Analytic Ambition
An Introduction to Philosophy

William Charlton (Author)

9780631169352, Wiley

Paperback / softback, published 18 July 1991

240 pages
22.8 x 15.4 x 1.8 cm, 0.369 kg

This book explains in down-to-earth language what analytical philosophy is, and presupposes no previous knowledge of the subject. Analytical philosophers aim at obtaining insight into the traditional topics of philosophy by logical, conceptual and linguistic analysis. In this book William Charlton answers relativist attacks on this ambition and argues that its methods can still provide fresh insight into the traditional problems of philosophy. Taking such central philosophical problems as meaning, time, causation and thought, the author shows why they are problems for philosophy rather than for any other discipline, and thereby illustrates and supports a new general theory of the nature and scope of philosophical enquiry.

The Analytic Ambition is both an introduction to readers fresh to philosophy and a challenge to professional thinking that has become set in its ways.

Preface ix

1 What is Analytical Philosophy? 1

Subject Areas: Philosophy [HP]