We our so in the grip of 'Frege-our-Father' that we forget that Schlick invented analytic philosophy. (He would make a great martyr if only he had been shot for philosophical reasons!) Einstein's great achievements had caused a crisis to philosophy--then in the grip of Neo-Kantianism (of various stripes). Schlick's great insight was to insist that part of Einstein's achievement was strictly philosophical: Einstein had developed wholly new concepts that turned out to be extremely fruitful. Frege's logic would be the tool, but it is Schlick that developed the program of the free play in conceptual invention. Carnap debased the coin a bit by insisting we should be more modest conceptual engineers. But a scientific philosophy requires worker-bees and philosophical queens.
While I work on historical figures, I am an analytic philosopher (not just because I did my apprenticeship with some impressive analytic philosophers, but especially) because I follow Schlick's dictum: I develop concepts that help clarify our philosophical situation and that are meant to have fruitful applications. The three main concepts that I have been developing are "Newton's Challenge" (that is the standing challenge of scientific authority vis a vis philosophy); "The Socratic Problem" (the complex relationship between intellectual activity and society); "Philosophic Prophecy" (the way philosophers make future(s) possible). The third is the most reflexive of the group. (I explain these concepts and offer lots of distinctions among them elsewhere more at length.)
This is my response to the recent discussions (here, here, and here); the history of philosophy is first and foremost philosophy.
cannot be reduced to the conditions of their invention." Hume Studies (Volume 35, Number 1 & 2, 2009, pp. 246-250). This from a Review of Jeffrey Bell's Deleuze's Hume: Philosophy, Culture and the Scottish Enlightenment.
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