I shall not begin by saying why language matters to philosophy, but start with some evidence, examining a few familiar problems in metaphysics and epistemology that have been influenced by theories about language. The main body of the book will illustrate how language has, from time to time, mattered to philosophers. It is a collection of case studies, which can usefully introduce newcomers to the subject. Only the final chapter tries to guess about the nature of language and philosophy in an attempt to explain some features of the case studies. Only then do I try to answer the question Why does language matter? The final conjectures, although by no means original, are at present non-standard. The reader is not obliged to accept them. In the case studies I aim at objectivity, providing data on the basis of which you can judge the situation for yourself. This objectivity is slightly spurious because I inevitably select and interpret the data in my own way. I try to refrain from editorializing until the end.

Before getting down to work, a variety of remarks are needed, mostly negative. First, many philosophers writing in English seem to have settled down to discuss the pure theory of meaning. They do not appear to study language and meaning in order to understand some philosophical problem-what we could call applied philosophy of language-but write almost exclusively about the nature of meaning itself.