I felt [the new philosophy] as a great liberation, as if I had escaped from a hot-house on to a wind-swept headland. I hated the stuffiness involved in supposing that space and time were only in my mind. I liked the starry heavens even better than the moral law, and could not bear Kant's view that the one I liked best was only a subjective figment. In the first exhuberance of liberation, I became a naive realist, and rejoiced in the thought
that grass is really green, in spite of the adverse opinions of all philosophers from Locke onwards.

-Bertrand Russell, My Philosophical Development

Throughout the Twentieth century, in the major universities of the English speaking world, the discipline of Philosophy has been conducted in the analytical mode. Thus, one hears of philosophy, as it is practiced in departments of philosophy, described as "analytical philosophy", in contrast to, say, "continental philosophy", or "theory", which are different terms used to describe the modes of discourse prevalent in departments of English and Comparative Literature. As it is used in the mouths of its current proponents and detractors, there does not seem to be one, or even several, clear meanings to the expression "analytical philosophy". Nonetheless, there is a fairly clear historical reason why the philosophy practiced in the major philosophy departments in Britain and America throughout the Twentieth Century came to be known as analytic. For the adjective "analytic" derives from the noun "analysis". And at the turn of the century, perhaps the central foundational question in philosophy involved the status of the method then known as analysis.
    In the period before the turn of the century, British adherents of Hegelian Idealism dominated the philosophical landscape. Philosophers such as Green, Bradley, Bosenquet, McTaggert, and Joachim all argued that the process of analysis was a distortion, since it relied on the absurd premise that reality (which was, for them, the Absolute Idea) could be fruitfully analyzed into parts. It was two students of these philosophers, G.E. Moore and Bertrand Russell, who became the figures who most influenced the course of Twentieth Century philosophy. And Moore and Russell made their reputations developing and defending the method of analysis against their teachers. It is perhaps for this reason, historically, that philosophy as practiced in the major departments of Britain and the United States has come to be known as Analytic Philosophy.
    The focus of this course is the origins of analytic philosophy. If there is an underlying theme of the course, it is the nature of analysis. By studying the objections to analysis in the idealist tradition, and the development of the method of analysis in the British and German-speaking traditions, we will gain an understanding of some of the central historical roots of the analytic tradition.

Reading

Required

The required reading for the course is composed of:
(1) two (and perhaps more) course packets.
(2) The following five books:
Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint (Franz Brentano)
The Principles of Mathematics (Bertrand Russell)
The Philosophy of Logical Atomism (Bertrand Russell)
Our Knowledge of the External World (Bertrand Russell)
The Frege Reader (edited by Beamey)

Recommended

The recommended reading for the course is generally included in the various course packets, with the exception of Peter Hylton's book, Russell, Idealism, and the Emergence of Analytic Philosophy. I recommend purchasing Hylton's useful book; I will be recommending chapters from it throughout the course of the class.

Class requirements

There will be two papers, and a mid-term and final exam. The exams will test material covered in the reading and in lecture, so absence from lecture is likely to result in diminished performance on the exams. Anything in any of the required reading is fair game for the exams.

Class prerequisites

One course in Logic, either in philosophy (Phil 231) or in mathematics or computer science, and at least two courses in non-logic related areas of philosophy.

Tentative Schedule

I. Idealism and its Critics.

First reading: Chapters 1, 2, and 3 of F.H. Bradley's Appearance and Reality [course packet #1].
Second reading: Note B: "Relation and Quality" [course packet #1]
Third readings: "External and Internal Relations", G.E. Moore [course packet #2]
"The Thing and its Relations", William James [course packet #1]
Fourth readings: "The Monistic Theory of Truth", Bertrand Russell [course packet #2]
selections from Russell's Principles of Mathematics
Recommended: "'Absolute' and 'Relative' Truth", Harold Joachim [course packet #1]
Chapter 2 of Hylton.

II. Judgement and Truth

First readings: Selections from Franz Brentano's, Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint.
Second reading: "The Nature of Judgement", G.E. Moore [c.p. #2]
Third reading: Selections from Alexius Meinong's On Assumptions [c.p. #2]
Fourth readings: "Meinong on Complexes and Assumptions I, II, and III", B. Russell [c.p. #2].
"Truth and Falsity" (entry for Baldwin's Dictionary of Philosophy), G.E. Moore.
Fifth reading: "The Nature of Truth and Falsity", B. Russell [c.p. #2]
Recommended: "A Neglected Theory of Truth" (Richard Cartwright) [c.p. #2]

III. The Theory of Descriptions: one method of analysis.

First readings: Selections from Franz Brentano's Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint
Second reading: "The Theory of Objects", A. Meinong [c.p. #2]
Third reading: "On Sense and Reference", G. Frege [the Frege Reader]
Fourth reading: "On Denoting", B. Russell [c.p. #1]
Recommended: "The Origins of Russell's Theory of Descriptions" (Cartwright) [c.p. #2]
Hylton, Chapter 6

IV. Occam's razor: one principle of analysis.

First reading: "On the Relation between Sense-data and Physics", B. Russell [c.p. #2]
Second reading: Bertrand Russell's Our Knowledge of the External World (up to and including Lecture 4).
Third reading: Bertrand Russell's The Philosophy of Logical Atomism