Analytic philosophy: some unbeaten tracks

Abstract

Vladimir Shokhin suggests another revision of the canonical history of analytic philosophy which for Michael Loux stands as something self-evident. Shokhin’s point is that the seemingly indubitable verity of the picture that makes analytic philosophy emerge at the beginning of the 20th century as a result of the philosophical revolution brought about by Moore, Russel, Witgenstein and, in part, by Frege, is actually nothing more than a stereotype opinion shared by the majority of historians of philosophy. As a matter of fact, analytic philosophy as a self-сonscious trend begins to crystallize only half a century later, whereas as a format of philosophizing, along with the analytic method as such, it dates back to the Middle Ages and Antiquity, with many obvious parallels even outside the Western philosophical tradition. In the second part of his paper, Shokhin criticizes another commonplace assertion, namely that it is the theory of possible worlds which provides the best avenue to develop any contemporary metaphysics, the analytic one in the first place. Estimating this concept as philosophically quite meagre, Shokhin proposes instead an idea of mental, non-empirical existence of objects, which has strong medieval roots and finds important parallels in Indian thought; it could, therefore, provide a firm basis for stratifying the layers of reality. The latter undertaking is considered by Shokhin as very promising for contemporary ontology.