As we look back to the philosophy of the period from 1914 to 1945, we tend to think of this as a time when ‘analytic philosophy’ flourished, though of course many other types of philosophy also flourished at this time (idealism, phenomenology, pragmatism, etc.). But what was this ‘analytic philosophy’ of which John Wisdom wrote when he opened his book Problems of Mind and Matter (1934) by saying ‘It is to analytic philosophy that this book is intended to be introduction’ (1934: 1)? Wisdom makes a start at answering this question by contrasting analytic philosophy with ‘speculative’ philosophy: the contrast is that speculative philosophy aims to provide new information (for example, by proving the existence of God), whereas analytic philosophy aims only to provide clearer knowledge of facts already known. Much the same contrast is to be found in the ‘statement of policy’ which opens the first issue of the journal Analysis in 1933: papers to be published will be concerned ‘with the elucidation or explanation of facts…the general nature of which is, by common consent, already known; rather than with attempts to establish new kinds of fact about the world’ (Vol. I: 1). As we shall see, the thesis that philosophy does not aim to provide new knowledge is indeed a central theme of many ‘analytic’ philosophers of this period. But first we need to investigate the relevant conception of analysis – ‘philosophical’ analysis.

WHAT IS NEO-KANTIANISM?

For contemporary philosophers it is safe to say that much, if not most, of recent philosophy is either directly or indirectly indebted to Kant. Paul Guyer and Allen Wood write in their introduction to the new Cambridge translation of the Critique of Pure Reason: ‘all modern thinkers are children of Kant, whether they are happy or bitter about their paternity’ (Kant 1781, 1787 [1998: 23]). Although this sentiment has been prominent for some time, it has not always been the case. Indeed, some of Kant’s contemporaries prophesied that he would be soon forgotten, and his German speculative idealist successors appeared to go so far beyond Kant that he was no longer recognisable – hence Kant was almost forgotten. That philosophers of the late nineteenth century and the twentieth century not only remember him, but also maintain that philosophy since Kant is the attempt either to build upon him or refute him, is due in large measure to the German idealist movement of the last decades of the nineteenth century and the first several decades of the twentieth century. This is the movement known as Neo-Kantianism.

Despite the significant role that the Neo-Kantians played in emphasising Kant’s importance, there has been little work done on this movement. Writing in 1967 Lewis White Beck observed that ‘There is very little material in English on Neo-Kantianism’ (Beck 1967). This is still true today, although there have been several recent German scholars who have attempted to draw attention to certain figures, or to certain aspects of the movement as a whole.

While vitalism can be traced to ancient Greece (Aristotle’s On the Soul is a vitalist work), modern vitalism arose as a rejection of Descartes’s mechanistic view that plants, animals, and even living human bodies are kinds of machines. Early modern vitalists such Georg Ernest Stahl maintained that what distinguishes living things from nonliving things is that the former contain an irreducible component that is responsible for animating the body. By the start of the nineteenth century, however, a number of researchers had followed Antoine Laurent Lavoisier’s lead in applying the new chemical theory to physiology. And the debate between vitalists and mechanists became focused on whether it is possible to give chemical accounts of vital behaviour such as metabolisation, respiration, and fermentation (Asimov 1964). Many vitalists argued that an account of these vital behaviours would require the discovery of fundamental, vital forces, while mechanists argued that there are no fundamental vital forces, and that organic and inorganic processes differ only in complexity (see Bechtel and Richardson 1993 and 1998). By the close of the nineteenth century, mechanism appeared to be winning on the battlefronts of metabolisation, respiration, and fermentation. Nevertheless, vitalism had begun a powerful resurgence. In the last two decades of the century, biologists began to study the underlying mechanisms of developmental and regulative processes in organisms. And the work of Hans Driesch (1867–1941), one of the founders of this new field of experimental embryology, played a major role in igniting a new period of intense interest in vitalism that lasted well into the 1930s.

Logical atomism is a complex doctrine comprising logical, linguistic, ontological, and epistemological elements, associated with Russell and Wittgenstein early in the twentieth century. The first appearance of a form of logical atomism (though not explicitly identified as such) is in Russell’s philosophical introduction to Principia Mathematica (1910a; see esp. 43–5). Russell had acquired elements of this position from his earlier studies of Leibniz (who is a clear precursor of logical atomism), from his reaction against absolute idealism (where the influence of G. E. Moore’s early atomism, as in Moore 1899, was important), and from his analysis of knowledge. A year later Russell used the term ‘logical atomism’ for the first time (though in French) in his lecture ‘Le réalisme analytique’, where he says of his analytic realism ‘this philosophy is the philosophy of logical atomism’ (1911 [1984– : VI, 135]).

Russell’s conception of logical atomism developed further in the course of his discussions and correspondence with Wittgenstein during the period from 1912 to 1914. These were primarily concerned with the foundations of logic, but the lessons learnt there were applied by Russell and Wittgenstein to other areas. The term ‘logical atomism’ then became known in English through Russell’s 1918 lectures ‘The Philosophy of Logical Atomism’ which provide the fullest presentation of his position (1918 [1984– : VIII]). Though Russell there describes his views as ‘very largely concerned with explaining ideas which I learnt from my friend and former pupil Ludwig Wittgenstein’ (1918 [1984– : VIII, 160]), there are significant differences between their versions of logical atomism. Wittgenstein’s logical atomism is set out in his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921).

Logical positivism had almost as many names as it had roots. Among the terms used by its promoters were: logical positivism, logical empiricism, scientific empiricism, consistent empiricism, and other, similar names. All these names came fairly late in the day, stemming from around 1930, when the work of the logical positivists was first being brought before the English-speaking philosophical community. The initial public statement by the Vienna Circle, the Wissenschaftliche Weltauffassung: Der Wiener Kreis (Scientific World Conception: The Vienna Circle; Neurath et al. 1929 [1973]), eschews all of these terms, adopting instead the general term ‘scientific world conception’. This term was chosen in self-conscious opposition to the then dominant idealist, conservative, Catholic Austrian Weltanschauung philosophy. The Vienna Circle offered a scientific way of conceiving the world, not an intuitive grasp of the world’s ineffable essence and meaning.

The more general term is useful. It warns us away from expecting to find a short-list of doctrines about which the logical positivists agreed. It reminds us, also, that logical positivism grew up in an Austro-Germanic context. This context provided much of the philosophical training of the logical positivists; it also supplied the arationalist philosophical perspectives, Weltanschauungslehre and Lebensphilosophie (philosophy of life), against which the Vienna Circle publicly situated itself. Thus, while I will here, for ease of reference, employ the term ‘logical positivism’, the reader should bear in mind that this term suggests a greater commonality of project than one actually finds among the logical positivists (for attempts to situate the development of logical positivism within its broader intellectual context, see the essays in Uebel 1991 and Giere and Richardson 1996, as well as Galison 1990; the essential reference work on the career of logical positivism is Stadler 1997).

TWO SENSES OF ‘LATIN AMERICA’

‘Latin America’ is used as a collective noun to denote a number of states (nineteen in 1945) in North, Central, and South America. Each has idiosyncratic geographic, ethnic, cultural, social, political, and economic features. But in spite of their differences, Latin American countries share a common political origin (Spanish/Portuguese conquest), a similar linguistic heritage (Spanish/Portuguese), a dominant religion (Catholicism), and comparable predicaments vis-à-vis local, regional, and international affairs. It is no surprise, then, that Latin American countries show, by and large, similar patterns of development and evolution, and that the term ‘Latin America’ is also used to signify these shared traditions and relationships. Philosophical thinking is no exception to the rule. It has evolved in analogous periods, with similar influences and traditions, and produced comparable outputs. In referring to Latin American philosophy, therefore, I am presupposing this intensional sense of ‘Latin America’ and in what follows, I will ignore the national peculiarities associated with its extensional sense.

POSITIVISM VS. ANTIPOSITIVISM AND THE RISE OF ACADEMIC PHILOSOPHY

Positivism ruled the Latin American philosophical scene from 1870 to 1910. But from 1910 to 1920 onwards a wave of antipositivistic philosophies wiped out positivism and took over the stage. The antipositivist turn was influenced by a parallel and overlapping change in the institutional setting of philosophy. It was a turn from a non-academic to an academic practice, from a nonprofessional to a professional conception of the role of philosophy and philosophers. Philosophy departments and faculties, flourishing ‘athenea’ and ‘colleges’, became the proper places to learn and to do philosophy.

INTRODUCTION

The first-order logic that is commonly taught and used today did not exist at the beginning of the twentieth century. A series of investigations in ‘foundations of mathematics’ by a variety of researchers led to its treatment as the core element of. These investigations searched for a detailed account of how our finite reasoning capacity could lead to knowledge of the infinite quantities involved in mathematics. This issue took on an acute form in the late 1800s when Georg Cantor (1845–1918) showed that mathematics could not be understood without accepting the existence of infinite sets of entities, in particular the complete set of counting (or natural) numbers. He also showed that the existence of such a denumerably infinite set entails the existence of ever larger infinite sets, each having a larger infinite ‘cardinal number’. The methods developed in the studies of mathematical logic were taken over to formulate alternatives to first-order logic. The most important of these were modal logic and intuitionistic logic. This chapter tells the story of these changes.

FIRST-ORDER LOGIC

A first-order logic is a set of logical axioms and formal inference rules for a first-order language. Such a language will contain one-place predicate symbols and multiple-place relation symbols. The language may also have symbols for individual objects and functions. For logical symbols, it typically has the sentential connectives ˜, &, →, ∨, ↔, and the two quantifiers, ∀, ∃. The language is ‘first-order’ because quantifiers apply only to variables which range over the individual objects of the domain. Second-order or higher-order languages have variables that range over sets of objects or of n-tuples drawn from the domain.

Gestalt psychology was a movement related to phenomenology, especially that of Husserl, a contemporary of the founding Gestalt theorists. Gestalt psychology and phenomenology arose from the philosophy of Brentano, which emphasised the description of consciousness, rather than its analysis. However, Gestalt psychologists were scientists, not philosophers, wanting to put psychology on sound experimental footings and seeking physiological explanations of consciousness. Their work extended beyond investigating consciousness to include memory, problem solving, creativity, group dynamics, child development, and animal behaviour, although their theories in these areas were informed by their original theorising about perception. Moreover, the movement’s changing historical circumstances took Gestalt psychology ever farther from philosophy. The Gestalt psychologists were second-generation German psychologists, struggling against philosophers to win autonomy in the German university system. Like phenomenology, Gestalt psychology arose in a country already deeply troubled by modernity which then experienced the vicissitudes of the First World War, the Weimar period, and the rise of Hitler and Nazism (the best general account of the development of Gestalt psychology is Ash 1995). The major Gestalt theorists joined the diaspora of German intellectuals to the United States. There, the Gestalt movement was shaped by a culture very different from Germany’s, and by their encounter with behaviourism.

Moral philosophy during the period under review was marked by the dominance in England of a form of ethical intuitionism that arose in response to G. E. Moore’s Principia Ethica (1903). By the mid-1930s this began to be challenged, both in England and in the United States, by various forms of emotivism. In some isolation from this debate, Dewey continued to write extensively on ethics.

INTUITIONISM

The intuitionist school consisted of H. A. Prichard, W.D. Ross, H.W. B. Joseph, and E. F. Carritt in Oxford and C. D. Broad and A. C. Ewing in Cambridge. Prichard should probably be considered the leader of the school, though he published the least; Broad called Prichard ‘a man of immense ability whom I have always regarded as the Oxford Moore’ (1971: 14).

The intuitionists believed that rightness and goodness were distinct qualities, qualities that such things as people, actions, emotions, motives, intentions, and consequences could have. They were interested in the nature of and relation between these two qualities and in the distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic forms of them, and in which things in fact have these properties. Ross, for instance, argued that there was no such thing as instrumental goodness, that is, value as a means (1930: 133, 1939: 257); but he insisted that there was such a thing as intrinsic value, and that it was distinct from intrinsic rightness. Further, nothing was capable of being both intrinsically good and intrinsically right (Prichard 1912: 5–6).

The discussion in this chapter aims at clarifying the views of Heidegger and the later Wittgenstein on the idea of the end of philosophy. The chapter begins with a sketch of the conception of philosophy at issue in their work. There follows an examination of the idea of its end as it is developed first in the work of Heidegger and then in the work of Wittgenstein.

PHILOSOPHY AS METAPHYSICS

What both Heidegger and Wittgenstein mean by ‘philosophy’ when they broach the possibility of its ending is the understanding of non-empirical enquiry which is more usually characterised simply as ‘metaphysics’ (see Heidegger 1969 [1977: 432] and Wittgenstein 1968: §116). However, although both authors are engaged with questions concerning the end of philosophy qua metaphysics there is a prima facie difference in the way they approach this topic. For Heidegger the ‘end of philosophy’ is discussed primarily in terms of its terminus, and in particular in terms of the idea of its dissolution into empirical science. By contrast, for Wittgenstein the ‘end of philosophy’ is discussed primarily in terms of its telos or goal, and in particular in terms of the idea of its achievement of complete clarity concerning the foundations of the empirical sciences. I want to leave that contrast in the air for the moment in order first to highlight a significant confluence in their views, namely in their conception of what precisely the ‘metaphysical’ understanding of non-empirical enquiry is.

Language became a major concern during this period. Moreover, theories of language suggested methodologies for the study of philosophy itself, so that the two topics often became intertwined. A number of main tendencies can be distinguished: whereas at the beginning of the period models suggested by logic and other formal disciplines predominated, by the end there was a growing interest in psychological and sociological approaches, and increasing scepticism about the value of formal models.

LOGICAL ATOMISM

Russell coined this term in a series of lectures given in 1918 (Russell 1918 [1956: 177]). Non-logical expressions are, he argued, either complex or simple. To understand the former one has to understand the simple expressions contained in their analyses. Since complex expressions can be analysed only in the context of analyses of sentences in which they occur, the apparent formof such sentences may be a poor guide to the logical form revealed by analysis (for Russell an important example of this situation arises from his theory of descriptions). Analysis terminates when all the complex non-logical items have been eliminated, and only simple ones remain. To understand these it is necessary to be cognitively acquainted with the items they stand for, which are literally their meanings. So, to understand (S1) ‘This is blue’ one has to be acquainted both with the sense-datum identified by ‘this’, and with the universal blue. A sentence such as (S1) that cannot be further analysed corresponds to what Russell called an atomic fact. The fact to which it corresponds, if true, is of the simplest kind and consists in the possession by a particular of a property.

In the period 1870 to 1914 there emerged new philosophical defences of religious experience and belief and new philosophies of faith. These programmes undertake a critique of the then dominant scientific positivism and its materialist and behaviourist doctrines. They can best be set out in the work of representative thinkers in four different contexts: in France, in Britain and the United States, and in Germany.

THE DEFENCE OF RELIGIOUS FAITH IN FRANCE

In France these new spiritualist philosophies trace their beginnings to a number of influential philosophers earlier in the century, such as François-Pierre Maine de Biran (1766–1824). He had argued that the study of human consciousness must begin with the distinctive experience of the human will and its efforts, without which perception, memory, habit, and judgement remain inexplicable. A true philosophy insists on free will and deliberative action, and points to an exigency or need for faith and religion. These interests are later pursued in the work of Emile Boutroux (1845–1921) and Henri Bergson (1859–1941). In his De la contingence des lois de la nature (1874), Boutroux attacks all forms of monistic materialism and determinism. He argues that natural laws alone are, finally, inadequate explanations, as is shown when one moves from the laws of one science to another, for example, from physics to biology to sociology and history. In Ideé de la loi naturelle (1895), Boutroux further argues that the activity of the human mind is holistic, necessarily engaging the entire person, and this activity portends certain spiritual needs that issue in such creative activities as art, morality, and religion.

INTRODUCTION

Although discourses on the subject of wealth and money reach back to antiquity, extensive theorising about economic phenomena only emerged in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations (1776) launched the classical theory of political economy which was developed in the nineteenth century, most notably by Jean-Baptiste Say, Thomas Robert Malthus, David Ricardo, and John Stuart Mill. Despite numerous differences, they were of one mind on the significance of labour in determining value and prices, on the perpetual strife between landowners, capitalists, and labourers, and on the inevitable onset of the ‘stationary state’ due to a tendency of the profit-rate to decline. Notwithstanding the fact that the British economy had grown at an unprecedented rate since the mid-eighteenth century, nineteenth-century economists were preoccupied with the problems of scarcity of land and capital, coupled with an overabundant population.

By the 1820s, it was commonplace in learned circles to refer to political economy as a science. It had an extensive list of laws and, in the hands of Ricardo, had gained a deductive rigour that was often compared to Euclidean geometry. Nevertheless, political economy was almost entirely a literary pursuit. Ricardo used hypothetical numerical examples to illustrate his principles, but he did not posit algebraic functions or undertake quantitative verifications of his derivations. The basic assumptions about human behaviour were also left rather vague, though it could be argued that, with the immediate ancestry of Hume and Smith, classical political economy was actually founded upon a rich set of insights into human nature.

The decades around 1900 witnessed a lively debate in German philosophy about the nature of knowledge and methodology in the social and cultural sciences, and about the appropriate demarcation criterion distinguishing these Geisteswissenschaften (human sciences) from the more established natural sciences. This debate engaged philosophers (W. Dilthey, W.Wundt, G. Simmel, W.Windelband, H. Rickert) and leaders from the empirical Geisteswissenschaften (K. Lamprecht, M. Weber).

The problem of humanistic knowledge assumed philosophical importance for many reasons, but the most important was a serious tension within a widely held constellation of views about the human sciences. On the one hand, humanistic learning was prominent in the German intellectual landscape, both because of nineteenth-century scholarly achievements, and because of the central place of classical languages and literatures in gymnasium education. Work in the Geisteswissenschaften thus served as an example of intellectual rigour for students and scholars alike, and it was standard to see humanistic learning as exemplary science. On the other hand, the older and more established natural sciences were still paradigms of mature science, and the progress of the natural and human sciences had carried them far apart, both in their methods, and in the nature of their results. Natural sciences subjected phenomena to relatively simple quantitative laws, which permitted improvements in precision and confirmation of theory by controlled experiment. Because the nineteenth century saw repeated extensions of this broad approach to new areas in physics, chemistry, and fields like physiology and psychology, it could claim to be the model for mature scientific knowledge. By contrast, the Geisteswissenschaften in Germany were dominated by the ‘Historical School’, whose highest accomplishments rested on sensitive historical interpretations of unique and valuable cultural achievements.