ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces the notion of logical analysis that Gottlob Frege and Bertrand Russell pioneered and that gives ‘analytic’ philosophy its name. The basic idea informing it is that the surface grammar of natural language conceals the true, underlying logical form of its sentences, which results in philosophical problems and confusion. Frege and Russell thought that logical analysis could dispose of these problems but in order for it to do so, they needed to develop a new logic, a new formal notation, capable of expressing the true logical structure underlying natural language sentences. The major achievement of Frege’s Begriffsschrift is that it provides a complete, rigorous formalization of sentences that talk about quantities of things. Frege was very interested in arithmetic: he was a mathematician by trade and from there became interested in questions concerning the foundations of arithmetic truth and validity – that is, the philosophy of mathematics and mathematical logic.
