ABSTRACT
The concentration of philosophy upon language is not a phenomenon confined to the analytic philosophy of the Anglo-Saxon world, but it is very marked in that world. So much so that the main part of philosophy now is the philosophy of language, so called. In some ways this is natural enough. Philosophy must above all be a criticism of thought, of culture, of all the sciences. At present it conducts that criticism by studying their language. Being a critical activity, it must also be self-critical: this is a tradition going back to the ancients and grounded in the fact that philosophy is an ultimate activity – there is nothing further to be a critique of it. Thus at present and in that environment, the self-criticism of philosophy takes the form of philosophy of language.
