ABSTRACT
Academic philosophy has undergone a striking metamorphosis in recent years, one so radical that a philosophical Rip van Winkel would indeed have to rub his eyes to recognize his subject in it. The attention of philosophers has become more and more concentrated on language; and linguistic considerations, which were once introduced incidentally, for the sake of clarifying a question or an argument, now occupy a central place in the doing of philosophy. It may be that the inner substance of philosophy has remained unchanged and that what philosophers seek now is what philosophers have always sought. But there can be no doubt that the approach to problems has, apparently, gone through a change which is as strange and disconcerting to some able philosophers as it is exciting and promising to others. In the Phaedo Socrates says that he tried to determine ‘the truth of existence’ by recourse to concepts: this is the traditional image of the philosopher. And Moore’s distinction between knowing the meaning of a common word and knowing the analysis 1 of its meaning fitted in with the picture of the philosopher looking more deeply into concepts than does the ordinary man and discovering basic facts about things. Wittgenstein, it will be remembered, told us not to ask for the meaning of a word but rather to ask for its use; and in line with this recommendation many present day philosophers examine linguistic usage with the traditional aim, apparently, of establishing facts of ontology.
