INTRODUCTION 1063
masculine, the sacred, the literal, or the objective, and so on, entails the exclusion,
suppression, or marginalization of their opposites—passion, the feminine, the
profane, the metaphorical, the subjective, and so on—while at the same time it
must presuppose these opposites to sustain or even to make sense of the privi-
leged concept. In this way, it is maintained, texts regularly undermine their own
assumptions. As a reading technique uncovering alleged hidden agendas behind
the ostensible meaning of a text, Deconstruction takes the further step of denying
that the text has a definite meaning. This has become a key thesis for the currents
of literary theorizing and criticism that followed in Derrida’s wake.
Turning to the other dominant twentieth-century philosophical tradition, it is not
uncommon to equate Anglo-American philosophy with what is called Analytic or
Analytical philosophy. But the term is also used in a broader sense to encompass
other movements that have flourished chiefly on British and American soil, for
instance, Pragmatism, Naturalism, and Process Philosophy. There is much to be said
for the wider meaning, which avoids the suggestion that philosophy in England and
America is more monolithic than it really is. The equation of Anglo-American with
Analytic is also unfortunate from another point of view, in that Analytic philosophy
has become the dominant mode of philosophizing in some other areas as well,
notably the Scandinavian countries, to say nothing of the inroads it has made in areas
where other approaches still dominate the field (the other side of the blurring and
bridging of the Continental/Anglo-American boundary), for example, in Germany.
However, given all those qualifications and others, there is no question that Analytic
philosophy is the most important philosophical current within the Anglo-American
sphere. It is also the one most often contrasted with (and actively opposed to) the
Continental movements described earlier.
What Analytic philosophy isis not so easy to say. I believe it is possible to distin-
guish at least three variants, though they probably represent points on a spectrum
rather than discrete alternatives. In the widest and loosest sense, Analytic philosophy
is hardly more than a philosophical style, one that takes extreme care with the mean-
ings of words (sometimes with precise definitions of terms and consistency in their
use, sometimes with the nuances of ordinary language) that tends to present argu-
ments in meticulous step-by-step fashion (often endeavoring to leave nothing
implicit), and that pays close, sometimes minute, attention to logical relations (often
using logical symbolism or specialized logical terminology to render such relations
transparent). In a narrower sense, “Analytic philosophy” designates a philosophical
outlook that holds that the primary task or even (in its more extreme version) the only
proper task of philosophy—the primary or proper method for attacking philo-
sophical problems—is analysis of one sort or another: of meanings, of concepts, of
logical relations, or all of these. We can call this the methodological version. Finally,
one may occasionally encounter the term “Analytic philosophy” in contexts in which
it is reserved for one or more specific doctrines regarding the outcome of correct
philosophical analysis. Even though the Analytic tradition (in either of the two wider
senses) owes a great deal to certain specific doctrinal versions—and to major figures
who propounded them, such as Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and the
Logical Positivists—it would be incorrect to say that Analytic philosophy is the
dominant orientation among British and American philosophers if one has in mind