One of the founders of analytical philosophy is considered. Russell's analytical philosophy

The grandiose successes of science, especially logic, linguistics, mathematics and physics, could not but change the content of philosophizing. Moreover, these changes were impressive.

Analytical philosophy is philosophizing through a detailed analysis of the logic and language used. Logic and language come to the fore. The reason for this was, firstly, the difficulties that mathematicians had at the beginning of the twentieth century (as well as at its end). In science, mathematics has always been considered a model of rigor. But rather unexpectedly, mathematicians began to encounter various kinds of paradoxes and contradictions. It was not possible to cope with these difficulties by simple means. Because of this, the conviction grew stronger that the roots of the difficulties are hidden in the foundations of mathematics, which includes logic, and some artificial language, as well as philosophy. Deep specialists in mathematics and logic, such as a German Gottlob Frege and Englishman Bertrand Russell, came to the conclusion that the old philosophy is outdated, there is no less confusion in it than in mathematics.

Secondly, analyticism arose as a reaction to the dominance of idealism in English universities at the beginning of the 20th century. It was recognized that idealism is untenable, it obscures the clear state of affairs. In philosophy, it is necessary to take as a basis not abstract impressions and words that are necessary to reflect all this. Thus, the clarity of philosophy was connected, first of all, with the language, and not with what is going on in the head, which is purely individual and unverifiable. Unlike thoughts, feelings, everyone can be convinced of the truth of linguistic descriptions of facts external to a person. And this means that clear philosophy must be reduced to statements about facts external to man.

Englishman John Moore and an Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein were the first to put at the center of philosophical analysis not the artificial languages ​​of mathematics and logic, but natural language.

Thus, analyticism in philosophy arose not by chance, but by virtue of well-defined reasons.

The German mathematician Gottlob Frege was one of the many researchers who sought to improve mathematics by means of logic, especially mathematical proof, which was replete with various kinds of paradoxes and contradictions. But in Frege's approach there was one most important feature: according to his intuition, it was necessary to significantly develop the logic itself, to create a formalized language that would serve as a worthy replacement for natural language with its many shortcomings. According to Frege, the then formal logic and natural language suffered from the same shortcoming - the assumption that all sentences have a subject-predicate form. In complex sentences, the division into subject and predicate was difficult. Frege saw a way out of the situation in the distinction between an argument and a function and also introduces second-order functional expressions: “everything”, “no one”, “some”, which require the introduction of variables into the logic. Frege's inventions literally transformed logic, which gained access not only to mathematics and various kinds of formalized languages, but also to natural language, and hence to the philosophy of the Philosophers of the 20th century.-M., 1999.- P.431..

The English logician and mathematician Bertrand Russell was convinced that the new logic would make it possible to more adequately than previously find the final philosophical truths, to discover the nature of the basic elements of reality, which are not reducible to the fictions of the idealists (Leibniz, Hegel, Bradley).

Russell was guided by three ideas. First, sound philosophy is logic, for it begins by explaining propositions of what can be true or false, and that is the task of logic. Secondly, knowledge is most reliably given to us directly, primarily in sensory data. Reduction to the ultimate elements of reality allows us to avoid misconceptions. Thirdly, he used his own version of the technique, which he called "Occam's razor": the subject content should be reduced to the original essences, indefinable in terms of anything else. For Russell, philosophy coincides with science, which has nothing to do with the old intoxicating metaphysics.

The culmination of the first stage in the development of analytic philosophy was the book of the Cambridge philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein "Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus", where the author even more persistently than Russell focuses his attention on language.

The main provisions of this first anthology of analytic philosophy are as follows:

Thought is expressed in language, which means that language is the limit of thinking.

There is only one world - the world of facts, events (coexistence of facts), which are described by the totality of natural sciences.

A sentence is a picture of the world, it has the same logical form with the latter (if the world were illogical, then it could not be represented in the form of a sentence).

The meaning of the sentence expresses the event.

Compound sentences are made up of elementary sentences that relate directly to facts.

The highest is inexpressible (meaning that the proposals of ethics, aesthetics, religion cannot be substantiated by facts.

What can be said at all can be said clearly. About everything else, for example, the mystical, it is better to remain silent.

Philosophy cannot consist of scientific propositions, because philosophical propositions cannot be tested for truth and falsity, they are meaningless.

The goal of philosophy is not specific philosophical propositions, but logical clarifications of language. Therefore, philosophy is not a special doctrine, but an activity to clarify the language. Analytical Philosophy: Selected Texts.-M., 1993.-S.113..

The development of philosophical thought led to the improvement of speech. Linguists of European states (also some American representatives) delved into the study of language turns. Analytic philosophy has made the metalanguage a tool for general use, accessible and understandable for everyone who wants to learn science, regardless of education. It is impossible to determine exactly when such a general cultural upheaval took place, since the process captured many decades of the 20th century. The beginning of the Second World War was a decisive factor in the transition of the current to a new level. From crises, innovations of the direction, the history of a full-fledged language array has developed.

Philosophy of analytics, early stage, representatives

Speaking of analytic philosophy, it is paramount to understand its essence. It is the leading trend in the philosophy of the English-speaking intellectual communities of the 19th and 20th centuries, which dominates other linguistic trends, unites them, and teaches to use accuracy, rigor, and common sense in solving problems.

Representatives of the direction are distinguished by restraint towards abstractness, generalization, secularization of concepts. Reasonable reasoning is the main trump card of philosophers. Language serves for them not only as an auxiliary means of study, but is itself a subject of study.

The desire of analysts to eliminate from the language turns forms that lead to misleading philosophical conclusions, confusion of reasoning has acquired tremendous importance. With the help of a comparison of the logic and grammar of sentences, syntactic accuracy, the adherents achieved the desired result.

Due to the scale of analytical philosophy, uniting scientific diversity under its leadership, began to lay claim to the methodology of all research knowledge.

Analysis in philosophy has acquired the role of an influential tool. He refracted the intellectual consciousness of society, directed mankind to the path of scientific and technological progress, and carried out a revolution in philosophical thinking. At the same time, adherents of linguistic and logical types of analysis, reflecting the moods of the minds, deny the supremacy of any of the sciences, rely on ordinary language and a natural approach to life.

Analytical philosophy has its roots in antiquity. Aristotle reflected the initial ideas of modern analysts. Later, philosophizing also contained the makings of an analytical approach. All subsequent analytic philosophers became the forerunners of the trend: Leibniz, Hume, Descartes, Berkeley, Locke, Hobbes, Brentano.

Heidegger was the ideologist of language improvement. The philosopher believed that the purpose of philosophical science is to approach the maximum adequacy of the transmission of thought through language.

The bright first representatives were Russell, Ramsey, Frege, Wittgenstein. They delved into a detailed language analysis, became the founders of knowledge for related sciences.

The supporter of the meta-ethical approach was the Georgian philosopher Mamardashvili, who proposed to build ethical judgments based solely on life experience.

Members of the Vienna Circle are also considered adherents of analytical philosophizing. Despite the difference of opinions, they pursued a single principle - a philosophical analysis of the scientific language, a critical perception of available knowledge. The essence of the principle was to understand the existing knowledge as a commonality of human sensations. To confirm this formulation, the adepts suggested reducing knowledge to sensations.

Analytic ethics or metaethics

With the development of society, sooner or later, the ethical question of philosophy, raised by Aristotle, Kant, again had to be on the agenda. If earlier ethics looked abstract, did not have clear definitions and rules, then analytic philosophers looked at it with their inherent logical view.

The moral-ethical problem, long ignored by proponents, has taken center stage in analytic philosophy. It is thanks to her that the direction is called metaethics. Husserl believes that the European social crisis is connected precisely with the removal of man from ethical values.

Metaethics, which analyzes ordinary language, has two approaches to the perception of moral and ethical phrases: cognitive (cognitive), non-cognitive (subjective-emotional). The cognitive approach is more widespread and in demand. The ethics of values, justice was the key idea of ​​the representatives of the direction. But over time, metaethics moved away from it, transformed into a vast current, only remotely reminiscent of the original source in its concepts. Modern metaethics is similar to the original one only in the analytical manner of the way of thinking: the absence of vagueness, abstractness of presentation; clear definition of key phrases; striving for the purity of logical conclusions.

The political side of philosophy

Analytic philosophers were adherents of various political opinions. Being adherents of philosophical knowledge, they did not hesitate to combine their scientific convictions with their political position, put into practice their research and analytical knowledge in order to eliminate political rivals, and criticized the historically formed state systems.

This general process can be called the massive use of logical analysis for selfish purposes. This "phenomenal omnipresence of politics in philosophy" abolishes the very concept of "political philosophy".

Religion through the Eyes of Analytical Philosophers

In short, many of them were rabid atheists. In every possible way using methodological analysis in politics, philosophers actively translated it into religious beliefs. Challenging, criticizing, ridiculing church dogmas, they sought to prove the unviability of faith as such. Although they themselves were also believers, only their deity was science. Some analytic philosophers considered religion to be the worst offspring of metaphysics. Others denoted the totality of mystical knowledge, which lends itself to linguistic research.

Such a diverse use of analytical philosophizing testifies to its wide applicability in any sphere of life.

Metaphysics as a subject of controversy

Initially, metaphysics was the object of denial for analytic philosophers: they did not understand its principles, they had a negative attitude towards its purpose, and considered its conclusions and discoveries absurd. Metaphysical logic was not compared with analytical thinking, as it was weakly provable. She, as the representatives of the direction believed, was based on the fictions of scientific minds, meaningless absurd conclusions. Later, the analyst Quine found that the accusations of the absurdity of metaphysics were based only on specific atomic quotations. From which it follows that it is unreasonable to judge science as a whole by individual passages.

Analytical philosophers have come to the conclusion that without some intellectual hypotheses, universals, it is impossible to compose linguistic terms. Therefore, the complete denial of metaphysical theories makes philosophy itself problematic, and science must leave free space for assumptions, approximations, which in time will find natural proof or become confirmation of other laws.

Thanks to the adherents of analytical philosophy, the uniqueness of metaphysics, the same doctrine of atoms, was proved, its discoveries received research approval from the scientific community. After that there was a synthesis of precision and approximation. But analysts prefer to refrain from loud statements about postmodern metaphysics, not to combine it with classical teaching. The assumption of the parallelism of the worlds, their multiplicity, the uniqueness of the model of our world, philosophers-analysts refer to atomic theories.

Analytical methods of philosophy, influence on them Carnap

The echo of the metaphysical philosophers was picked up by the analyst Carnap.

The statement of the only true mathematical precision, consistency seemed to him erroneous, practically impossible. But the use of the humanitarian literary language for the formulation of physical, mathematical concepts also showed its incapacity.

The research space needed a radical new approach. Carnap proposed the massive use of the main scientific language, built according to established rules. The philosopher suggested: "if any dogma contains the concept of the essence of something, you need to recognize it as true, build further logical conclusions." This approach was a kind of semantic, which had two directions - general, academic. The first assumed that the use of terms is reduced to a simple dictionary convenience of communication between people, and skirmishes occur as a result of elementary linguistic innuendo. The second (Carnap was his supporter) assumed the existence of a world ideological contract, a “vocabulary basis”, thanks to which scientists from all over the world could communicate without problems.

Wittgenstein - a representative of analytical philosophy

The Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein supported the methodology of language analysis. To do this, he used deductive, logical, mathematical techniques.

Wittgenstein finds the connection between judgments and facts precisely in the linguistic space. A thorough mathematically provable study of the language is necessary, namely, the separation of meaningless and reasonable conclusions that will show whether the saying coincides with reality. To simplify the analysis, it is necessary to single out individual important statements from the general mass, and then compare them with the fact.

Due to the use of literary generalized language, terms are mixed up, thus creating philosophical pseudo-problems.

Therefore, the main task of Ludwig Wittgenstein's method is the division of complex sentences into atomic ones with their subsequent correlation with facts. The followers of the analyst have developed a procedure for analyzing theoretical explanations, basic statements. Basic statements were based on sensations, research results. From which it follows that science must be guided by logical, mathematical truths, and not by empirical guesses.

Philosophy sets itself a more global goal - language improvement, the establishment of prohibitions on certain topics.

Opposition of metaphysics and philosophy

The concept of "analytic philosophy" was born from the methodology of Rudolf Russell. He considered the world to be a collection of facts supported by propositions. A single fact creates an idea of ​​a secondary one, so ad infinitum. The logical entities of facts, like atomic statements, contain all scientific significance.

According to Russell, the relationship of a fact with a statement proves the definition of the statement itself as a valid fact.

Plato, with his "universal ideas", influenced the construction of Russell's own analytical method. His theory of "logical atoms" demonstrated the relationship between philosophy and science.

Russell's brainchild, analytic philosophy, discovered the true meaning of sayings, their hidden meaning. Russell believed that the clarity of knowledge, as the main goal of philosophy, can be achieved not by discovering new terms, but by rebuilding already known scientific dogmas based on proven facts. Any metaphysical principle that does not correspond to a known factual essence is an absurdity, a play on words.

About philosophy briefly and clearly: ANALYTICAL PHILOSOPHY. Everything basic, most important: very briefly about ANALYTICAL philosophy. The essence of philosophy, concepts, trends, schools and representatives.

THE CONCEPT AND DEVELOPMENT OF ANALYTICAL PHILOSOPHY

In analytical philosophy, the tendency of philosophy of the 20th century has received the most complete expression. - "turn to the language." Logic and language come to the fore. Unlike the "classics", analytic philosophy sees in language not just a means of conveying some content, but also an independent object of study. Analytism in philosophy arose not by chance, but by virtue of well-defined reasons. One of these reasons is the difficulties faced by mathematicians at the beginning of the 20th century (as well as at its end). In science, mathematics has always been considered a model of rigor. But rather unexpectedly, mathematicians began to encounter various kinds of paradoxes and contradictions more and more often. These difficulties could not be overcome by simple means. Because of this, the conviction grew stronger that the roots of the difficulties were hidden in the foundations of mathematics. But what is the foundation of mathematics? Logic and some artificial language, as well as philosophy. Deep specialists in the field of mathematics and logic, such as the German Gottlob Frege and the Englishman Bertrand Russell, came to the conclusion (Russell was especially sharp on this subject) that the old philosophy was outdated, it was no less confusing than mathematics.

There are several stages in the development of analytical philosophy.

The first stage is "romantic" (Russell, Schlick), which is characterized by boundless confidence in the possibilities of a new method of analysis, which is based on the achievements of mathematical logic.

The second stage is distinguished by an appeal to the philosophical and linguistic analysis of natural language (J. E. Moore, Malcolm).

The third stage is linguistic philosophy based on Ludwig Wittgenstein's concept of linguistic meaning as usage. Linguistic philosophy found the cause of philosophical problems in the very element of natural language, which gives rise to paradoxical sentences and linguistic "traps". Misconceptions are eliminated by clarifying and describing the usual ways of using words and expressions, introducing as a criterion of meaningfulness the requirement of the possibility of an antithesis to any used word. Since the 60s. 20th century there is a convergence of problems and research approaches of linguistic philosophy and a number of areas of linguistics.

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Analytical philosophy covers a variety of philosophical theories that have developed in the XX century. and adherents analytical tradition. This tradition was established in England, the USA, Canada, Australia, then spread to the Scandinavian countries and the Netherlands. Now analytical philosophy is developing vigorously all over the world, including Russia.

Different concepts of analytical philosophy differ significantly from each other, but they have some common features. This is, first of all, a linguistic turn - the reformulation of philosophical problems as language problems and their solution based on the analysis of linguistic expressions; focusing on the problem of the meaning of linguistic expressions; the use of various methods of analysis in order to turn philosophy into a fairly rigorously reasoned knowledge.

Formation of analytical philosophy. The founders of analytical philosophy are English philosophers Georphy Moore(1873–1958) and Bertan Russell(1872-1970), in whom one can find the beginnings of almost all forms of analysis used in this philosophy.

Russell takes natural language statements as the initial units of analysis. But he believes that the form of these statements, their ambiguity and complexity obscure their true meaning. It is necessary to find a way to reformulate statements about objects whose existence is doubtful, replacing the names of these objects with a description of the properties inherent in these objects. The analytical method has a positive meaning for Russell - with its help it is supposed to obtain true information about what exists in the world.

Philosophy, writes Russell, throughout its history consisted of two parts that did not harmonize with each other. On the one hand - the theory of the nature of the world, on the other hand - ethical and political teachings. The inability to clearly separate these two sides has been a source of much confusion. Philosophers from Plato to the present have allowed their opinions about the structure of the universe to be influenced by the desire to teach. Russell condemns such prejudice on both moral and intellectual grounds. From a moral point of view, a philosopher who uses his professional abilities for anything other than an impartial search for truth, in Russell's opinion, commits a betrayal. "If he accepts, even before research, that certain beliefs - no matter if they are true or false - contribute to good behavior , he so limits the scope of philosophical reasoning that philosophy becomes trivial.A true philosopher is ready to explore All assumptions. Philosophers who have made logical analysis the main business of philosophy reject all prejudice. They frankly admit that the human intellect is not able to give definitive answers to many questions that are very important for humanity. But they refuse to believe in the existence of some "higher" way of knowing, with the help of which one can discover truths hidden from science and reason. The habit of careful truthfulness inculcated by analytic philosophy can be extended to all spheres of human activity.

Moore emphasizes the possibility of using natural language for the purposes of argumentation. Studying ethics, he comes to the conclusion that the difficulties faced by philosophers stem to a large extent from a careless attitude to the meanings of the concepts used, insensitivity to their dependence on context, from attempts to raise questions without substantiating their legitimacy, etc.

Wittgenstein proceeds from the premise that there is a connection (correlation) between reality and the logical structure of language. Perhaps, Wittgenstein suggests, the creation of analytical tools to distinguish theoretically legitimate statements from logically absurd and meaningless. One of these means is the scheme of an ideal language, which, based on the identification of the true logical structure of the language, provides a single formalized model of human knowledge. Wittgenstein thus appeals to the correction of natural language with the help of artificial language. Unlike Russell, who believes in the progress of philosophical knowledge, Wittgenstein's analytical techniques are aimed not so much at a positive solution of problems, but rather at liberation from the "mystical", which includes most of the problems of traditional philosophy.

Wittgenstein later renounces, however, his idea of ​​the coincidence of the structure of language with the structure of facts. Now he sees language as a set of tools that perform communicative functions and serve changing social goals. A new version of the analysis based on the concept of "language games" is proposed. The task of analysis is to clarify the uses or functions of expressions, to describe the instrumental functions that they perform in each specific context and in various forms of life. Among the uses of the language, descriptions, evaluations, norms, expressions of feelings (expressives), suggestion of feelings (orjectives), etc.

As before, Wittgenstein rejects speculative philosophy, but on a different basis - it unduly transfers the rules of one language game to another: for example, it identifies assessments with descriptions or expressions of feelings with their suggestion. Philosophy, Wittgenstein believes, has only therapeutic, and not a cognitive role - to weed out what something can be said about, from what it is impossible to talk about.

It is sometimes said on this occasion that Wittgenstein did away with traditional philosophy and showed that there is no such thing as philosophy anymore, there is only philosophizing. Most major philosophical questions have been the result of linguistic errors. It is enough to understand the mistake - and the question simply disappears. And all the remaining questions simply do not have an answer or, which would be more correct, should not have been asked at all.

Modern analytical philosophy. Following Wittgenstein, many representatives of analytical philosophy proceed from the idea that all knowledge about the world comes from science and common sense; philosophy is engaged not in the establishment of truths, but in clarifying therapeutic activity to cleanse the language of "systematically misleading statements" (G. Ryle).

American philosopher Willard Van Orman Quine(1908-2000) put forward the thesis of the "indeterminacy of radical translation", according to which a sentence can always be considered as the meaning of not one, but many different things. Our statements about the world appear before the court of sensory experience not individually, but as a system that collides with experience only at the edges, and we can only talk about justifying the entire system. Analysis acts as the construction of a logically sound theory, which receives its justification with the help of the practical effectiveness of the system.

The need for logical modeling of natural language, which arose with the production of computer systems, stimulated the development of the formal technique necessary for this.

Modern analytic philosophy cannot be singled out to any substantive basic principle. It is connected not by adherence to any one "sample of knowledge", but by stylistic kinship. The main subject of analysis is not so much language, but the philosophical question of how language "links" with thinking and reality. Most often, analysis is understood as the use of modern argumentation techniques to determine premises, establish a semantic and logical relationship between statements, etc. Analytic theories generally follow the ideal of philosophy as a rational-theoretical activity, although they do not identify philosophy with science.

Some American analysts (R. Rorty, A. Danto and others) question the very image of "philosophy as a science" and leave one perspective for philosophy - "philosophy as literature".