Analytic Philosophy as a Critique of System Building: The Oxford Philosophers' Approach

Abstract

This paper examines analytic philosophy, in its formative Oxford phase, as a sustained critique of philosophical system building. Where the idealist metaphysics that dominated British philosophy at the close of the nineteenth century sought comprehensive, architectonic accounts of reality modelled on the systems of Hegel and Bradley, the Oxford philosophers—working from the logical innovations of Moore and Russell and radicalised by the later Wittgenstein—reoriented philosophy away from system construction toward the patient analysis of language, concepts, and ordinary usage. The paper argues that this reorientation was not merely a change of method but a distinct meta-philosophical stance: the conviction that many philosophical problems are generated by the systematic misconstruction of ordinary expressions, and that the philosopher's task is therapeutic and clarificatory rather than constructive. Drawing on the work of Gilbert Ryle, J. L. Austin, and P. F. Strawson, the paper reconstructs the Oxford critique of system building, assesses its philosophical merits and limitations, and considers its continuing relevance to contemporary metaphysics and philosophy of language.