Cambridge Analysis

Abstract

Philosophical schools of thought are notoriously difficult to define in terms of dates, personalities and even agreed tenets. Nevertheless, it is possible cautiously to identify a set of ideas that were developed during the early 1930s by a group of philosophers working at or associated with the University of Cambridge. ‘The Cambridge school’ or ‘Cambridge analysis’ drew on the work of Moore and of Russell, but was developed and championed by younger philosophers, including Stebbing. She acknowledged the existence of an identifiable school but saw the term ‘Cambridge’ as having been applied ‘somewhat unfortunately’.¹ There is no clear extant statement from Stebbing as to why the label was unfortunate. In one sense it could be seen as too narrow; interpreted too literally it would exclude thinkers based at other universities, such as herself. In another sense it was too broad, implying unrealistic degrees of similarity between the ideas of thinkers as disparate as Russell, Moore and even Wittgenstein, simply because they all happened to be based in Cambridge. Nevertheless, the name stuck and within the framework of Cambridge analysis Stebbing offered a specific and detailed contribution to analytic philosophy. She used the term ‘directional analysis’ to identify this contribution, and in a series of short papers offered an account of it that attracted interest and provoked debate among her philosophical contemporaries.