Summary of a book symposium on What is analytic philosophy? By Hans-Johann Glock.


Author: Doctor Terence Rajivan Edward (or 0161__Rajivan, if that helps)
Draft version: version 1 (5 April 2026, quick summary)


Leila Haaparanta.  It presents a summary of Glock. It says, "Glock proceeds by testing several hypotheses concerning the definition of analytic philosophy. That is a good strategy and also favored in earlier studies. What is special in Glock's procedure is that he gives a comprehensive and detailed presentation of the results of testing." For example, he considers the hypothesis that analytic philosophy has different topics and that it has a distinctive writing style. Haaparanta says, "It is easy to see that the tests fail." [Does she actually mean that all the proposals for a defining quality - all the hypotheses - fail when tested? Doesn't tests fail, taken literally, means that the tests used are not adequate for testing a hypothesis, not that each hypothesis fails when tested? What she says before encourages the non-literal reading; what she says afterwards gives plausibility to the literal reading. See sentence after next.] Haarparanta thinks that even if a hypothesis fails, there are trends distinguishing analytic from continental philosophy, along the lines of the hypotheses considered, italicizing "more often." Haaparanta tries to open Glock up to this: instead of saying that a given hypothesis fails because it excludes Russell and Moore, he should open himself up to the possibility that they actually don't count. [This point is also pursued by Raatikainen, if not everyone else. See below.] She also encourages a project of detailed contrast between analysis in analytic philosophy and other projects of philosophical analysis, e.g. in phenomenology. Haaparanta says that Glock does not spell out his methodology clearly enough, sketching how historical research is done by various scholars: history of ideas, analytic philosophers extracting key arguments, Foucault.


Glock's reply. Glock writes: "Leila Haaparanta provides an accurate and sympathetic summary of my book, and she appears to agree not just with its critique of alternative definitions of analytic philosophy but also with its positive proposal." (See final sentence of Pincock section for positive proposal.) [She is attracted to a statistical approach, if not stylitically: "There is no hope of a definition but there are trends, e.g. a trend of definition and careful revision of definition to achieve correspondence with term use, a trend of use of formal logic… Some continental philosophers define, but the first trend of initial definition, counterexample, then revision is largely absent, etc." What does that look like fully-baked? Statistics!] 


Christopher Pincock. Pincock implies a criticism early on. He presents Glock like so: "Against those who argue that we should dispense with labels like  'analytic philosophy', Glock argues that we "can hardly engage in an assessment of the historical development and the merits of analytic philosophy without some conception of what it amounts to" (9)." The reader will think this is no response to arguments for dispensation, since it assumes there is analytic philosophy, which the pro-dispensers don't assume. Pincock summarizes for more than a page: "Glock's positive proposal comes in chapter 8. It is a hybrid proposal that claims that analytic philosophy is identified partly by its historical origins and chains of influence and partly by ongoing features that are shared to some degree or other." Pincock then makes a criticism: "I think that Glock has stopped short of giving an answer to his original question. His hybrid proposal only says what kind of thing analytic philosophy is. To take the next step and say what analytic philosophy is, Glock must fill in and argue for the details  of this historical-resemblance picture. There is only the barest sketch of how this might go in chapter 8." Pincock says: "Glock must address at least three issues before his schematic proposal can be filled in and justified. First, he must say what the ultimate constituents of analytic philosophy are. These constituents are the units of which we can ask whether they stand in the appropriate influence relations." The obvious approach today is you are writing analytic philosophy if you have a sufficient number of qualities in this overall set (this cluster!), if not all, e.g. uses formal logic, values the sciences.  Pincock interestingly says, "It might seem obvious that these units are individual philosophers," before considering subtlety from Glock.  He then says, "A second pressing issue is how influence should be conceived if our aim is to make sense of analytic philosophy." Then: "A third question for Glock's account is how he proposes to demarcate analytic philosophy from non-analytic philosophy." Pincock writes: "By 2050, one expects, Russell will influence philosophers only in the way that Descartes does today." [I am not sure which direction, the Cartesian or the Russellian, to laugh at this at!] Later Pincock helpfully says, "if we accept Glock's historical-resemblance account, then analytic philosophy is made up of philosophers-at-a-time sharing certain features via chains of influence."


Glock's reply. Various things can be classed as analytic - philosophers, texts, movements, journals - but "I had implicitly taken for granted that the paradigmatic units of classification and influence are individual thinkers. Pincock objects that philosophers like Russell, Wittgenstein, Rorty and Putnam underwent significant and often repeated changes of mind. Fair enough, although this is the exception rather than the rule."


Paanu Raatikainen. Raatikainen says that often one means by analytic philosophy a tradition which began with Frege or with Russell and Moore and which dominates, especially Anglo-Saxon countries. But he says this is vague, perhaps intolerably, and involves problematic interpretations of the philosophers named. Raatikainen disagrees with Glock, but will focus on presenting his alternative. [Much engagement with Hacker though; and not the bold Fodorian structure promised - deceptive advertising!] Reports P.M.S. Hacker's view: although analytic philosophy is allied with the spirit of rationality and science, it is not scientism, so W.V. Quine is not an analytic philosopher! For Hacker, anti-scientism seems to be essential. Raatikainen disagrees. (Weakly suggested definition in the text: scientism is the view that other disciplines should model themselves on natural science.) Using formal logic is neither necessary nor sufficient for being an analytic philosopher apparently: Gödel does, other important logicians Hermann Weyl, Arend Heyting and Per Martin-Löf do, and continental philosopher Alan Badiou. The later Wittgenstein and ordinary language philosophers are critical of formal logic apparently. [They are actually critical of taking formal logic as a key to understanding language.] Considers whether philosophical analysis defines analytic philosophy. Reports Hacker's three phases of analytic philosophy: metaphysical analysis, reductive analysis, connective analysis. Raatikainen denies essentialness of analysis though, referring to later Wittgenstein and ordinary language philosophy as counterexamples and Quine (also referred to by Dagfinn Føllesdal for denying this; Føllesdal says argument and justification define analytic philosophy; Raatikainen says too broad; suggests Føllesdal needs to learn that analytic philosophy is not the same as all mainstream Western philosophy!). Considers Michael Dummett's proposal that analytic philosophy seeks a philosophical account of thought through an account of language. Hacker says this wrongly excludes Russell and Moore. But if Hacker is prepared to discount Frege, why not these two? After some pages, this line is taken. Says that Dummett is right to focus on language, and briefly works on dealing with objections to Dummett: recommends distinguishing the movement proper and background figures, counting Russell and Moore as the latter. No other approach yields a clear and distinct use for the term "analytic philosophy."


Glock's reply. Glock draws attention to a subsidiary argument by Raatikainen for his proposal: "He further maintains that this is the original meaning of the term. Here he invokes Nagel, Bergmann, Black and Pap [19–20]." The original application does not allow Raatikainen's exclusion of Russell and Moore though. Glock sounds defensive of Hacker's divergent treatment of Frege versus Russell and Moore: "his relegation of Frege to 'one of the many precursors of twentieth century analytic philosophy' (1996, 281n) instead appears to be based on the conviction that, unlike Moore and Russell, Frege did not play a significant role in starting the distinctive historical movement of analytic philosophy." 


Graham Stevens. P.M.S. Hacker and Glock oppose family resemblance definitions of analytic philosophy, which say there is no quality that all and only analytic philosophy has, rather there are overlapping resemblances between different works, as with members of a family (some have the family nose, others the family eyes). This leads to including Ancient Greeks, say H&G. Stevens aims to be neutral on whether family resemblance is the right approach, but disarm this particular objection by saying, "or analytic philosophy is really just the continuation and evolution of philosophy simpliciter." But he tells us: "What  marked Russell out from these [other logical fellows, e.g. Frege, Peano] however, was the revolutionary zeal with which he sought to establish the new logic as the centrepiece of a new philosophy." However, times have changed. "Many philosophers who class themselves as analytic do not draw extensively on the techniques on formal logic that were so prized by Frege, Russell, and the Positivists. Nor is the Positivist's dislike of metaphysics, or insistence on the priority of linguistic concerns, shared by the majority of current analytic philosophers. But the one thing that nearly everyone will agree on is that they are doing something fundamentally different to what continental philosophers do." Some major continental philosophers, we are later told, seem to deliberately eschew argument and there is suggestion this characterizes the whole project. Stevens regards Glock and Hacker as inconsistent: "failure on their part to accept  the evidence of their own careful historical enquiries. What those enquiries show is that the self-conscious revolutionary proclamations made by key figures in the analytic tradition were overstated." [He's inviting the objection; they weren't overstated but the label has been hijacked by others, interested in a central place for argument but not especially interested in a central place for formal logic. I personally am keen on argument, but sometimes I have interactions with people who would benefit from conclusions I am contemplating now and they can fill out various arguments for it themselves, e.g. does Carl Schmitt expect poor people who are offered a better life elsewhere to be nationalists and how to make them less poor?]


Glock's reply. Will take a while to process this. [Is Glock thinking: something is going on but what?!!! Well, what attracts people to analytic philosophy in UK? There is a kind of postgraduate who regards analytic philosophy as an expression of a set of allied cultures, all of which emphasize hard-work and high impulse-control - perhaps they grow out of this way of regarding; I don't know. Some essay structures, such as what I was expecting from Raatikainen - "here is my proposal; here's why it's right; therefore you others are wrong" - are regarded as unsuitable for analytic philosophy on the grounds that they will make things too easy for the reader. I take Raatikainen and Stevens to be responding to such a student. "Here is the Fodorian approach scattered; happy now?!" and "Analytic philosophy is a convenient signal of clarity-and-argument-focus, given the obscurities of these continental folk."]


References
Book symposium on What is Analytic Philosophy? By Hans-Johann Glock. Journal for the History of Analytical Philosophy Volume 2, Number 2. And The Smashing Pumpkins! No pay