The Revolution of Moore and Russell: A Very British Coup?

Summary

The question I shall attempt to address in what follows is an essentially historical one, namely: Why did analytic philosophy emerge first in Cambridge, in the hands of G. E. Moore and Bertrand Russell, and as a direct consequence of their revolutionary rejection of the philosophical tenets that form the basis of British Idealism? And the answer that I shall try to defend is: it didn't. That is to say, the ‘analytic’ doctrines and methods which Moore and Russell embraced in the very last years of the nineteenth century were not revolutionary, did not emerge first in Cambridge, were the creation of neither Russell nor Moore and cannot be explained by appeal to facts concerning British Idealism. The adoption of the doctrines and methods which characterised the earliest manifestations of British analytic philosophy are to be explained neither by reference to anything specifically British, nor by appeal to anything unproblematically philosophical. Or so I shall argue.

In taking this line I am, of course, intending to dissent from a very widespread and deeply entrenched view, the most detailed and authoritative defence of which forms the content of Peter Hylton's book Russell, Idealism and the Emergence of Analytic Philosophy. Because his presentation of the case is, precisely, so detailed and authoritative, I shall tend to take it as exemplary.