Abstract

The British movement of Linguistic Analysis is now comparatively mature, although it has not yet greatly expanded from the private circle in which its early pioneers, Moore and Wittgenstein guided its first steps and early mistakes. Its admittedly revolutionary character lies not so much in a new statement of traditional British empiricism as in a new conception of the philosophical activity itself. It is a new philosophy about philosophy, which claims to be more ‘skilful’ in professional method and application than any of its predecessors. It claims not so much to make new statements as to clarify those already and commonly made, and to remove many of them which concern problems which, Analysts allege, arise through plain misunderstanding of ‘the logic of our language’. Philosophy thus becomes a method of therapy rather than a set of fundamental doctrines and Wittgenstein considered that its work ‘is best done in piece–meal fashion in short essays and articles and, most successfully of all, in private discussion’. Hence the movement remained almost completely unknown outside Britain, while inversely it bred itself within a passing atmosphere of insular superiority.