T H E R IS E O F T W E N T IE T H C E N T U R Y A N A LY TIC

P H IL O S O P H Y

P. M . S. H acker

I. Analytic philosophy
I f philosophy of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries can be
characterized as the age of reason and enlightenm ent, and
philosophy of the nineteenth century as the age of historicism and
historical self consciousness, then to th at extent the twentieth
century can be said to have been the age o f language and logic. T he
role of exploring the philosophical consequences of the thought th at
m an is above all a language using creature fell to analytic
philosophy.1 So too did the task of clarifying the significance of the
unprecedentedly powerful formal logic invented a t the turn of the
century by Frege, Russell and W hitehead, and of elucidating the
relations between logical calculi, language and thought.
Analytic philosophy cam e to dom inate Anglophone, and for a
while Viennese, and thence Scandinavian, philosophy from the
1920s until the 1970s. M odern analytic philosophy was bom on the
banks of the C am a t the turn of the century, whence its influence
spread to the D anube and the Isis, and thence to far-flung
countries across the globe. M any figures played a role in its
developm ent, b u t none a greater one than Ludwig W ittgenstein,
who was one o f the two m ajor figures in the transform ation of its
first M oorean and Russellian phase into its second phase of
C am bridge analysis in the 1920s. His influence moulded the third
phase of Viennese logical positivism, and he was the leading
inspiration of its fourth and final phase of connective2 and
therapeutic analysis which characterized post-war Oxford analytic
philosophy.
T his judgem ent is controversial. O ne ground of controversy is
the very term ‘analytic philosophy’. In a loose sense, one m ight say,
all, or the bulk, of philosophy is analytic. Considered independently

1 T here were, of course, precursors, from Vico, through Ham ann, Herder, Humboldt,
and Schleiermacher to Dilthey.
2 I owe the term ‘connective analysis’ to P. F. Strawson’s Analysis and Metaphysics, An
Introduction to Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), pp. 19-21.
 52 P M.S. HA C KER

of their antecedents and sources of inspiration, if A ustin’s

investigations into excuses belong to analytic philosophy, then so
too do Aristotle’s investigations into voluntary action; if Ryle’s
writings upon the concept of m ind are an example of analytic
philosophy, so too are A quinas’s; if Strawson’s writings on
‘individuals’ are a variety of analytic philosophy, then so too are
K a n t’s on ‘objects’, / i f the term ‘analytic philosophy’ is to be a
useful classificatory term, it m ust do m ore work than merely to
distinguish m ainstream W estern philosophy from the reflections of
' philosophical sages or prophets, such as Pascal o r Nietzsche, and
from the obscurities o f speculative metaphysicians, such as Hegel,
Bradley or H eidegger^
Professor D um m ett has suggested that analytic philosophy is the
philosophy of thought, and that its m ain tenet is that a philo­
sophical account of thought can be obtained only through a
philosophical account of language. This characterization is
puzzling, since it is unclear w hat the ‘philosophy of thought’ might
be. I f ‘thought’ here means w hat Frege m eant by ‘G edanke’, then
the philosophy of thought is simply the philosophy of, o r a
philosophical elucidation of, the concept of a proposition. But while
the concept of a proposition is of great philosophical interest, and
has been the subject o f extensive philosophical controversy, it is
hardly the whole of philosophy, or even of everything th at might
rightly be called ‘analytic philosophy’. It is no m ore than a p a rt of
the philosophy of logic or philosophy of language. I f ‘thought’ here
m eans ‘thinking’, then the philosophy of thought is simply a p a rt of
philosophical psychology, and analytical philosophy of thought is
no more than a fragm ent of analytical philosophy of psychology.
D um m ett’s explanation was tailored to fit Frege. ‘Frege himself
did not m ake the claim th at the only task of analytic philosophy is
the analysis of thought, and hence of language . . .’, D um m ett
adm itted, ‘b u t by his practice in the one particular branch of
philosophy in which he worked, the philosophy of m athem atics, he
left little doubt th at th at was his view.3 I t seems to me that he left a
great deal of doubt, that it is questionable w hether Frege had any
general views about the whole body o f philosophy, w hether he
thought th at analytic philosophy o f psychology, o f axiology, ethics
and aesthetics, political and legal philosophy, etc. are all concerned
with ‘the analysis of thought, and hence of language’. Indeed,

3 M. A. E. Dum m ett, ‘Can Analytic Philosophy be Systematic and O ught It T o Be?’,

rcpr. in his Truth and Other Enigmas (London: Duckworth, 1978), p. 442.
 T W E N T IE T H CE N T U RY ANALYTIC PH ILO SO PH Y 53
w hether the cloth D um m ett cut actually fits even the body of
Frege’s own, very limited, philosophical concerns (i.e. the philo­
sophy of m athem atics and logic) is debatable, since Frege patently
did not think th a t an account of natural language was the best way
to investigate thoughts. O n the contrary, he held th at logic is the
science o f the laws of thoughts, and th at ‘Someone who w ants to
learn logic from language is like an adult who wants to learn how to
think from a child. W hen m en created language, they were at a
stage of childish pictorial thinking. Languages are not m ade to
logic’s ruler’.4 Indeed, the task of the philosopher is to break the
¡rower o f the word over the hum an m ind, to free thought ‘from that
which only the n ature of the linguistic m eans of expression attaches
to it’.5 T his exegetical question is controversial, but having
discussed it in extenso elsewhere,6 I shall not debate this issue now.
D u m m ett’s characterization o f analytic philosophy is also m eant
to capture the contours of the philosophy of W ittgenstein ‘in all
phases of his career’.7 This too seems to me to be wrong, and I shall
com m ent briefly on the m atter. W hat is true is that according to the
early W ittgenstein of the Tractatus, the prim ary task of philosophy
was to determ ine the limits of thought by clarifying the essence of
the proposition as such. This was held to be the route to the
clarification of the essence of representation in general, and hence
of the essence of the world. But that idea marks a break with Frege
and Russell, not the continuation of an established tradition of
analytic philosophy. For according to Frege, a thought is an
ab stract entity which exists in a ‘third realm ’ of sempiternal
Platonic objects, whereas W ittgenstein conceived of a proposition
as a linguistic entity —a meaningful sentence. For W ittgenstein, but
not for Frege, the investigation into the natu re of the proposition
was an investigation into the essential nature of representation by
m eans of symbols. N either Frege nor Russell believed that the
philosophical investigation of logic was an investigation into the
essential nature o f symbolism. T ru e , W ittgenstein held that studying
the limits of language will also reveal the limits of thought - but the
limits of thought are the limits of the thinkable. He did not m ean

4 Frege, letter to Husserl, dated 30.10-1.II . 1906, in his Philosophical and Mathematical
Correspondencey pp. 67f.
5 G. Frege, Conceptual Notation, tr. and ed. T . W. Bynum (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972),
Preface.
6 See G. P, Baker and P. M. S, Hacker, Frege: logical Excavations (Oxford: Blackwell and
New York: University Press, 1984), chs. I and 3.
7 M. A. E. Dum m ett, Origins o f Analytical Philosophy (Ixmdon: Duckworth, 1993), p. 4.
54 P.M.S. HACKER

here by ‘thought’ w hat Frege m eant (i.e. a proposition conceived as

an abstract entity). R ather, he m eant by ‘thought’ or ‘proposition’
the sentence in its projective relation to reality. O n his view, an
investigation o f the essence of any possible language will disclose the
limits of what can be said, and hence the limits o f w hat can be thought.
T h a t was a dram atic break with his predecessors. But given that
transform ation, it would have been trivial for W ittgenstein to
suggest that a philosophical account of thought, i.e. o f the meaningful
sentence, is to be obtained through a philosophical account of
language, i.e. o f meaningful sentences. His concern was rath er with
the limits ofw hat we can think, and he argued that those limits (which
exclude the ineffable truths o f metaphysics, ethics, aesthetics and
religion) are to be uncovered by an investigation into the essence of
symbolism. T his investigation, he held, will also reveal w hat cannot be
said in any possible language, but is inevitably and ineffably shown by
any form of representation whatever. This K antian preoccupation
was shared neither by Frege nor by Russell. T o the extent that
D um m ett’s characterization o f analytic philosophy fits the early
W ittgenstein, to that extent it fails to fit either Frege or Russell.
Furtherm ore, the later W ittgenstein repudiated this Tractatus
doctrine. H e did not think that investigating the use o f the
expression ‘proposition’ holds the key to the deepest, let alone to all
the problem s of philosophy. H e repudiated his earlier view that
there is such a thing as ‘the general propositional form’. Indeed, he
denied that the concept o f a proposition holds any special
foundational privileges relative to other philosophically problem atic
concepts. Philosophy has no foundations in an ineffable m eta­
physics o f symbolism. An investigation of thinking is to be
conducted by an exam ination of the use of the verb ‘to think’ and
its cognates, and far from such an investigation exhausting the
dom ain o f analytic philosophy, it constitutes no m ore than a small
p art of the philosophy of psychology.
D um m ett’s characterization of analytic philosophy is historically
unillum inating, and unhelpful in describing w hat is distinctive
about the tw entieth century revolution in philosophy. H e claims
th at ‘we m ay characterize analytical philosophy as that which
follows Frege in accepting th at the philosophy of language is the
foundation for the rest of the subject’.8 Not only is it debatable
w hether Frege would have accepted any such doctrine, it is certain
th at Moore and Russell alike would, indeed did, reject it.

9 Dummett, ’Can Analytic Philosophy be Systematic and O ught It T o Be?’, p. 441.

m

T W E N T IE T H CENTURY ANALYTIC PH ILO SO PH Y 55

Furtherm ore, the later W ittgenstein repudiated any such hier­

archical conception of philosophy. No p a rt of philosophy, in his
view, is foundational relative to the rest. Philosophy is ‘flat’.
Finally, the most distinguished analytic philosophers of the post­
w ar phase of analytic philosophy would not have accepted such a
characterization of their conception of their subject. I f Ryle’s
investigations into the concept of m ind belong to analytic philo­
sophical psychology, if von W right’s exam ination of the varieties of
goodness belong to analytic axiology, if H a rt’s study of the concept
of law belongs to analytic jurisprudence, if D ray’s study of
historical explanation belongs to the analytic philosophy of history,
then little light is shed upon the character of analytic philosophy by
characterizing it either as ‘giving a philosophical account of
thought by means of a philosophical account of language’ or as
holding th at the philosophy of language is the foundation of the rest
of the subject. Any characterization of ‘analytic philosophy’ which
excludes Moore, Russell and the later W ittgenstein, as well as the
leading figures of post-war analytic philosophy, m ust surely be
rejected.
I shall take the term ‘analytic’ to m ean w hat it appears to m ean,
nam ely the decomposition of something into its constituents.
Chem ical analysis displays the composition of chemical compounds
out of their constituent chemical elements; micro-physical analysis
penetrates to the sub-atomic composition of m atter, disclosing the
ultim ate elements of which all substance is composed. Philosophical
analysis harboured sim ilar am bitions within the dom ain of ideas or
concepts which are the concern of philosophy. Accordingly, I take
the endeavours of the classical British empiricists to be a
psychological form of analytic philosophy, for they sought to
analyze w hat they thought of as complex ideas into their simple
constituents. Such analyses, they believed, would not only clarify
philosophically problem atic notions, such as substance, causation,
the self, etc., consigning some to oblivion and elucidating others, it
would also illuminate the sources and extent of possible hum an
knowledge.
I shall use the term ‘tw entieth century analytic philosophy’ to
characterize a dom inant strand in twentieth century philosophy. It
denotes a historical phenom enon, a distinctive movement in
twentieth century thought. Like any historical movement, that
m ovem ent underw ent extensive change and development. I do not
believe th at it can be fruitfully characterized by reference to any
single common tenet, or indeed by any conjunction of doctrines or
56 P.M.S. HA CKER

methods accepted by all those who can with justice be called

‘analytic philosophers’. R ather, it is to be understood dynamically.
A variety of strands connect the thought of earlier phases of the
movement with th at of subsequent phases, even though no single
strand o f any m om ent runs through all phases. Nevertheless, I do
not think it should be conceived to be a family resemblance
concept/"Tor th at would detract from its usefulness as a historical
category. O f course, this does not m ean th at twentieth century
analytic philosophy had no precursors, both in the nineteenth
century (am ong others Frege) and in earlier centuries (such as
Aristotle, or B entham ), who shared some fundam ental tenets and
methodological principles with some phase or other of the modern
movement.
T aking the term ‘analysis’ au pied de la lettre, twentieth century
analytic philosophy is distinguished in its origins by its non-
psychological orientation. One (Russellian) root o f this new school
m ight be denom inated ‘logico-analytic philosophy’, in as m uch as
its central tenet was that the new logic, introduced by Frege,
Russell and W hitehead, provided an instrum ent for the logical
analysis of objective phenom ena. T he other (M oorean) root might
be term ed ‘conceptual analysis’, in as much as it was concerned
with the analysis of objective (mind independent) concepts rather
than ‘ideas’ o r ‘im pressions’. From these origins other varieties
grew. Russell’s Platonist pluralism , considerably influenced by the
prew ar im pact of the young W ittgenstein, evolved into logical
atomism. T h a t in turn, fertilized by the Tractatus linguistic turn in
philosophy (and greatly influenced by both Moore and Russell),
gave rise to C am bridge analysis o f the inter w ar years. At m uch the
same time, the Tractatus was a m ajor source of the different school of
logical positivism, which arose in Vienna, was further fertilised by
contact with W ittgenstein from 1927-36, and spread to G erm any,
Poland, Scandinavia, Britain and the USA. Both these phases of
the analytic movement, in rather different ways, practised and
developed forms o f reductive and (its m irror image) constructive
analysis. U n d e r the influence of W ittgenstein in C am bridge and
later of his posthum ous publications, analytic philosophy entered
yet another phase. Reductive and constructive analysis were
repudiated. Connective analysis (exemplified in various forms in
postw ar Oxford) emerged, and with it therapeutic analysis. These
different phases of the analytic movement overlapped temporally,
and were m utually fructifying. Any detailed study of the movement
must bear in m ind th at the development of analytic philosophy in
w
T W E N T IE T H CE N T U RY ANALYTIC PH ILO SO PH Y 57

this century was not linear, but has a complex synchronic, as wel!
as diachronic, dimension.
In this lecture I shall try to give a synoptic view of the rise of
analytic philosophy, to sketch its developm ents from its beginnings
in C am bridge at the turn of the century, to its third great phase in
the V ienna Circle prior to the second world war. Its final flowering
in post-war Britain, in particular in Oxford, will not be discussed.

2. The first phase

T w entieth century analytic philosophy has its two-fold root in
Cam bridge at the turn of the century in the work of G. E. Moore
and B ertrand Russell. Although it later merged with, it did not
arise as a m odern continuation of, the classical British empiricist
tradition that runs from Hobbes and Locke to Mill. O n the
contrary, when Moore and Russell initiated their revolution in
philosophy, the empiricist tradition in Britain was m oribund. Since
the 1860s Absolute Idealism had dom inated philosophy in British
universities, being a belated assimilation of Hegelian idealism
tem pered by British m oderation. K an t and Hegel were thought to
have dealt a death blow to empiricism. British philosophy seemed
for awhile to be rejoining ‘the main stream of European thought’9,
although, ironically, in G erm any in m id-century Hegelianism was
a spent force, and the neo-K antians were trium phant.
T h e assault upon idealism arose both in Oxford, from Cook
Wilson and his followers, and in Cam bridge, where it was
spearheaded by Moore, swiftly followed by Russell. M oore’s revolt
against idealism began with his 1898 Dissertation, and was rooted
not in empiricism, let alone in comm on sense, but in Platonist
realism. He insisted that relations are objective and mind-
independent, and, with some qualifications, external. H e rejected
the monistic holism of Bradley’s idealism, propounding instead an
extreme form of pluralist, atom ist realism .10 T he motivation was
not unlike that which inspired M einong and Brentano on the
continent. In ‘T he n ature of judgem ent’ (1899), Moore defended
the anti-idealist view that concepts are not abstractions from m ind-
dependent ideas, but are independent existences in their own right.

s T hus J. H. Muirhead, writing in 1924, in ‘Past and Present in Contemporary

Philosophy’ in M uirhead ed. Contemporary British Philosophy, First Series (Ixmdon: Allen and
Unwin, 1924), p. 323. M uirhead’s owl did indeed take flight after dusk.
111 In a letter to Desmond M acCarthy, in August 1898, he wrote: ‘I am pleased to believe
that this is the most Platonic system of modern times.’ (seeT . Baldwin, G. E. Moort London
and New York: Routledgc, 1990), p. 40.
58 P.M.S. H A C K E R

They combine to form propositions which are m ind-independent

objects of thought. Indeed, reality consists of concepts combined in
propositions. T h e idealist notion that the unity of a proposition
depends upon the synthesizing activity of consciousness was
brushed aside in favour of unrestricted Platonism .11 A true
proposition does not correspond with reality, but is (a p a rt of) reality.
C ontrary to the Absolute Idealist doctrine, the truth and falsehood
of propositions are absolute, not a m atter of degree. T ru th is a
simple, unanalyzable, intuitable property which some proposition,
have and others lack.
H aving repudiated the monism of the idealists, Moore turned, in
his 1903 article ‘T h e Refutation of Idealism ’, to assail the idea that
reality is, in some m etaphysical sense, subjective, spiritual or
mental. This seminal article, rath er curiously, took as its target not
Bradleian m etaphysics, b u t rather the Berkeleian claim that esse is
percipi, although it is evident th at Moore thought he had K a n t too
in his target area. His purpose was to sustain the claim that no
good reason has been given for the doctrine that there is no
distinction between experience and its objects, or th at w hat we
perceive does not exist independently of our perception of it. M ore
generally, he insisted th at objects of knowledge (including proposi­
tions), exist independently of being known. For knowing something,
w hether by way o f perception or by way o f thought, is quite distinct
from the object o f th a t knowledge; it is a cognitive relation external
to the object of knowledge.
In these early papers, and in Principia Ethica (1903), Moore
invoked ‘analysis’ - a m ethod or approach to philosophy which was
to have great influence over the next decades, despite the unclarity
with which M oore explained w hat he m eant by it. Sometimes, it
seems, analysis is o f properties or universals, sometimes of
concepts, and sometimes of meanings of expressions. T he difference
is perhaps insignificant for Moore, since by and large he took a
concept to be the m eaning of an expression - w hat the expression
‘stands for’, and it was natural enough from this perspective to
assimilate concepts to properties. W hat is clear is that analysis was
not conceived to be of language, but of something objective which is
signified by expressions. T he analysis of the m eaning o f ‘X ’ was
variously specified as being: (i) the specification of the constituent

11 He wrote to MacCarthy: "I have arrived ai a perfectly staggering doctrine . . . An

existent is nothing but a proposition: nothing but concepts. T here is my philosophy.’ (sec
Baldwin, op.cit., p. 41).
 T W E N T IE T H CE N T U RY ANALYTIC PH ILO SO PH Y 59
concepts into which the concept of X can be decomposed; (ii) the
specification of w hat one sees before one’s m ind when one sees the
m eaning o f X (i.e. the concept of X), e.g. a common property
which m ay be simple and unanalyzable, or analyzable into
constituents; (iii) the specification of how a given concept is related
to and differentiated from other concepts. F ar from intending to
point philosophy in the direction of scrutiny of language and its
use, M oore distinguished sharply between knowing the meaning of
an expression, knowing its verbal definition and knowing its use on
the one hand, and knowing the analysis of its meaning (or knowing
the analysis of the concept expressed by a given verbal expression)
on the o th er.12 H e differentiated knowing the meaning of an
expression, construed as having the concept before one’s mind,
from being able to analyze that meaning, i.e. being able to say what
its constituents are and how it is distinguished from other related
concepts. O ne may know the m eaning of a n expression, but not
know the analysis of the concept for which it stands. Moore
conceived of analysing a concept as inspecting something which lies
before the m ind’s eye, seeing the parts of which it is composed and
how they are combined, and discerning how it is related to and
distinguished from other concepts. H ence his theory of analysis
implied that it is possible to analyze a concept without attending to
its linguistic expression. In practice, however, as might be expected
from his questionable conceptions of m eaning and of concepts, his
actual analyses, for example his (later) celebrated discussion of
existence13, were effected by com paring and contrasting the uses of
expressions. T he upshot of analysis was either the revelation that a
given concept is simple and unanalyzable (as in the case o f ‘good’),
or a specification of a set of concepts the combination o f which was
equivalent to the analysandum . The latter kind of case comm itted
M oore to the linguistic representation of the analysis of complex
concepts into their constituents by means of a paraphrastic
equivalence, a conception which in practice converged on the
general view of logico-linguistic analysis in the 1920s and ’30s.
However, in distinguishing one concept from another in terms of
sim ilarities and differences, he did not insist on finding equivalences.
T his approach became comm on in post second world w ar British
philosophy, by which time M oore’s conceptual realism had been

12 See G. E. Moore, ‘A Reply to my Critics’, in P. A. Schilpp cd.> The Philosophy o f G. E,

Moore (Evanston and Chicago: Northwestern University, 1942), pp. 660-7.
'* G. E. Moore, ‘Is Existence a Predicate’, PASS X V (1936) 175-88,
60 P.M.S. HACKER

rightly rejected. ‘Conceptual analysis’, as practised in Britain after

the w ar, was an heir to M oorean analysis, in which the term
‘analysis’ was retained, but its implications o f decomposition into
simple constituents was jettisoned. Similarly, the term ‘concept’
was preserved, b u t its M oorean realist or Platonist connotations
were abandoned. ‘Conceptual analysis’ thus conceived am ounted,
roughly speaking, to giving a description, for specific philosophical
purposes, of the use of a linguistic expression and o f its rule-
governed connections with other expressions by way of implication,
exclusion, presupposition, etc. (As Strawson has observed, the
nam e ‘connective analysis’ (or ‘elucidation’) might have better
conveyed this m ethod of philosophy.) Though the expression
‘analytic philosophy’ continued to be widely used, its content had
to a considerable degree lost contact with the philosophical
perspective and aspirations in which it originated.
J u s t how far M oore’s conception of philosophical m ethod was
from the linguistic orientation which analytic philosophy was
subsequently to assum e is evident from his later lecture ‘W hat is
Philosophy?’, which he gave at Morley College, London, in 1910,
and which is the opening chapter of his Some Main Problems o f
Philosophy. T h e m ost im portant objective of philosophy, M oore
declared, is no less than
T o give a general description of the whole of the Universe,
m entioning all the m ost im portant things which we know to be in
it, considering how far it is likely that there are in it im portant
kinds of things which we do not absolutely know to be in it, and
also considering the most im portant ways in which these various
kinds of things are related to one another. I will call this, for
short, ‘Giving a general description of the whole Universe’, and
hence will say th a t the first and most im portant problem of
philosophy is: T o give a general description o f the whole
Universe. (Ibid., pp. 1-2)
Such a description differs from physics in its generality. T he very
general kinds of things which Moore enum erates (starting from
comm on sense beliefs) include the existence of m aterial things and
states of consciousness within a spatio-tem poral framework. He
further enum erates the various fundam ental relationships in which
things of these kinds stand to each other, e.g. the mind independence
of m aterial things, the spatial dependence of acts of consciousness
on the location of the bodies whose states of consciousness they are.
These m etaphysical (or ontological) beliefs, which are, according
 T W E N T IE T H C E N T U R Y ANALYTIC PH ILO SO PH Y 61
to M oore, p a rt of our Com m on Sense beliefs, have been controverted
by m any philosophical theories - particularly those of the Absolute
Idealists against which M oore was cam paigning, and it is part of
the task of philosophy to investigate the truth of these beliefs and
the ways in which we can establish them to be known with
certainty to be tru e .14
Although M oore led the revolt against Absolute Idealism ,
Russell followed swiftly in his footsteps. Although taught by
J . W ard, G. F. Stout and H. Sidgwick, it was M cTaggart who
influenced him most, and his first philosophy was idealist. His
reaction against idealism started in 1898 under M oore’s stim ulus.15
T he philosophically most im portant feature of his youthful revolt
was his rejection of Bradley’s doctrine of relations as unreal and
reducible to properties o f their relata, with the consequence that
reality cannot consist in a plurality of items externally related to
each other in a m ultitude of ways. All relations were construed by
Bradley as internal, i.e. as essential properties of their relata
(although even as such they were held to be ‘unreal’). Since
everything is related to everything else, nothing short of the
‘A bsolute’ comprises the tru th as such. Russell saw w hat he called
‘the axiom of internal relations’ as informing five salient doctrines
of Absolute Idealism : m onism - the doctrine that there exists only
one substance - the Absolute; the coherence theory of truth; the
doctrine of concrete universals; the ideality or spirituality of the
real; and the internal relation between the m ind and the objects of
knowledge. O ne of the m any consequences of this strange doctrine
is that it makes it impossible to give a coherent account of
m athem atical thought. For asym m etric relations essential to

14 T here is a striking rcsemblancc between Moore's ‘description of the most important

things we know to be in the Universe’ and Strawson’s much later account of the basic
particulars of any conceptual scheme which we can render intelligible to ourselves (sec P. F.
Strawson, Individuals, an Essay in Descriptive Metaphysics (l-ondon: Methuen, 1959). The
equally striking differences arc a measure of the transformation which analytic philosophy
had undergone during the half century that separates the two books.
n He was later to write, ‘I iclt [the new philosophy] as a great liberation, as if I had
escaped from a hot-house on to a wind-swept headland, I hated the stuffiness involved in
supposing that space and time were only in my mind, t liked the starry heavens better than
the moral law, and couldn’t bear K ant's view that the one I liked best was only a subjective
figment. In the first exuberance of liberation, I bccamc a naive realist and rcjoiced in the
thought that grass is really green . . .’ (Russell, My Philosophical Development (Ixmdon: Allen
and Unwin, 1959, p. 61). However, there was a difFcrcnce between Russell’s preoccupations
and Moore's (ibid., p 54). Moore's primary interest lay in the rejection of idealism, but,
despite the above passionate reaction, Russell’s was in the rejection of monism (although, as
he pointed out, the two were closely conncctcd through the doctrine of internal relations).
62 P.M.S. HA CKER

m athem atics, such as ‘is greater th an ’ or ‘is the successor o f , are

not reducible to properties of the relata without regress.16 T he
proposition ‘A is larger than B’ is not reducible to ‘T here are
m agnitudes x and^v, such that A is x and B i s j ’ without the addition
o f ‘and x is larger th a n ji’. Recognition of external relations not only
liberates philosophy of m athematics, it also abolishes the monism
o f the Absolute and adm its th at reality consists of a plurality of
things.
Russell’s adoption of analysis (as opposed to the neo-Hegelian
synthesis associated with Absolute Idealism) had additional
roots.17 His reading of the works of W eierstrass, Dedekind and
C antor on the principles of m athem atics coincided with his
abandonm ent, under M oore’s influence, of Idealism , and was a
potent source of his conception o f philosophical analysis. T h e work
o f the G erm an m athem aticians in analysing or defining m athe­
m atical concepts pertaining to the calculus, such as limit or
continuity, ‘swept away great quantities of metaphysical lumber
th at had obstructed the foundations of m athem atics ever since the
time of Leibniz’. 18 In particular, it liberated Russell from K antian
and Hegelian mis-construals of arithm etic and geometry, freeing
his conception from any dependence upon a priori intuitions of
space and time, and enabling him to repudiate the synthetic
apriority of m athem atical propositions.
Russell becam e persuaded that the royal road to truth in
philosophy was analysis. He later wrote ‘Ever since I abandoned
the philosophy of K a n t and Hegel, I have sought solutions of
philosophical problem s by means of analysis; and I rem ain firmly
persuaded . . . th at only by analysing is progress possible’.19 Like
M oore, Russell replaced Absolute Idealism not by empiricism, but

Russell examined the m atter in detail in chapter X X V I of his The Principles of

Mathematics (London: Allen and Unwin, 1903). Subsequent references in the text to this work
are abbreviated PrM.
17 I am grateful to Ray Monk for pointing this out to me.
,H See Russell, Portraits from Memory and Other Essays (London: Allen and Unwin, 1956),
p. 24.
1S Russell, My Philosophical Development, pp. I4f. In his prcfacc to Our Knowledge o f the
External World> Russell generously characterizes the writings of Frege as ‘the first complete
example’ of ‘the logical analytic method of philosophy’. It is indeed true that Frege’s
philosophy of mathematics can be characterized as a complete example of the ‘logical
analytic method’ as Russell understood it in the second decade o f the century. However, Russell
evolved his conception of analysis independently of Frege, and the application of the
‘analytic method’ to philosophy in general (in particular to cpistcmology, ontology,
metaphysics and ethics), in this phase of the evolution of analytic philosophy was the work of
Russell and Moore.
f

T W E N T IE T H C E N T U R Y ANALYTIC PH ILO SO PH Y 63
by unbridled Platonist realism. Initially, his conception of analysis
was M oorean. In The Principles o f Mathematics (written largely in
1900 and published in 1903), he wrote: ‘All complexity is
conceptual in the sense that it is due to a whole capable of logical
analysis, but is real in the sense that it has no dependence upon the
m ind b u t only on the nature of the object. W here the m ind can
distinguish elements, there m ust be different elements to distinguish’
(PrM 466). Analysis is essentially the decomposition of conceptu­
ally complex things (of which the world supposedly consists) into
their simple unanalyzable constituents. W hen analysis term inates
in simples or ‘indefinables1, the task of philosophy is
the endeavour to see clearly, and to m ake others see clearly, the
entities concerned, in order that the m ind may have th at kind of
acquaintance with them which it has with redness or the taste of
a pineapple. Where, as in the present case, the indefinables are
obtained prim arily as the necessary residue in the process of
analysis, it is often easier to know th at there m ust be such
entities than actually to perceive them. (PrM p.xv)
Subsequent developments in his philosophy, however, enriched his
conception o f analysis, lending it a more pronounced logical-
linguistic character, and giving it a reductive purpose.
In the Principles, inspired by Peano, Russell m ade his first
attem p t to carry out his logicist program m e, attem pting to show
that arithm etic is reducible to purely logical notions alone.20 Like
M einong, he accepted a referential conception of meaning, viz. that
if an expression has a meaning, then there m ust be something
which it means. As M einong had argued, one m ust have due
respect for w hat subsists w ithout being actual. Accordingly,
Russell held th at every significant expression stands for something.
H is ontology included not only m aterial particulars but also spatial
points, instances of time, relations, universals, classes, correlates of
vacuous definite descriptions such as ‘the golden M ountain’,
logical objects for which logical expressions, such as ‘or’, were
thought to stand, not to m ention Hom eric gods and chimeras.
W ithin a short time, however, w hat Russell later called his

i0 He later wrote 'T he definition of num ber to which I was led . . . had been formulated
by Frege sixteen years earlier, but I did not know this until a year or so after I had
rediscovered it.’ My Philosophical Development, p. 70). The Principles was originally intended to
be the first volume of a two-volume work, the second of which was to be written in
collaboration with Whitehead. As it turned out the sccond volume was never written, its
place being taken by the far more sophisticated fhrec-volumc Prindpia Mathematica.
64 P.M.S. HA CKER

‘robust sense of reality’ reasserted itself. His Theory of Descriptions

(1905) enabled him to reduce the luxuriant growth of subsistent
entities which he had hitherto adm itted. But there was a price for
this achievement. It created the possibility of a rift between the
gram m atical structure of a sentence which expresses a proposition
and the logical structure of the proposition expressed. Hitherto,
Russell, like Moore, had taken for granted that the linguistic
expression for a proposition is a transparent m edium through
which to view the real subject m atter of philosophical reflection,
namely propositions. For it was propositions, and not sentences,
which, in his view, were the bearers of truth and falsehood, and he
conceived of them , as did Moore, as m ind-independent, non-
linguistic objects, which contain not words but objective entities
which he called ‘term s’ (which are akin to w hat M oore had called
‘concepts’). T he Theory of Descriptions, according to Russell,
showed that the gram m atical form of an expression (e.g. ‘T h e King
of France is b ald’, which has the subject/predicate form) may
conceal the true ‘logical form ’ of the proposition expressed. For the
logical analysis of such propositions reveals the presence of
quantifiers, identity, and logical constants. And ‘denoting phrases’,
which seem to stand for something, do not do so at all, despite their
occurrence as the gram m atical subject of a sentence. This had far
reaching implications for his conception of philosophical analysis.21
First, it transform ed the previous conception of analysis from
piecemeal analysis o f the entities which are ostensibly m entioned
by expressions in a sentence into a conception of analysis which
recognizes the existence of what Russell called ‘incomplete symbols’
(of which definite descriptions are one kind). Such expressions
occur in sentences, but have no m eaning (do not stand for
anything) on their own, although the sentence in which they occur
does have a m eaning, i.e. expresses a proposition. T h e analysis of
such propositions is to be done by the transform ation of the original
sentence into a sentence from which the incomplete symbol has
been eliminated. Consequently, secondly, analysis becomes an
instrum ent for the uncovering of the true logical forms of
propositions, which m ay be altogether different from the gram ­
m atical forms of sentences which express them . W hen Russell
began to invoke facts, rather than propositions, as composing the
w orld, he would express this by distinguishing the gram m atical

21 T he m atter is illuminatingly discussed in P. Hylton, Russell, Idealism and the Emergence o f

Analytic Philosophy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), chap. 6.
¥

T W E N T IE T H C E N T U R Y ANALYTIC PH ILO SO PH Y 65

form of a sentence from the logical form of the fact. Indeed, he

would argue th at the prim ary task of philosophy is the investigation
of the logical forms of the facts of the world. Thirdly, logic and its
technical app aratu s became the salient tool of analysis, enabling
one to penetrate the misleading features of ordinary gram m ar and
to gain insight into the true logico-metaphysical structure of things.
Fourthly, the Theory of Descriptions forced Russell to concede
greater im portance to the investigation of language and symbolism
than he had hitherto done, if only because it apparently revealed
how m isleading the symbolism of ordinary language is if taken to
be a transparent m edium through which to investigate the forms of
propositions (or facts). M oreover, although Russell was loath to
acknowledge it, the Theory of Descriptions exerted great pressure
to consider analysis as an intralinguistic operation of sentential
paraphrase for the purpose of philosophical clarification, and not a
super-physical investigation into the logical structure o f reality
(either of facts or of propositions).
T h e Theory of Descriptions enabled Russell to pare down his
ontological commitments. It strengthened his adherence to the
principle of O ckham ’s Razor - th at entities should not be
m ultiplied beyond necessity. This set Russell on the high-road to
reductive analysis in various forms, later articulated in ‘the
suprem e m axim of all scientific philosophizing’: Wherever possible,
logical constructions are to be substituted fo r inferred entities. Analysis
enabled one to show that apparent entities are actually merely
logical constructions out of familiar items of which we have direct
experience. H arnessed to Russell’s distinction between knowledge
by description and knowledge by acquaintance, it became an
apparently powerful tool in epistemological as well as ontological
investigations.
In 1901 Russell discovered the set-theoretic paradox, which so
devastated Frege. In the course of his attem pts to resolve it, he
subsequently (1906) introduced the Theory of Types. By delimiting
the range of significance (the range of possible values of the
variable), i.e. the ‘type’, of a given propositional function ‘x is F ’,
one could exclude certain apparent (and paradox generating)
propositions as meaningless. A function m ust always be of a higher
type than its argum ent, hence while an individual (e.g. Leo) can be
or not be a m em ber of a class (of, say, lions), a class (such as the
class of lions) can neither be nor fail to be a m em ber of anything
else but a class of classes. (So while it m ay or m ay not be true that
Leo is a lion, it is neither true norfalse th at the class of lions is a Hon
66 P.M.S. HACKER

- it is quite meaningless.) Such restrictions are, Russell thought,

rooted in the nature of things; a predicate cannot take itself as its
argum ent because no property of objects can also be a property of
properties. T h e T heory of Types distinguishes sharply between
w hat is true o r false on the one hand and w hat, although
gram m atically well-formed, is in fact meaningless. Again, while
Russell originally conceived of entities, and not expressions, as
being of one type or another, his theory was subsequently to be
transform ed a n d given a more markedly linguistic orientation by
conceiving of type-distinctions as syntactical distinctions between
kinds o f expression.
Both M oore's and Russell’s rath er different styles of analysis
inaugurated tw entieth century analytic philosophy. T hough both
philosophers were ad am an t in their view that they were analysing
phenom ena, the foundations they laid were readily adjustable to
logico-linguistic analysis once the ‘linguistic tu rn ’ in philosophy
had taken place.

3. The linguistic turn o f the T ractatus

T he expression ‘the linguistic turn in philosophy’ was introduced
by Richard Rorty, who employed it as the title of an anthology of
essays on philosophical method published in 1967.22 T he expression
‘the linguistic tu rn ’ caught on and is indeed useful. 1 suggest that
the linguistic turn in philosophy was begun, though not completed,
by the Tractatus. T his claim too is controversial, not only in respect
of identifying w hat can rightly be denom inated ‘the linguistic tu rn ’,
but also in ascribing its prim ary source to the Tractatus.
A nthony K enny, following D um m ett, has suggested that if
analytic philosophy was born when the ‘linguistic tu rn ’ was taken,
‘its birthday m ust be dated to the publication of The Foundations o f
Arithmetic in 1884 when Frege decided that the way to investigate
the nature of n u m b er was to analyse sentences in which num erals
occurred’.23 If the principle that the way to investigate the nature of
X is to analyse sentences in which ‘X ’ occurs signals the linguistic
turn in philosophy, then the linguistic turn was already taken by

Tl R. Rorty, The Linguistic Turn: Recent Essays in Philosophical Method (Chicago and [.ondon:
University of Chicago Press, 1967). Rorty attributes the phrase to Gustav Bcrgmann's ¡jOgic
and Reality (1964).
M A. J . P. Kenny, Frege (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1995), p. 2 1 1.
 T W E N T IE T H CE N T U RY ANALYTIC PH ILO SO PH Y 67
B entham .24 A lthough the context principle, whether in its
B entham ite form or in its Fregean form, is of great im portance, its
introduction does not w arrant the appellation ‘the linguistic turn in
philosophy’. A nd I doubt w hether there is m uch to be gained by
characterizing Bentham as the founding father of m odem analytical
philosophy, even though he explicitly engaged in w hat he called
‘logical analysis’25, and he is in various respects, one o f the many
precursors of twentieth century analytic philosophy.
It seems to me th at in the course o f the developm ent of analytic
philosophy in the early p a rt of the century, there was a transform a­
tion th a t can justly be denom inated ‘the linguistic tu rn ’. It is not a
defining feature of analytic philosophy, for it postdates the

24 Bentham propounded a form of context principle, closer to the later Wittgenstein than
to Frege's (not altogether happy) contention that a word has a meaning only in the context of
a sentence. He also advocated a method of analysis of those problematic terms which he
called "names of fictions’ by means of sentential paraphrase. As Frege thought that the way
to investigate the nature of number was to analyse sentences in which numerals occurred, so
Bentham thought that the way to analyse the nature of duties, obligations and rights (as well
as much else), was to analyse sentences in which the terms ‘duty’, ‘obligation’ or a ‘right’
occurred.
Bentham ’s form of con text principle rightly stresses that the sentence is, as Wittgenstein
was later to argue, the minimal move in a language game:
But by anything less than an entire proposition, i.e. the import of an entire proposition,
no communication can take place. In language, therefore, the integer to be looked for is an
entire proposition - that which logicians mean by the term logical proposition. O f this
integer, no one part of speech, not even that which is most significant, is anything more
than a fragment; and, in this respect, in the many-worded appellative, part o f speech, the
word part is instructive. By it, an intimation to look out for the integer of which it is a part
may be considered as conveyed. A word is to a proposition what a letter is to a word.
( Chrestomathia > Appendix No. IX , ‘Hints towards the Composition o f an Elementary
Treatise on Universal G ram m ar’, in J . Bowring ed. The Works o f Jeremy Bentham
(Edinburgh: T ait, 1843), Vol. V III, p. 188)
Like Frege, Bentham thought that certain kinds of names have a meaning, even though they
do not stand for any idea. Unlike Frege, his interest was in names of what he called "fictitious
entities’ (e.g. ‘o b l i g a t i o n ‘a right’), and his concern was not to show that they signify
abstract entities, but rather that they have a meaning in a sentence even though they do not
stand for anything a t all. This is to be demonstrated by means of paraphrasis, i.e. ‘that sort of
exposition which may be afforded by transm uting into a proposition, having for its subject
some real entity, a proposition which has not for its subjcct anything other than a fictitious
entity’ (Essay on Logic, in Bowring ed. Works, Vol. V III, p. 246). Thus the term ‘obligation’ is
to be explained by embedding it in a sentence (‘phraseoplerosis*), and then ‘exhibiting
another [sentence] which shall present exactly the same import’, but without containing the
problem atic expression in question. In the paraphrastic elimination of names of fictitious
entities, it should not ‘for a moment so much as be supposed t h a t . . . the reality of the object
is m eant to be dented in any sense in which in ordinary language the reality of it is assum ed’
(Chrestomathia, Appendix No. IV, ‘Essay on Nomenclature and Classification’, section X X ,
in Bowring cd. Works, Vol. V III, p. !26).
Bentham, Chrestomathia, Appendix IV, ‘Essay on Nomenclature and Classification1,
Section X IX , in Bowring ed. Works, Vol. V III, p. 121.
68 P M.S. HACKER

M oorean and Russellian revolt against Absolute Idealism . But it is

of the first im portance, for it moulded the subsequent phases of the
analytic movement. This transform ation was effected by the
Tractatus. I shall try to substantiate this claim by attem pting an
overview of some of the salient doctrines of the book.
According to the Tractatus, the function of language is to
com m unicate thoughts by giving them perceptible form. T h e role
of propositions is to describe states of affairs. Propositions are
composed of expressions. Logical expressions ap art, all expressions
are either analyzablc, or they are unanalyzable simple names. Simple
names are representatives of objects in reality th at are their meanings.
Names link language to reality, pinning the network of language to
the world. T he elem entary proposition is a concatenation of names
in accord with logical syntax, which does not nam e anything, but
says that things are thus and so. It represents the existence of a
possible state of affairs that is isomorphic to it, given the m ethod of
projection. T h e logical syntax of any possible language m irrors the
m etaphysical structure of the world. Hence language is necessarily
heteronom ous, answ erable to the logical structure of the world as a
condition of sense.
Sentences are expressions of thoughts. T hought is itself a kind of
language, composed of thought-constituents. T he form of a
thought, no less than of a sentence, m ust m irror the form o f w h at it
depicts. Language is necessary for the com m unication of thoughts,
b u t not for thinking, which is effected in the language of thought.
M ental processes o f m eaning and thinking inject content into the
bare logico-syntactical forms of language. W hat pins a nam e to an
entity in the world is an act of m eaning that object by the name.
W hat differentiates a mere concatenation of signs from the living
expression of the thought is the employm ent of a m ethod of
projection, which is thinking the sense of the sentence, i.e. meaning,
by the utterance of the sentence, that very state of affairs. So the
intentionality of signs is parasitic upon the intrinsic intentionality
of thinking and meaning. U nderstanding is a m ental state or
process that consists in interpreting the sounds heard and assigning
them the sam e content as the speaker.
T he salient achievem ent of the Tractatus was the positive account
o f the n atu re of the propositions of logic. T h e m ark of propositions
of logic is necessity. All necessity is logical. Logical propositions are
tautologies, i.e. com binations o f atomic propositions by m eans of
truth-functional operations such that they are unconditionally true.
All propositions of logic are senseless (all say the same, viz.
 T W E N T IE T H CENTUR Y ANALYTIC PH ILO SO PH Y 69
nothing). Every tautology is a form of a proof. So although they all
say the same, different tautologies differ, inasm uch as they reveal
different forms o f proof It is a m ark of propositions of logic that in a
suitable notation they can be recognized from the symbol alone.
T his reveals the n ature of the propositions of logic and their
categorial difference from empirical propositions. All the proposi­
tions of logic are given with the mere idea of the elem entary
proposition as such. For the logical connectives are reducible to the
operation of jo in t negation, i.e. to conjunction and negation. Since
it is of the essence of the proposition to be bipolar, and to be
assertiblè, the notions of negation and conjunction are given by the
mere fact th at every proposition can be either true or false, and any
p air o f propositions can be conjunctively asserted. For ‘It is false
th a t p' is equivalent to ‘Not-/)’, and the successive assertion of '/>’
and 'q' is equivalent to the assertion of ‘p & q'. Hence every possible
truth-function of elem entary propositions can be generated by the
successive application o f the operation of joint negation to
elem entary propositions. Tautologies and contradictions are the
limiting cases of such combination.
T his m ade it clear how misleading was the Frege/Russell
axiom atization o f logic, and their consequent appeal to self­
evidence for their chosen axioms. For these axioms are not
privileged by their special self-evidence. They are tautologies no
less than the theorems. They are not essentially primitive, nor are
the theorem s essentially derived propositions, for all the proposi­
tions o f logic are of equal status, viz. vacuous tautologies.
Equally revolutionary, and of param ou nt importance for the
subsequent evolution o f analytic philosophy, was the critique of
m etaphysics and the conception of future philosophy as analysis.
Philosophy, according to the Tractatus, is categorially distinct from
all sciences. N either in its m ethods nor in its product is it akin to
science. T here are no hypotheses in philosophy. It does not
describe the m ost general truths about the universe. Nor does it
describe the workings -of the mind. I t does not investigate the
m etaphysical nature of things and describe them in synthetic a
priori propositions, for there are none. T here are no metaphysical
truths that can be expressed in propositions. T he only expressible
necessity is logical. Hence all the propositions of the Tractatus are
nonense, violations of the bounds of sense. T he Tractatus is the
swansong o f metaphysics. M etaphysical truths are ineffable. But
they are shown by ordinary propositions with a sense. Future
philosophy will construct no theories, propound no doctrines,
70 P.M.S. HACKER

attain no knowledge. T here are no philosophical propositions. The

task of philosophy is the activity of logical clarification. Philosophy
is not a cognitive discipline. Its contribution is not to hum an
knowledge but to h um an understanding.
This non-cognitive conception of philosophy is unprecedented in
the history o f the subject. It marks a break with the first phase of
analytic philosophy, a n d was to exercise great influence upon the
V ienna Circle. It also paved the way for W ittgenstein’s later
conception of philosophy. All philosophy is a critique of language.
Its task is to elim inate m isunderstandings, resolve unclarities, and
dissolve philosophical problem s that arise out of the confusing
surface features of natural language. This is to be done by
analysis:
T he idea is to express in an appropriate symbolism w hat in
ordinary language leads to endless m isunderstandings. T h a t is
to say, where ordinary language disguises logical structure,
where it allows the form ation of pseudo-propositions, where it
uses one term in an infinity of different meanings, we must
replace it by a symbolism which gives a clear picture of the
logical structure, excludes pseudo-propositions, and uses its
terms unam biguously.26
T he conception o f analysis was atomistic and logical. Unlike
M oorean analysis, it was linguistic: not an analysis of ideas, or of
concepts (conceived as objective entities one can hold before the
m ind and inspect), b u t o f propositions, i.e. sentences in their
projective relation to the world. I t would display the construction
of propositions out of elem entary proposition by m eans of truth
operations. In addition to its task as clarifier of sense, philosophy
has a m ore negative task, viz. to expose metaphysical statem ents as
nonsense.
In six respects the Tractatus introduced the ‘linguistic tu rn ’ in
analytic philosophy, m arking a break with M oore and Russell.
i) T he aim of the book is to set the limits of thought. But it did so
by setting the limits of language, i.e. by determ ining the bounds

26 Wittgenstein, 'Some Remarks on Logical Form’, Proceedings o f the Aristotelian Society,

suppl vol. IX (1929), p. 163. Though written a decade later than the TraeUUus, this essay
(which W ittgenstein was later to reject as worthless) gives a perspicuous account o f his
earlier conception of analysis, and the only example of what he called ‘the application of
logic', with which he had not been concerned in the Tractatus.
 T W E N T IE T H C ENTURY ANALYTIC PH ILO SO PH Y 71
between sense and nonsense. T his put language, its forms and
structure, in the centre of its philosophical investigation.
ii) T he positive program m e for future philosophy is the logico-
linguistic analysis of propositions, i.e. of sentences with a sense.
iii) T he negative task is the dem onstration of the illegitimacy of
m etaphysical assertions. This was to be done by clarifying the way
in which attem pts to say som ething metaphysical traverse the
bounds of language, endeavour to say something which by the
intrinsic nature of language cannot be said.
iv) T h e key to W ittgenstein’s endeavours lay in the clarification
of the essential nature of the propositional sign. T h a t was achieved by
elucidating the general propositional form, i.e. by giving ‘a
description of the propositions of any sign-language whatsoever in
such a way th a t every possible sense can be expressed by a symbol
satisfying the description, and every symbol satisfying the descrip­
tion can express a sense, provided the meanings of nam es are
suitably chosen.’ (T L P 4.5)
v) T he logical investigation of ‘phenom ena’, the unfolding of
their logical forms, is to be effected by the logical analysis of the
linguistic descriptions of the phenom ena. For the logical syntax of
language is and m ust be isom orphic with the logical structure of
reality.
vi) T h e greatest achievement of the book was the elucidation of
logical truth. T his was effected by an investigation of symbolism. The
‘peculiar m ark of logical propositions is th at one can recognize that
they are true from the symbol alone, and this fact contains in itself
the whole philosophy of logic’. (T L P 6.113)
Although the Tractatus was rooted in a misconceived metaphysics
of symbolism (e.g. that only simple names can represent simple
things, th at only relations can represent relations, that only facts
can represent facts) it gave analytic philosophy a linguistic
orientation it had not had before, and was far removed from the
conceptions of philosophy and philosophical method of Frege,
M oore and Russell. .

4. Cambridge analysis and the Vienna Circle

T he long term im pact of the Tractatus was very far reaching, for the
spirit o f the Tractatus informs m uch contem porary philosophy of
language. It is manifest in Chom skian conceptions of depth
gram m ar, in the D avidsonian ‘d re a m ’ of a theory ‘that makes the
transition from the ordinary idiom to canonical notation purely
72 P.M.S. HA CKER

mechanical, and a canonical notation rich enough to capture, in its

dull and explicit way, every difference and connection legitimately
considered to be the business o f a theory o f m eaning’.27 It is
exhibited in the fascination of linguists and theorists of m eaning
with the question of how it is possible to understand sentences we
have never heard before and in the ways in which they attem pt to
answer this question,28 and it lurks behind cognitive scientists’
claims about the ‘language of thought’. I shall not attem pt to
recount here how the ghost of the Tractatus still haunts contem porary
thought, but merely dwell briefly upon its immediate im pact on the
next phases of analytic philosophy.
Its im m ediate im pact was twofold. It was a m ajor inspiration for
Russell’s logical atom ism and for the emergence of C am bridge
analysis in the 1920s. Its influence on Ramsey was great, and it was
a prim ary inspiration for W isdom ’s influential papers on logical
constructions in 1931-3. It moulded Stebbing’s conception of
logical analysis, and was a guideline for the extensive debate in
Britain in the 1930s about the nature o f philosophy and of
philosophical analysis - until C am bridge analysis was killed off by
its begetter. T h e C am bridge analysts accepted the claim that the
task of philosophy is not to add to hum an knowledge, but rather to
elucidate the knowledge we already have by the logical analysis of
sentences. Its purpose is to reveal the logical forms of facts, and, by
reductive analysis, to show how logical constructions are generated
out of the prim itive constituents of experience. They eschewed
traditional speculative metaphysics, and accepted the Tractatus
conception of logic as consisting of vacuous tautologies.
T he second sphere of the Tractatus influence was the V ienna
Circle. Five m ajor themes characterize the philosophy of logical
positivism, and all were substantially influenced by the Tractatus
and by contact with W ittgenstein between 1927 and 1936. It is
striking th at m uch of the .influence involved extensive misreadings
of its salient doctrines.
First, the logical positivists’ conception of philosophy and of
philosophical analysis was to a large extent the result of their
reading o f the book. T hey abandoned the logical atom ism and the
ontology of facts and their simple constituents. But they embraced

s? D. Davidson, ‘The Logical Form of Action Sentences’ in N. Reschcr ed., The Ij>gic of
Decision and Action (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press* 1967)* p. 115.
28 For the reasons why this is a misbegotten question, see G. P. Baker and P. M, S.
Hacker, Language, Sense and Nonsense (Oxford: Blackwell, 1984), chap. 9.
r
T W E N T IE T H C E N T U R Y ANALYTIC PH ILO SO PH Y 73

the idea that philosophy is not a cognitive discipline, that it is toto

caelo distinct from science. T h e task of philosophy is logical
analysis. Its positive use, according to C arnap, is to clarify
meaningful concepts and propositions, and to lay the foundations
for science and m athem atics. T raditional philosophy is to be
replaced by the investigation of the logical syntax of the language of
science. Although this conception was derived from the Tractatus, it
is notew orthy th at C a rn a p ’s conception of logical syntax differs
profoundly from W ittgenstein’s, since he thought that different
languages m ay have a quite different logical syntax, and that we
are free to construct languages and their logical syntax as we
please. Nevertheless, the M anifesto echoed the Tractatus in
proclaim ing th a t ‘Clarification of the traditional philosophical
problem s leads us partly to unm ask them as pseudo-problems,
partly to transform them into empirical problems and thereby to
subject them to the judgem ent of experim ental science. T he task of
philosophical work lies in this clarification of problems and
assertions, not in the propounding of special “philosophical”
pronouncem ents.’
Secondly, the Circle advocated the demolition of metaphysics.
T raditional m etaphysical claims are to be exposed as nonsense.
Pure reason alone can yield no knowledge. As they understood the
Tractatus, it had shown th at all reasoning is merely the tautological
transform ation of symbolism, and th a t metaphysical assertions are
pseudo-propositions devoid of cognitive content. Unsurprisingly
W ittgenstein was scornful of this aspect o f the Circle’s ideology,
observing th at there was nothing new about ‘abolishing m eta­
physics’. W h at had seemed to him to be original in his anti­
m etaphysical rem arks in the Tractatus was th at by circumscribing
the limits of language, he had m ade room for ineffable metaphysical
truths, truths about the essential n ature of the world, which cannot
be expressed in a language, but which m ust inevitably be shown by
the forms of any possible language. For this doctrine, the Circle
justifiably had no sympathy.
Thirdly, the hallm ark of logical positivism was the principle of
verification, viz. that the m eaning of a proposition is its m ethod of
verification. T his was the basis for their criterion of meaningfulness,
viz. verifiability. T h is criterion played a m ajor role in the Circle’s
anti-m etaphysical polemics, in contrast to W ittgenstein’s strategy
of arguing th at there can be no expressible atom ic necessary truths,
and th at any attem pt to express such truths would involve illicitly
employing a formal concept. T he principle of verification was
74 P.M.S. HA C KER

derived from conversations with W ittgenstein in 1929/30 and read

back into the Tractatus by mem bers of the Circle.29
Fourthly, the Circle aim ed to uphold w hat they called ‘consistent
em piricism ’. T he m ajor flaw in traditional empiricism was the
difficulty in accounting for necessary truths. O f these, the
propositions of logic and m athem atics constituted the most
formidable problem . As far as geometry was concerned, they
tended to adopt H ilb ert’s view th at pure geometry was a calculus of
uninterpreted symbols and that applied geometry was an empirical
theory of space. As far as arithm etic was concerned, they cleaved to
logicism, thinking th at the Tractatus had shown that arithm etical
propositions are tautologies (whereas it had argued that they were
pseudo-propositions). W h at seemed to them the greatest advance
of the Tractatus was the claim th at logical propositions are senseless
tautologies, and that a priori reasoning is nothing but the
tautological transform ation of symbols. It had liberated the
philosophy of logic from the incoherent idea th at logical truth rests
on an array of privileged self-evident axioms known by intuition. It
also showed th at contrary to Frege and Russell, there are no logical
objects, and it rendered obsolete the idea that the propositions of
logic consist of generalizations about logical entities, or forms, or
the m ost general facts in the universe. As they understood
W ittgenstein’s account, he had shown that truths of logic are true
in virtue of the m eanings of the logical operators, hence a logical
consequence o f conventions o f symbolism. Again, ironically,
although the Circle’s conventionalism was inspired by the Tractatus,
and was rooted in W ittgenstein’s explanation of the tautologous
character of the propositions o f logic, the conception of the Circle
was far rem oved from his. W here they thought that the logical
constants are arbitrary symbols introduced to form m olecular
propositions, he had argued that all of the logical constants are
given together with the mere idea of the elem entary proposition as
such. W here they argued th at logical propositions are consequences
o f conventions, he held th at they are given by the essential nature of
every possible language. In his view, they flow not from arbitrary
conventions but from the essential bipolarity of the proposition,
and they reflect the logical structure of the world. Logic, far
from being determ ined by conventions, is transcendental.
T he fifth plank in the logical positivists’ platform was the

29 See P. M. S, Hacker, Insight and Illusion: Themes in the Philosophy o f Wittgenstein (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1986), pp. 134—35.
 T W E N T IE T H CENTURY ANALYTIC PH ILO SO PH Y 75
program m e o f the unity of science. T he idea has Cartesian
ancestry, and was advocated in opposition to the view that there
are different kinds of science with radically different methodologies
and logical structures. In particular, they opposed the view that
there is a sharp methodological and logical difference between the
physical and the psychological, social and historical sciences. T he
thesis of the unity of science, at least in its original form, was
com m itted to a reductionist program m e of displaying all cognitively
significant propositions as deducible from an array of basic
propositions th at constitute ‘the given’. Although the Tractatus had
not specifically discussed the thesis of the unity of science, it had
argued that all propositions are reducible to an array o f elem entary
propositions and their truth-functional combination. Non-
extensional contexts were held to be reducible to extensional ones.
O n the plausible assum ption that elem entary propositions are
verifiable in im m ediate experience, these claims provided a logical
basis for the thesis of the unity of science.
It could readily be argued that o f all the forms of twentieth
century analytic philosophy, logical positivism has been the most
influential, for not only was it the most vigorous, radical and
influential m ovem ent in the interw ar years, but, as a consequence
of the fact th a t most m em bers of the Circle fled to the USA, it was
also destined to mould the shape of Am erican post-war philosophy.
However, in its ‘classical’ Viennese phase, it collapsed under both
internal and external criticism, (i) T he reductivist base was a bone
of contention, opinion polarising between phenomenalism and
physicalism. Despite extensive efforts, no one succeeded in pro­
ducing a convincing reductive account of any general dom ain of
discourse, (ii) The reductivism com m itted orthodox logical
positivism to either methodological solipsism or to radical
behaviourism . N either proved acceptable, (iii) The thesis of
extensionality proved exceedingly difficult to defend, (iv) N either
the principle of verification nor verifiability as a criterion of
m eaningfulness were capable of w atertight formulation, (v) The
conventionalism regarding necessary truth was shown to be
inadequate, (vi) Substantial problems lay buried beneath the
acceptance of classical logic as the basis for the logical analysis of
language or for the rational reconstruction of the language of
science. It is far from obvious that the logical operators of the
calculus correctly represent the ordinary use of their natural
language correlates. It is not evident that the latter are topic
neutral. And it is evident that inference patterns licensed by the
76 P M S. HACKER

calculus do not exhaust the forms of licit inference we employ (e.g.

determ inate exclusion), (vii) T he thesis o f the unity of science came
under attack from different directions. It is not obvious that there is
‘only one science’ or only one ‘language of science’ in C a rn a p ’s
sense. M ethodological monism came under increasing challenge
from herm eneutics and from W ittgenstein’s later philosophy,
(viii) T h e conception of philosophy and of analysis was too narrow.
I f the whole o f philosophy is characterized as the logical analysis of
the language of science, this evidently precludes large areas of
thought and discourse from the province of philosophy. M oral,
legal and political discourse cannot be characterized as part of the
language of science, nor can aesthetics. T h e superficiality of the
logical positivists’ brief forays into ethics was all too evident, and a
reaction against their emotivism duly set in after the second world
w ar. Legal and political philosophy slowly reasserted themselves.
W hether analysis is conceived as a m atter of strict translation, or
as a m atter of the production o fC a m a p ia n reduction-statem ents, it
proved to be far too restrictive for purposes o f philosophical
clarification. T his becam e clear with the liberalisation of the notion
of analysis th a t characterized the next phase in the evolution of
analytic philosophy. T h e fountainhead o f its final phase, charact­
erized by connective and therapeutic analysis, was again
W ittgenstein. Its w aters flowed directly to Oxford, which, after
W ittgenstein’s retirem ent, became the leading centre of analytic
philosophy for the third q u arter of the twentieth century. Its
manifold branches, and its rem arkable and varied achievements
are, however, a tale for another occasion.30

St John’s College
Oxford 0X 1 3JD
England

I have tried to tell this talc in Wittgenstein*s Place in Twentieth Century Analytic Philosophy
(Oxford: Blackwell, 1996).