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The Language Turn: A Narrative Review of Analytic Philosophy, from Frege's Begriffsschrift to Rigid Designators

Year: 2026
Type: review
Abstract: Analytic philosophy is the language turn's name: the conviction—stated in Frege's 1879 Begriffsschrift and Russell's 1905 denoting—that philosophy's problems are settled by analyzing the language that carries them, and the century's sequence of settlements—the Vienna Circle's logical positivism, Wittgenstein's two philosophies, Austin's ordinary language, Quine's word and object, Kripke's rigid designators, Davidson's truth—that made the analytic tradition the English-speaking world's dominant one. This article presents a narrative review of the primary literature of that tradition, from Frege's 1879 Begriffsschrift and 1892 Sinn und Bedeutung, Russell's 1905 'On denoting,' the 1929 Vienna Circle manifesto and Carnap's 1928 Aufbau, Ayer's 1936 Language, Truth and Logic, Wittgenstein's 1922 Tractatus and 1953 Investigations, Austin's 1962 How to Do Things with Words, Quine's 1960 Word and Object, Davidson's 1967 'Truth and meaning,' and Kripke's 1980 Naming and Necessity. The synthesis is organized around three themes: the logical settlement, in which reference and meaning were analyzed through the new logic; the positivist and ordinary-language phases, in which philosophy's role was redefined twice—as the scientific worldview's clarification and as the everyday speech's study; and the naturalist and semantic reconstructions, in which Quine's indeterminacy, Davidson's truth theory, and Kripke's designators rebuilt reference against the paradigm's own assumptions. It is concluded that analytic philosophy's history is a dialectic of programs—each founding a method the next dissolves—and that the language turn's questions, meaning and reference, remain the tradition's live core.
DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.22166849
Language: English
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7204646756
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