Book contents
- The Cambridge History of the British Essay
- The Cambridge History of the British Essay
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Preface to a History in the Manner of an Essay
- Part I Forming the British Essay
- Part II The Great Age of the British Essay
- Part III Assaying Culture, Education, Reform
- 20 The Essay and the Theme
- 21 The Academic Essay: Rhetoric and Pedagogy
- 22 The Essay and the Rise of University English
- 23 Victorian Essays in Criticism
- 24 Nineteenth-Century Reviews Reviewed
- 25 Essays in the ‘Golden Age’ of the British Newspaper
- 26 The Essay in the Age of Chartism
- 27 Political Theory and Ethics in the Victorian Essay
- 28 Plain English: Essays and Analytic Philosophy
- Part IV Fractured Selves, Fragmented Worlds
- Part V The Essay and the Essayistic Today
- Book part
- Bibliography
- Index
28 - Plain English: Essays and Analytic Philosophy
from Part III - Assaying Culture, Education, Reform
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 31 October 2024
- The Cambridge History of the British Essay
- The Cambridge History of the British Essay
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Preface to a History in the Manner of an Essay
- Part I Forming the British Essay
- Part II The Great Age of the British Essay
- Part III Assaying Culture, Education, Reform
- 20 The Essay and the Theme
- 21 The Academic Essay: Rhetoric and Pedagogy
- 22 The Essay and the Rise of University English
- 23 Victorian Essays in Criticism
- 24 Nineteenth-Century Reviews Reviewed
- 25 Essays in the ‘Golden Age’ of the British Newspaper
- 26 The Essay in the Age of Chartism
- 27 Political Theory and Ethics in the Victorian Essay
- 28 Plain English: Essays and Analytic Philosophy
- Part IV Fractured Selves, Fragmented Worlds
- Part V The Essay and the Essayistic Today
- Book part
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
The tradition of philosophical essayism beginning with Montaigne takes experience as its starting point, adopting a sceptical attitude towards grand philosophical systems and a priori truth. It was the favoured form of British empiricists, who looked to experience as the source of philosophical truth, and early analytic philosophers, who saw themselves as inheritors of the empiricist tradition and sought to avoid the perceived philosophical and rhetorical excesses of ‘continental’ idealism. Their adoption of the essay was accompanied by a view of writing, continued in present-day analytic philosophy, that stresses clarity, economy, and simplicity – virtues borrowed from the realm of mathematics and logic. But a tension, evident in Bertrand Russell’s work, emerges between fidelity to experience and fidelity to a mathematical model of clarity. This chapter argues that the notion of experience grounding the essay loses its philosophical richness in the analytic project.
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- The Cambridge History of the British Essay , pp. 421 - 436Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2024