Abstract

The paper provides an overview of the most fundamental ideas representing analytic philosophy throughout its history from the beginning of 20th century up to now. The history of analytic philosophy is divided into two stages – the early and the contemporary ones. The main distinguishing features of early analytic philosophy are using mathematical logic as a tool of stating and solving philosophical problems, and critical attitude toward ‘metaphysics’, i.e., traditional and contemporary non-analytic philosophical theories. The genesis of analytic philosophy was closely related to the revolution in logic that led to the rise of mathematical logic, and it is no coincidence that some founders of analytic tradition (first of all Frege, Russell, and Carnap) were also prominent logicians. (But there were also authors and schools within early analytic philosophy whose researches were based on less formal tools such as classical logic and linguistic methods of analysis of language. Ordinary language philosophy is an example of this type of philosophy.) Using the new logic as a philosophical tool led to a huge number of new ideas and generated a new type of philosophical criticism that was implemented in a number of projects of ‘overcoming metaphysics’. These features constituted the methodological and thematic profile of early analytic philosophy. As opposed to the later, contemporary analytic philosophy cannot be characterized by a prevailing method or a set of main research topic. Its characteristic features are rather of historical, institutional, and stylistic nature. In the paper, early analytic philosophy is represented by Frege, Russell, early Wittgenstein, Vienna Circle (Schlick, Carnap etc.), and ordinary language philosophy (later Wittgenstein, Ryle, Austin, and Searle). Contemporary analytic philosophy is represented by Quine, and direct reference theory in philosophy of language (Kripke, Donnellan, Kaplan, and Putnam).