Analytical Philosophy Definition and Explanation

The phrase “analytical philosophy” is a generic one that refers to a specific school of thought in the field of philosophy that is antagonistic to metaphysical speculation and is founded on analytic logic. It stems from the English empiricism of John Locke, David Hume, and John Stuart Mill, passing through the logical positivism of the Vienna Circle and the “logical atomism” of early Wittgenstein and Russell on its way to becoming today’s dominant philosophical school. The later development of ordinary language philosophy is typically also covered; however, it varies significantly by concentrating on the language in use rather than its abstract form. The term “linguistic philosophy” is commonly used to refer to these latter variations of analytic philosophy.