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'''Analytic philosophy''' is a broad, [[Contemporary philosophy|contemporary]] movement or tradition within [[Western philosophy]] and especially [[English-speaking world|anglophone]] philosophy, focused on [[analysis]].{{efn|[[A.P. Martinich]] draws an analogy between analytic philosophy and analytic chemistry, which aims to determine chemical compositions.<ref name=:4>{{Cite web|title=A Companion to Analytic Philosophy}}</ref>}}{{efn|"Without exception, the best philosophy departments in the United States are dominated by analytic philosophy, and among the leading philosophers in the United States, all but a tiny handful would be classified as analytic philosophers. Practitioners of types of philosophizing that are not in the analytic tradition—such as phenomenology, classical pragmatism, existentialism, or Marxism—feel it necessary to define their position in relation to analytic philosophy."<ref name="Searle03P1">[[John Searle]] (2003), ''Contemporary Philosophy in the United States'' in N. Bunnin and E. P. Tsui-James (eds.), ''The Blackwell Companion to Philosophy'', 2nd ed., (Blackwell, 2003), p. 1.</ref>}} Analytic philosophy is characterized by a style of clarity of [[prose]] and rigor in arguments, making use of [[formal logic]] and mathematics, and, to a lesser degree, the [[natural sciences]].<ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Glock |first1=H.J. |year=2004 |title=Was Wittgenstein an Analytic Philosopher? |journal=Metaphilosophy |volume=35 |issue=4 |pages=419–444 |doi=10.1111/j.1467-9973.2004.00329.x}}</ref><ref name="PenguinDicP22">Mautner, Thomas (editor) (2005) ''The Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy'', entry for "Analytic philosophy", pp. 22–23</ref>{{efn|Quote on the definition: "'Analytic' philosophy today names a ''style'' of doing philosophy, not a philosophical program or a set of substantive views. Analytic philosophers, crudely speaking, aim for argumentative clarity and precision; draw freely on the tools of logic; and often identify, professionally and intellectually, more closely with the sciences and mathematics, than with the humanities."<ref name="LeiterWeb">[[Brian Leiter]] (2006) webpage [https://web.archive.org/web/20061115002425/https://www.philosophicalgourmet.com/analytic.asp ''"Analytic" and "Continental" Philosophy'']<!-- https://www.philosophicalgourmet.com/analytic-and-continental-philosophy/ --></ref>}}{{efn|"analytical philosophy [is] too narrow a label, since [it] is not generally a matter of taking a word or concept and analyzing it (whatever exactly that might be). [...] This tradition emphasizes clarity, rigor, argument, theory, truth. It is not a tradition that aims primarily for inspiration or consolation or ideology. Nor is it particularly concerned with 'philosophy of life', though parts of it are. This kind of philosophy is more like science than religion, more like mathematics than poetry—though it is neither science nor mathematics."<ref>Colin McGinn, ''The Making of a Philosopher: My Journey through Twentieth-Century Philosophy'' (HarperCollins, 2002), p. xi.</ref>}}{{efn|According to [[Scott Soames]], "an implicit commitment—albeit faltering and imperfect—to the ideals of clarity, rigor and argumentation" and it "aims at truth and knowledge, as opposed to moral or spiritual improvement [...] the goal in analytic philosophy is to discover what is true, not to provide a useful recipe for living one's life". Soames also states that analytic philosophy is characterized by "a more piecemeal approach. There is, I think, a widespread presumption within the tradition that it is often possible to make philosophical progress by intensively investigating a small, circumscribed range of philosophical issues while holding broader, systematic questions in abeyance".<ref name="Soames">{{cite book |last=Soames |first=Scott |title=The dawn of analysis |publisher=Princeton Univ. Press |year=2003 |isbn=978-0-691-11573-3 |edition=2nd print., 1st papers. print |location=Princeton, NJ |pages=xiii–xvii}}</ref>}} It is further characterized by an interest in [[language]] and [[Meaning (philosophy)|meaning]] known as the [[linguistic turn]].<ref name=":5">{{Harvnb|Dummett|1993|page=4, 22}}</ref>{{efn|"[I]t is difficult to give a precise definition of 'analytic philosophy' since it is not so much a specific doctrine as a loose concatenation of approaches to problems."<ref>See, e.g., Avrum Stroll, ''Twentieth-Century Analytic Philosophy'' (Columbia University Press, 2000), p. 5</ref>}}{{efn|"I think [[Hans Sluga|Sluga]] is right in saying 'it may be hopeless to try to determine the essence of analytic philosophy.' Nearly every proposed definition has been challenged by some scholar. [...] [W]e are dealing with a family resemblance concept."<ref>see Stroll (2000), p. 7</ref>}}{{efn|"The answer to the title question, then, is that analytic philosophy is a tradition held together ''both'' by ties of mutual influence ''and'' by family resemblances."<ref>See [[Hans-Johann Glock]], ''What Is Analytic Philosophy?'' (Cambridge University Press, 2008), p. 205</ref>}} It has developed several new branches of philosophy and logic, notably [[philosophy of language]], [[philosophy of mathematics]], [[philosophy of science]], modern [[predicate logic]] and [[mathematical logic]].<ref>{{cite web |last=Koopman |first=Colin |date= |title=Bernard Williams on Philosophy's Need for History |url=https://pages.uoregon.edu/koopman/pub/2010rev-metaP_williams_hist_phil-final.pdf |access-date=2022-03-01 |website=pages.uoregon.edu}}</ref>
 
The proliferation of analysis in philosophy began around the turn of the 20th century and has been dominant since the latter half of the 20th century.<ref name="Vienne 1997 p. 140">{{cite book |last=Vienne |first=J.M. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=LVXgT6lo6cwC&pg=PA140 |title=Philosophie analytique et histoire de la philosophie: actes du colloque (Université de Nantes, 1991) |publisher=J. Vrin |year=1997 |isbn=978-2-7116-1312-0 |series=Problèmes et controverses |page=140 |language=fr |access-date=2023-08-28}}</ref><ref name="Luft 2019 p. 258">{{cite book |last=Luft |first=S. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=mCu6DwAAQBAJ&pg=PT258 |title=Philosophie lehren: Ein Buch zur philosophischen Hochschuldidaktik |publisher=Felix Meiner Verlag |year=2019 |isbn=978-3-7873-3766-8 |page=258 |language=de |access-date=2023-08-28}}</ref><ref name="Glock 2008 p. 1">{{cite book |last=Glock |first=H.J. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=WnvhtAEACAAJ |title=What is Analytic Philosophy? |publisher=Cambridge University Press |year=2008 |isbn=978-0-521-87267-6 |page=1 |access-date=2023-08-28}}</ref>{{efn|The 1950s saw challenges to much which had been taken for granted, and roughly by 1960 anglophone philosophy began to incorporate a wider range of interests, opinions, and methods.<ref name="autogenerated3">{{cite web |title=Analytic Philosophy Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy |url=http://www.iep.utm.edu/a/analytic.htm |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090703212901/http://www.iep.utm.edu/a/analytic.htm |archive-date=3 July 2009 |access-date=13 April 2018 |publisher=Iep.utm.edu}}</ref> Despite this, most philosophers in Britain and America still consider themselves "analytic philosophers".<ref name="LeiterWeb" /> They have done so largely by expanding the notion of "analytic philosophy" from the specific programs that dominated anglophone philosophy before 1960 to a much more general notion of an "analytic" style,<ref name="LeiterWeb" /><ref name="autogenerated3" /> characterized by mathematical precision and thoroughness about a specific topic, and resistance to "imprecise or cavalier discussions of broad topics".<ref name="autogenerated3" />}} Central figures in its historical development are [[Gottlob Frege]], [[Bertrand Russell]], [[G. E. Moore]], and [[Ludwig Wittgenstein]]. Other important figures in its history include [[Franz Brentano]], the [[logical positivism|logical positivists]] (particularly [[Rudolf Carnap]]), the [[ordinary language philosophy|ordinary language philosophers]], [[Willard Van Orman Quine|W. V. O. Quine]], and [[Karl Popper]]. After the decline of logical positivism, [[Saul Kripke]], [[David Lewis (philosopher)|David Lewis]], and others led a revival in metaphysics.
 
Analytic philosophy is often contrasted with [[continental philosophy]],{{efn|"Most non-analytic philosophers of the twentieth century do not belong to continental philosophy."<ref>H.-J. Glock, ''What Is Analytic Philosophy?'' (Cambridge University Press, 2008), p. 86</ref>}} coined as a catch-all term for other methods, prominent in [[continental Europe]],{{efn|The distinction rests upon a confusion of geographical and methodological terms, as if one were to classify cars into front-wheel drive and Japanese. [...] the distinction between analytic and Continental philosophy rests upon a confused comparison of methodological and geographical categories.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Critchley |first=Simon |url=http://worldcat.org/oclc/1200924441 |title=Continental philosophy a very short introduction |date=2001 |publisher=Oxford University Press |oclc=1200924441}}</ref>}} most notably [[existentialism]], [[phenomenology (philosophy)|phenomenology]], and [[Hegelianism]].{{efn|"Analytic philosophy is mainly associated with the contemporary English-speaking world, but it is by no means the only important philosophical tradition. In this volume two other immensely rich and important such traditions are introduced: Indian philosophy, and philosophical thought in Europe from the time of Hegel."<ref>[[A.C. Grayling]] (ed.), ''Philosophy 2: Further through the Subject'' (Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 2</ref>}}{{efn|"So, despite a few overlaps, analytical philosophy is not difficult to distinguish broadly [...] from other modern movements, like phenomenology, say, or existentialism, or from the large amount of philosophizing that has also gone on in the present century within frameworks deriving from other influential thinkers like Aquinas, Hegel, or Marx."<ref>L.J. Cohen, ''The Dialogue of Reason: An Analysis of Analytical Philosophy'' (Oxford University Press, 1986), p. 5:</ref>}}{{efn|Steven D. Hales described analytic philosophy as one of three types of philosophical method practiced in the West: "[i]n roughly reverse order by number of proponents, they are phenomenology, ideological philosophy, and analytic philosophy".<ref>{{cite book |last=Hales |first=Steven D. |title=Analytic philosophy : classic readings |publisher=Wadsworth/Thomson Learning |year=2002 |isbn=978-0-534-51277-4 |location=Belmont, CA |pages=1–10}}</ref>}} There is widespread influence and debate between the analytic and continental traditions; some philosophers see the differences between the two traditions as being based on institutions, relationships, and ideology rather than anything of significant philosophical substance.<ref name="Rinofner-Kreidl Wiltsche 2016 p.">{{cite book |last1=Rinofner-Kreidl |first1=S. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=8-XVDAAAQBAJ |title=Analytic and Continental Philosophy: Methods and Perspectives. Proceedings of the 37th International Wittgenstein Symposium |last2=Wiltsche |first2=H.A. |publisher=De Gruyter |year=2016 |isbn=978-3-11-044887-0 |series=Publications of the Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein Society – New Series |page= |access-date=2023-08-28}}</ref><ref name="Glock 2008 p.">{{cite book |last=Glock |first=H.J. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=WnvhtAEACAAJ |title=What is Analytic Philosophy? |publisher=Cambridge University Press |year=2008 |isbn=978-0-521-87267-6 |page= |access-date=2023-08-28}}</ref> The distinction has also been drawn as analytic is [[Academy|academic]] or technical philosophy, while continental is [[Literary criticism|literary]] philosophy.{{efn|"The distinction which Russell sets up between 'technical' philosophy and 'literary' philosophy has had many incarnations, from Plato's 'ancient quarrel between poetry and philosophy'..."<ref>{{Cite book |last=Luchte |first=James |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=UFBS4Kpz9ooC |title=Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra: Before Sunrise |date=2011-11-03 |publisher=Bloomsbury Publishing |isbn=978-1-4411-1845-5 |language=en}}</ref>}}{{efn|The tradition has also been criticized for excessive formalism, ahistoricism, and aloofness towards alternative disciplines and outsiders.<ref name="Glock 2008 p. 231">{{cite book |last=Glock |first=H.J. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=WnvhtAEACAAJ |title=What is Analytic Philosophy? |publisher=Cambridge University Press |year=2008 |isbn=978-0-521-87267-6 |page=231 |access-date=2023-08-28}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |last=Akehurst |first=Thomas L. |date=2009-03-01 |title=Writing history for the ahistorical: Analytic philosophy and its past |url=https://doi.org/10.1016/j.histeuroideas.2008.09.002 |journal=History of European Ideas |volume=35 |issue=1 |pages=116–121 |doi=10.1016/j.histeuroideas.2008.09.002 |issn=0191-6599 |s2cid=143566283}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |last=Beaney |first=Michael |date=2013-06-20 |editor1-last=Beaney |editor1-first=Michael |title=The Historiography of Analytic Philosophy |url=https://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199238842.001.0001/oxfordhb-9780199238842-e-029 |access-date=2022-02-18 |website=The Oxford Handbook of The History of Analytic Philosophy |language=en |doi=10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199238842.001.0001 |isbn=978-0-19-923884-2}}</ref> Some have tried to develop a [[postanalytic philosophy]].}}
 
==History of analytic philosophy<!--'History of analytic philosophy', 'History of Analytic philosophy', 'History of analytical philosophy', and 'History of Analytical philosophy' redirect here-->==
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