School of Humanities | Sgoil nan Daonnachdan

There is no such thing as ‘analytic philosophy’, conceived as a special discipline with its own distinctive subject matter or peculiar method. But there is an analytic task for philosophy that distinguishes it from other reflective pursuits, a global or synoptic commission: to establish whether the final outputs of other disciplines and common sense can be fused into a single periscopic vision of the Universe. And there is the hard-won insight that thought and language aren’t transparent but stand in need of analysis - a recent variation upon the abiding philosophical theme that we need to get behind appearances to tell the ultimate truth about reality- an insight that threatens to be lost.

First published: 26 February 2014