Language is the primary fact which concerns contemporary philosophy. Men have been speaking and writing for a long time, but it is only recently that the task of philosophy has been said to be the analysis of language. Ethical perplexities, social anxieties, the nature of scientific knowledge, religious speculations, are held not to be directly the problems of the philosopher. They enter his study by way of a domain of languages and sub-languages. This preoccupation with language is itself an unusual (...) phenomenon in our intellectual history. It challenges the sociologist of philosophic ideas for an explanation, and it leads one to wonder upon what evidence philosophers have accepted the doctrine of linguistic primacy. (shrink)