Jan Dejnozka First Book - The Ontology of the Analytic Tradition and ItsOrigins:Realism and Identity in Frege, Russell, Wittgenstein, and Quine.

The Ontology of the Analytic Tradition and Its Origins:

Realism and Identity in Frege, Russell, Wittgenstein, and Quine

summary, praise, book history, and ordering information

Jan Dejnožka

While many books discuss the individual achievements of Frege, Russell, Wittgenstein, and Quine, few books consider how the thought of all four thinkers bears on the fundamental questions of twentieth century philosophy. This book is about existence-identity connections in Frege, Russell, Wittgenstein, and Quine. The thesis of the book is that there is a general form of ontology, modified realism, which these great analysts share not only with each other, but with most great philosophers in the Western tradition. Modified realism is the view that in some sense there are both real identities and conceptual (or linguistic) identities. In more familiar language, it is the view that there are both real distinctions and distinctions in reason (or in language). Thus in modified realism, there are some real beings (ontology) which can serve as a basis for accommodating possibly huge amounts of conceptual or linguistic relativity, or objectual identities' "shifting" as sortal concepts or sortal terms "shift" (ideology). Therefore, on the fundamental level of ontology, the linguistic turn was not a radical break from traditional substance theory. Jan Dejnožka also holds that the conflict in all four analysts between private language arguments (which imply various kinds of realism) and conceptual "shifting" (which suggests conceptual relativism) is best resolved by, and is in fact implicitly resolved by, their respective kinds of modified realism. Frege and Russell, not Wittgenstein and Quine, emerge as the true analytic progenitors of "no entity without identity," offering between them at least twenty-nine private language arguments and fifty-eight "no entity without identity" theories.

The book's principal argument is that while in the analytic tradition, ontology and indeed all philosophy are held to be supervenient on language, and perhaps ultimately on logical and conceptual proposals, there is enough reformulation and presupposition of classical thought to allow analogies to basic concepts of the substance tradition. Dejnožka assimilates the analysts to Aristotle as the paradigm of modified realism, and briefly describes earlier origins in Plato and Parmenides.

Praise for The Ontology of the Analytic Tradition and Its Origins

"I regard this book as a most important contribution to our understanding of the course of analytic philosophy from Frege to Quine, as well as to our philosophical understanding of the topics mentioned in its title."

--Panayot Butchvarov

Panayot Butchvarov has been President of the Central Division, American Philosophical Association, and the editor of Journal for Philosophical Research. He is the author of Skepticism about the External World (Oxford University Press), Skepticism in Ethics (Indiana University Press), Being Qua Being: A Theory of Identity, Existence, and Predication (Indiana University Press), The Concept of Knowledge (Northwestern University Press), and Resemblance and Identity: An Examination of the Problem of Universals (Indiana University Press). He served as chair of the philosophy department at The University of Iowa for many years and is now retired in Florida.

"Dejnožka's account is at once comprehensive and detailed, historically accurate and philosophically acute, profound and clear. Those interested in the metaphysical foundations of analytic philosophy will find it very useful. So will ontologists generally."

--Stewart Umphrey

Stewart Umphrey is a professor of philosophy at St. John's College. He is the author of Zetetic Skepticism (Longwood Academic) and Complexity and Analysis (Lexington Books).

"This work is simultaneously a scholarly investigation and interpretation of four of the most important thinkers in the analytic tradition, and a sustained critique of contemporary relativisms. Dejnožka argues that not only Frege and Russell, but such 'antimetaphysical' philosophers as Wittgenstein and Quine do in fact have metaphysical commitments which can be traced not only to Russell and Frege, but to a long and distinguished tradition within Western philosophy. This is a provocative and challenging reading of the analytic tradition."

--Evan Fales

Evan Fales is a professor of philosophy at The University of Iowa. He is the author of Causation and Universals (Routledge) and A Defense of the Given (Rowman & Littlefield).

"Dejnožka's superb expertise on Frege and Russell inevitably must be stressed. But his book is not 'mere history'; there are many sharp criticisms of major contemporaries."

--José Benardete

José Benardete is a professor of philosophy at Syracuse University. He is the author of Metaphysics: The Logical Approach (Oxford) and Infinity (Clarendon).