PHIL 845 Major Figures I

Instructor: Josh Mozersky

Topic: Analytic Philosophy: Its Origin, Scope, and Prospects

In the West, the dominant philosophical outlook of the 19th Century was Idealism, the view that everything is, ultimately, mental, or, on some versions, that only the contents of our own minds are knowable.  The early part of the 20th Century witnessed the birth of a new approach, eventually called Analytic Philosophy, that was, in large part, the rejection of the idealism of the previous era.  The turn away from idealism was accompanied, and encouraged, by two early 20th Century revolutions.  The first was the rise of modern physics, with the introduction of Relativity Theory and Quantum Mechanics.  The second was the birth of modern mathematical logic.  Both were important to the early analytic philosophers, but it is the latter that was especially influential because the pioneers of the analytic movement, such as Bertrand Russell, G. E. Moore, and Ludwig Wittgenstein, took great inspiration from the works of the mathematician Gottlob Frege, whose works sit at the foundations of modern logic, computer science, and Analytic Philosophy.

This course is an in-depth study of analytic philosophy’s birth, development, and influence on 20th Century thought.  We begin with a brief overview of 19th Century views on the nature of mathematics and mathematical knowledge.  We then turn to the pivotal works of Frege on the foundations of arithmetic, and its extensions to his theories of meaning and thought.  Next, we take a look at the ideas of Russell and Wittgenstein that took off from Frege’s works.  We end with an examination of some of the most influential analytic works from the middle and later 20th Century, with an eye toward understanding the strengths, limits, and prospects of the movement.