Russell, Wittgenstein, and the Project for “Analytic Philosophy”

Abstract

In the last three decades many books (see, for example, Clark 1975, McGuinness 1988,
Monk 1996) were published that broadened our knowledge of the relationship between
Russell and Wittgenstein in 1911-12. Unfortunately, the documents that these books
present remained less investigated. In this paper we are going to see that this is
also the case in regard to the history of the introduction of what was later called
“analytic philosophy”. Despite the fact that Russell and Wittgenstein shacked hands
in their antipathy towards the philosophy old-style, for example, that of Bergson,
everyone of the two philosophers had his own conception of the New Philosophy. For
Russell, it meant “examined philosophy”, or philosophy advanced through “scientific
restrain and balance”, and resulted in series of logically correctly constructed
theories. For Wittgenstein, it resulted in syncopated, short logico-philosophical
“discoveries”. In the years to come, the two conceptions of “rigorous philosophy”,
embraced by Russell and Wittgenstein often came in conflict.