American, attended their discussions. When Ayer returned to England, he wrote Language, Truth, and Logic, the most famous presentation of their philosophy: logical positivism (entry 40; sec also 41). ("Positivism" comes from the phrase "empirical positivism," which was a nineteenth-century scientism promoted by Auguste Comte.)

No less impressed with the Vienna Circle than was Ayer', Quine turned his thought in a different direction when he returned to the United States. While he continued his work on formal logic, Quine importantly attacked what he called ,Iwo dogmas of empiricism" (entry 43; see also 44), which he saw as dogmas of logical positivism. The first dogma is that there is a significant distinction between analytic truths and synthetic truths. The second dogma is that "each meaningful statement is equivalent to sonic logical construct upon terms which refer to immediate experience." Quine's attack was on the foundations of conceptual analysis. If he is right that there is no principled distinction between analytic and synthetic propositions, then analysis is hopeless.

Quine's dissatisfaction with the empiricism of the logical positivists was part of a ways of critical interest from across the Atlantic, a wave that included Nelson Goodman and Morton White. At roughly the same time, two other schools, in England, were reflecting critically on positivist positions. One, at Oxford and led by Gilbert Ryle and J. L. Austin, thought that the criterion for meaningfulness dictated by the logical Positivists was too confining. In "Performative Uttrrances" and most famously in How To Do Things with Words, Austin showed that ordinary sentences like "I christen thee the Queen Elizabeth," and "I promise to go to the store" are clearly cognitively meaningful, but do not pass the logical positivists' test for meaningfulness. This insight eventually led to the construction of speech-act theory, invented by Austin but perfected by John Searle and H. P. Grice (entry 5).

In addition, Austin and his hand of "ordinary-language" philosophers believed that philosophical progress could be made by group investigation into the distinctions implicit in ordinary language (entry 42). In his own way, Gilbert Ryle investigated the scope and limits of ordinary language in order to chart the topography of human concepts; he did conceptual geography (sec also his The Concept of Mind.

A second English school, headquartered in Cambridge (with an important outpost in Ithaca, New York) was led by Wittgenstein (selections 28 and 46 represent this group).  He emphasized that meaning' is an abstraction from speaking' (or, more generally, from the "use" of language) and that speaking was inextricably linked to a non-linguistic context. Wittgenstein's work challenged basic assumptions concerning relations between mind, language, and the world, which lay at the root of almost all the analytic philosophy that had come before (including his own earlier work; CC entries 10 and 46).

By 1970s, logical atomism, logical positivism, and Ordinary-language philosophy had had their day. At least three factors contributed to the decline. One was that the questions posed and the answers proffered were thought by their critics to be trivial. Second, some powerful new technical devices, notably possible-world semantics, promised to shed new light on substantive philosophical problems. Third, new philosophical theories, for exsample, causal theories of knowledge, perception, and language, not beholden to ordinary language or to science, were developed.

No one, two, or three ways of doing philosophy and no small class of problems dominated the last quarter century. A thousand philosophical flowers have bloomed. Metaphysics was reinvigorated by Strawson and by Chisholm (entries 11 and 17), ethics and political philosophy by John Rawls and others (entries 35 -7), philosophy of mind by many (entries 22 -7).

Moreover, even the variety of philosophical work included in this volume does not fully represent all that analytic philosophy) has to offer. We have been unable to include work by Gustav Bergmann, for example, or by G. von Wright or other Scandinavian philosophers, by Gilbert Ryle, Frank Ramsey, or C. D. Broad. And the list goes on (Tarski, Godel, Church). Difficult choices were required. (Any damage is partly remedied, concept, encompassing a range of methods and doctrines. Many of these methods and doctrines bear a family resemblance to each other because they have the same ancestors; and, while analytic philosophy of the last quarter century encompasses many deep disagreements, it is also not an unhappy family, and it is creative and diverse.

This diversity makes it difficult to summarize or characterize philosophy today. Perhaps also we are too close to it in time to he able to see it clearly. However, what appears to us to be the case, if only as through a glass darkly, is a more widespread scientism. Although logical atomism and logical positivism were sympathetic to science, very little science actually appeared in the works of their adherents. Scientific results have become more important to philosophy, and philosophy overlaps with science now more than it has since the seventeenth century.

Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation by Donald Davidson (Oxford University Press) The eighteen essays in this collection address the question of what it is for words to mean what they do. Davidson covers such topics as the relation between theories of truth and theories of meaning, translation, quotation, belief, radical interpretation, reference, metaphor, and communication. Excellent book. A must read for anyone interested in philosophy of language. This book contains all of Davidson's important articles concerning philosophy of language. A classic in analytical argument.

Aspects of Reason by Paul Grice, edited with introduction Richard Warner (Oxford University Press) Reasons and reasoning are central to the work of Paul Grice, one of the most influential and admired philosophers of the late twentieth century. In the John Locke Lectures that Grice delivered in Oxford at the end of the 1970s, he set out his fundamental thoughts about these topics; Aspects o f Reason is the long‑awaited publication of those lectures.

The focal point is an investigation of practical necessity (the necessity of `I must not torture' or `I must go to law school' for example). Grice contends that practical necessities are established by derivation; they are necessary because they are derivable. Aspects of Reason sets this claim in the context of an account of reasons and reasoning. This allows Grice to defend his treatment of necessity against obvious objections, also revealing how the construction of explicit derivations can play a central role in explaining as well as justifying thought and action. Grice was still working on Aspects of Reason during the last years of his life; unpolished as it is, the book provides an intimate glimpse into the workings of his mind. This rich and subtle work, powerfully evocative of its author, will refresh and illuminate many areas of contemporary philosophy.

Paul Grice (1913‑1988) was Fellow of St John's College, Oxford, and, until his retirement in 1980, Professor of Philosophy in the University of California, Berkeley.

Richard Warner is Professor of Law at Chicago‑Kent College of Law. He was previously Professor of Philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania, and at the University of Southern California.

Future Pasts: The Analytic Tradition in Twentieth Century Philosophy edited by Juliet Floyd and Sanford Shieh (Oxford University Press) this collections of essays on the historical significance of the analytic style of argument and inquiry that dominated Angelo-American professional philosophy though the 20^th century is sure to find a wide audience. Many of the classic feuds and concerns that have occurred in this period are written about by many of the participants themselves. The essays are arranged chronologically and though in no way is it comprehensive or analytical in its accounts, it does make some droll nod to narrative and not without some slight humor, as the excesses are admitted and as is some serious rhetorical short sightedness.
Among contemporary philosophers there is a growing interest in recounting the history of philosophy in the twentieth century. Those who discuss what is more or less loosely called "analytic philosophy"-among them some who reject the methods of analysis outright-are increasingly engaged in attempt­ing to delineate the origins and significance of the analytic tradition.

Future Pasts is meant to be a contribution to the growing historical con­sciousness of contemporary Anglo-American philosophy. More than that, however, the decision to bring together these particular essays stems from the editors' conception of present difficulties facing the historiography of recent philosophy. Both partisans and critics-such as Richard Rorty--of what is called "analytic philosophy" assume that it is definable by a small number of questions, theories, principles, or concepts. Future Pasts calls into doubt these often unquestioned, even unconscious, assumptions about the history of recent philosophy.

Containing twenty-one previously unpublished articles by such luminaries as W. V. Quine, John Rawls, Stanley Cavell, Warren Goldfarb, Hilary Putnam, and others, this volume represents a new approach to the history of philosophy as well as an exciting and engaging portrait of twentieth-century analytic philosophy.

A Parting of the Ways: Carnap, Cassirer, and Heidegger by Michael Friedman (Open Court) Philosophy is deeply divided between two hostile camps: analytic philosophy (dominant in the U.S. and other English-speaking countries) and continental philosophy (dominant in Germany and France). In this volume, Friedman explores the common origin of analytic and continental philosophy, showing how social and political events intertwined and influenced philosophy during the early twentieth-century.

Friedman gives a general overview of the philosophical issues of the period, paying special attention to the relationships among three key twentieth-century philosophers: Rudolf Carnap, Ernst Cassirer, and Martin Heidegger. Already polarized by their philosophical disagreements, the approaches of Carnap and Heidegger-now practiced largely in isolation from one another-were further split apart by the rise of Naziism and the resulting emigration of all influential German-speaking philosophers except for Heidegger. While the radical directions taken by Carnap (analytic philosophy) and Heidegger (post-modernism) have been hugely influential, Friedman enters a plea on behalf of Cassirer's "middle way" as a bridge between the dead ends now reached in both analytic and continental philosophy.

Intuitions As Evidence by Joel Pust (Studies in Philosophy: Garland) is concerned with the role of intuitions in the justification of philosophical theory. The author begins by demonstrating how contemporary philosophers, whether engaged in case-driven analysis or seeking reflective equilibrium, rely on intuitions as evidence for their theories. The author then provides an account of the nature of philosophical intuitions and distinguishes them from other psychological states. Finally, the author defends the use of intuitions as evidence by demonstrating that arguments for skepticism about their evidential value are either self-defeating or guilty of arbitrary and unjustified partiality towards non-intuitive modes of knowledge.

 

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