Philosophy's Second Revolution: Early and Recent Analytic Philosophy

First Descartes and his sympathizers transformed philosophy from an examination of the external to the internal; then Bertrand Russell and others of his school of thought transformed it to an examination of language. By taking a close look at analytic philosophy's objections to Cartesian-style modern philosophy, D.S. Clarke accomplishes two things: One, he introduces the reader to the linguistic foundations of analytical philosophy, the dominant school in contemporary philosophy. Two, he demonstrates that the recent slide of analytic philosophers into a narrow materialism is contrary to philosophy's enduring mission of providing an integrative framework for thinking in all disciplines. Although Clark is a bit blithe in dismissing the possibility of materialist correlations of thought processes and gives very little credit to the accomplishments of phenomenology when considering the significance of contemporary philosophy as a whole, he presents a lucid picture of analytic philosophy's place in the history of philosophy and its importance to future philosophical developments.