As in other areas of philosophy, analysis and analytic – terms that best describe the developmental sweep of aesthetics in the twentieth century – can hardly be described as uncontested terrain, the meaning they convey and the figures and themes to which they refer being due in no small part to a matter of emphasis, itself sometimes a function of ideologically inspired posturing rather than the disinterested pursuit of truth. At a general level, “analysis” is synonymous with clarity, the idea that, approached with lucidity of expression and precision of argument, any philosophical problem can be solved by reducing what is complex to its most simple constituents; certain strains of Continental philosophy notwithstanding, these are virtues to which any philosopher would aspire, irrespective of peculiar interest or methodological proclivity. As one narrows the focus of the term, however, these generally desirable desiderata start to blend with normative claims about the proper issues with which the real philosopher should deal – language, formal logic, and the methods of natural science loom large – elements that combine to yield not only an identifiable approach to philosophy but also a favorite source for what practitioners see as the central “problems” for philosophical investigation.

More specifically still, “analytic philosophy” has acquired a temporal dimension and settled comfortably into its place as a discrete and identifiable episode in the history of the discipline. Its origins are traced to the advances in logic made by Gottlob Frege (1848–1925), which inspired members of the “logical positivist” circles of Vienna and Berlin – including, most famously perhaps, Otto Neurath (1882–1945) and Rudolf Carnap (1891–1970) – and the generation of philosophers at Cambridge headed by G. E. Moore (1873–1958), Bertrand Russell (1872–1970), and his precocious student Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951).