Metaphysics in the analytic tradition

Abstract

The present paper provides an outline of the history of analytic tradition in philosophy from the point of view of its relation to metaphysical problems. First, the birth of the tradition is shown be a reaction against the metaphysical style of the British philosophy of Absolute Idealism. Even during this early period of analytic philosophy, however, i.e. the logical atomism and positivism which can be characterized as hostile towards any metaphysics, there were certain internal theoretical problems that could not have been resolved without a resort to metaphysics. The next period in the analytic philosophy became known as the ordinary language tradition, and it was more open towards metaphysics, though not yet particularly interested in it. This tradition was superseded by the metaphysical naturalism of Willard Van Orman Quine and the descriptive metaphysics of Peter Frederick Strawson. The full blossom of analytic metaphysics, as well as the shift of its center from Europe to America, occurred under the influence of Roderick Chisholm. Since then the main debate in analytic philosophy has been centred around the opposition of the reductive and non-reductive approaches to metaphysics. Finally, due to the successful introduction and application of the Leibnizian framework of possible worlds, analytic philosophy entered its golden era for metaphysics.