Metaphysics Out of Logic

Abstract

In the second and third chapters we illustrated the outlook of mid-century philosophy in contrast with the older speculative philosophy. But the attitude of the post-war writers had developed from a third point of view, widely different from either of those two, which had prevailed only a generation earlier among the analytic philosophers themselves. Our illustrations in the next two chapters are intended to show the main lines of this development, thus providing that shorter and more recent perspective on the revolution in philosophy which I mentioned at the beginning of Part One. It will be well to give an advance sketch of the development, indicating how the famous arguments serving as our illustrations were a part of it. But first I must say a few words about the late 19th-century speculative philosophy against which the founders of the modern analytic school were reacting.