Analytic philosophy is a broad school of thought or style in contemporary Western philosophy, especially anglophone philosophy, with an emphasis on analysis, clear prose, rigorous arguments, formal logic, mathematics, and the natural sciences (with less emphasis on the humanities). It is further characterized by the linguistic turn, or a concern with language and meaning.
Analytic philosophy is often contrasted with continental philosophy, a catch-all term for other methods prominent in continental Europe, most notably existentialism, phenomenology, and Hegelianism. The distinction has also been drawn between "analytic" being academic or technical philosophy and "continental" being literary philosophy.
The proliferation of analytic philosophy began around the turn of the twentieth century and has been dominant since the second half of the century. Central figures in its history include Gottlob Frege, Bertrand Russell, G. E. Moore, and Ludwig Wittgenstein. Other important figures include Franz Brentano, the logical positivists (especially Rudolf Carnap), and the ordinary language philosophers.
Wilfrid Sellars, W. V. O. Quine, Saul Kripke, David Lewis, and others, led a decline of logical positivism and a subsequent revival in metaphysics. Analytic philosophy has also developed several new branches of philosophy and logic, notably philosophy of language, mathematics, and science, and modern predicate and mathematical logic.
Austrian realism
thumb|upright=0.75|Franz Brentano introduced the problem of intentionality.
Analytic philosophy was deeply influenced by Austrian realism in the former state of Austria-Hungary, so much so that Michael Dummett has remarked it is better characterized as Anglo-Austrian rather than the usual Anglo-American.
Brentano
In Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint (1874), University of Vienna philosopher and psychologist Franz Brentano gave to philosophy the problem of intentionality, or aboutness. For Brentano, all mental events or acts of consciousness had a real, non-mental intentional object, which the thinking is directed at or "about". Intentionality is "the mark of the mental." Intentionality is to be distinguished from intention or intension.
The School of Brentano included Edmund Husserl and Alexius Meinong. Meinong founded the Graz School, and is known for his unique ontology of real, nonexistent objects; a solution to the problem of empty names. This view is known as Meinongianism, or pejoratively as Meinong's jungle. According to Meinong, objects like flying pigs or golden mountains are real and have being, even though they do not exist. The Polish Lwów–Warsaw school, founded by Kazimierz Twardowski, was also influenced by Brentano. Twardowski emphasized "small philosophy", or the detailed, systematic analysis of specific problems.