 |
I sympathize with you. I think a "short and good formulation" or even a long and good formulation is
not going to mean much to a student in the abstract. The student really needs to see instances of
analytic philosophy, and do some himself. Wittgenstein, one of the greatest of analytic philosophers,
wrote that philosophy was not a theory but an activity. Moreover, the term "analytic philosophy" is not
the name of just one kind of thing. There are many ways of "doing" analytic philosophy ranging from
the very formal to the very informal. But, perhaps, what these all have in common is the conviction
that philosophical problems have to be dealt with painstakingly with close attention to detail and trying
to get to the root of the problem. Most analytic philosophers (although not all) would agree that
philosophical problems are (very) generally speaking, problems about certain fundamental concepts
like truth or knowledge, and that these problems will yield (or should yield. anyway) to the analysis of
these concepts. It is, perhaps, generally agreed that this analysis will very much involve the language
in which these concepts are expressed which is why there is a close relation between analytic
philosophy and what is sometimes called "linguistic philosophy."
|