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The concepts of particular and universal have become so familiar that their significance has become difficult to discern, like coins that have been passed back and forth too many times, worn smooth so their values can no longer be read. On the Genealogy of Universals seeks to overcome our sense of over-familiarity with these concepts by providing a case study of their evolution during the late 19th century and early 20th century, a study that shows how the
history of these concepts is bound up with the origins and development of analytic philosophy itself. Understanding how these concepts were taken up, transfigured and given up by the early analytic philosophers, enables us to recover and reanimate the debate amongst them that otherwise remains Delphic - to
interpret some of the early, originating texts of analytic philosophy that have hitherto baffled commentators, including Moore's early papers, to appreciate afresh the neglected contributions of philosophical figures that historians of analytic philosophy have mostly since forgot, including Stout and Whitehead, and to shed new light upon the relationships of Moore to Russell and Russell to Wittgenstein.
About the author
Fraser MacBride is Professor of Logic and Metaphysics at the University of Manchester and Editor of the Monist. He was previously Chair of Logic and Rhetoric at the University of Glasgow and a Reader in Philosophy at the University of Cambridge. He has also been the Visiting Bertrand Russell Professor at McMaster University where the Bertrand Russell Archive is held. He has published widely on metaphysics, the philosophy of mathematics and the philosophy of language as well as the history of analytic philosophy with an especial interest in the existence and nature of relations.
Summary
On the Genealogy of Universals explores the development of analytic philosophy in the late 19th and early 20th century and the contributions of different philosophers to a specific set of metaphysical problems. It focuses on some of the most famous philosophers of the period, whilst also highlights the contributions of lesser-known figures.
Additional text
In the preface to this excellent book, Fraser MacBride says he decided to write it because he had "become convinced that there is far more to ?nd out and far more to learn from the history of early analytic philosophy" (vii). He is right; the history of early analytic philosophy holds insights for us today, and most of them lie outside of what MacBride calls our "cartoon histories." In punchy prose, he mines gems from what one of his heroes, Frank Ramsey, called "that great muddle the theory of universals."
