Analysis is then accorded a fundamental role in Moore’s epistemology...

Analysis is then accorded a fundamental role in Moore’s epistemology: “A thing becomes intelligible first when it is analysed into its constituent concepts” (1899, p. 8). Both Moore’s naïve realism and the associated decompositional conception of analysis were endorsed by Russell in his initial rejection of idealism, but such a view faces obvious problems. How can we give an account of propositions about non-existent objects, for example?

Much of Russell’s subsequent philosophy is an attempt to think through and find solutions to such problems - the problems raised by adopting a decompositional conception of analysis in the context of repudiating idealism.[^1] After the initial exuberance of his naïve realism, Russell gradually developed tools to cut back on his ontological commitments.

This led first to his theory of denoting concepts, which was replaced within a few years by his theory of descriptions, on the basis of which he then developed his full-blown philosophy of logical atomism. By this time Wittgenstein, too, having been Russell’s pupil, was developing his own form of logical atomism, which found its definitive statement in the Tractatus . How can this path to logical atomism, however, be thought to have given rise to a whole new tradition of philosophy?

Naïve realism is hardly new, and even logical atomism has its precursors in the work of Leibniz, in particular. In any case, neither naïve realism nor logical atomism can be regarded as characteristic of analytic philosophy after the 1920s. More specifically, the decompositional conception of analysis which seems to lie at the heart of Moore’s, Russell’s and Wittgenstein’s early work is far from new.

In its general form, such a conception played a key role in Descartes’ philosophy (inspired by his analytic geometry) and in Locke’s empiricism, to take just two examples from the early modern period, and in the particular case of concepts, found its classic statement in Kant’s account of analyticity.[^2] So if decompositional analysis is meant to characterize analytic philosophy, then why has analytic philosophy been thought to start with Russell and Moore?

The answer is that it is not decompositional analysis on its own that characterizes analytic philosophy, even during its logical atomist phase.