ABSTRACT
In this chapter we survey the emergence of the analytic-synthetic distinction. The notion of analytic truth has played an important role in many central philosophical projects of the late modern and contemporary period, including the work of Immanuel Kant, Bernard Bolzano, Gottlob Frege, the Vienna Circle, and Rudolf Carnap. Philosophers have taken analytic truths as paradigms of necessary truths, of truths knowable a priori, or of truths knowable with absolute certainty. As a result, philosophers skeptical of the existence of such properties as necessary truth or a priori knowledge have frequently bolstered their skepticism with an attack on analyticity.
