The Historiography of Analytic Philosophy

In this chapter I offer an account of how analytic philosophy became constructed as a philosophical tradition, from its roots in the complex intellectual context of the last quarter of the nineteenth century to its dominant position across the world at the beginning of the second decade of the twenty-first century. I consider some of the histories of analytic philosophy that have been written, exploring the historiographical issues that they raise, with particular reference to Nietzsche’s distinction between monumental, antiquarian, and critical history, and subsequent debates about the relationship between rational and historical reconstruction. I end by outlining and defending the historical turn that has taken place in analytic philosophy over the last twenty years.