Analytic Philosophy: Russell’s Logical Atomism, Wittgenstein’s Two Periods, and Ordinary Language Philosophy
Analytic philosophy’s origins trace to Gottlob Frege’s mathematical logic reform and Bertrand Russell’s development of it. Frege invented modern predicate logic (quantificational logic), providing rigorous logical foundations for mathematics. Russell and Whitehead’s *Principia Mathematica* (1910–1913) attempted to reduce all mathematics to logic — this “logicism” was ultimately challenged by Gödel’s incompleteness theorems (1931), but its pursuit of logical precision had lasting influence.
## Wittgenstein’s Two Periods
Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) is the most influential and difficult philosopher in analytic philosophy’s history, with thought divided into two distinct periods:
**Early Wittgenstein (*Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus*, 1921)**: the world consists of facts (not things); propositions picture facts in the world (picture theory of meaning). Meaningful language can only describe facts; for ethics, aesthetics, and the mystical — “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.” Logical positivists (Vienna Circle) interpreted this as rejecting metaphysical propositions.
**Late Wittgenstein (*Philosophical Investigations*, 1953, posthumous)**: completely abandoned the picture theory. Linguistic meaning lies not in reference but in use — “language games” are activities of using language in social practice; “meaning is use.” Philosophical problems often arise from misuse of language and grammatical misunderstanding (“language going on holiday”); philosophy’s task is therapeutic (dissolving rather than solving philosophical problems).
