Who was the philosopher who believed that the main object of philosophy is an understanding of language?

Question

I would appreciate a brief summation of his thinking.

Answer 1

http://www.philosophyprofessor.com/philo...

that should get your started....now go do your hmework, lol.

Answer 2

Do you mean Logical Positivism?

http://www.philosophypages.com/hy/6q.htm

"Ever since Kant divorced reason from reality, his intellectual descendants have been diligently widening the breach. In the name of reason, Pragmatism established a range-of-the-moment view as an enlightened perspective on life, context-dropping as a rule of epistemology, expediency as a principle of morality, and collective subjectivism as a substitute for metaphysics. Logical Positivism carried it farther and, in the name of reason, elevated the immemorial psycho-epistemology of shyster-lawyers to the status of a scientific epistemological system—by proclaiming that knowledge consists of linguistic manipulations."

“The Cashing-in: The Student ‘Rebellion,’

Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal; Ayn Rand

Or do you mean Linguistic Analysis?

Despite Moore’s best efforts to explain otherwise, many took him to have invented and endorsed linguistic analysis.

http://www.iep.utm.edu/m/moore.htm

"Linguistic Analysis declares that the ultimate reality is not even percepts, but words, and that words have no specific referents, but mean whatever people want them to mean . . . Linguistic Analysis is vehemently opposed to . . . any kinds of principles or broad generalizations—i.e., to consistency. It is opposed to basic axioms (as “analytic” and “redundant”)—i.e., to the necessity of any grounds for one’s assertions. It is opposed to the hierarchical structure of concepts (i.e., to the process of abstraction) and regards any word as an isolated primary (i.e., as a perceptually given concrete). It is opposed to “system-building”—i.e., to the integration of knowledge."

“The Comprachicos,”

Return of the Primitive: The Anti-Industrial Revolution; Ayn Rand

Answer 3

Sounds like you're thinking of Ludwig Wittgenstein.  In the most pithy form, Wittgenstein opined, "The object of philosophy is the logical clarification of thoughts."

By this he did not mean clarification in the sense of explaining anything. This is where he seemed to think that all of the rest of philosophy went completely wrong. In his view all those explanations only served to muddy the waters further.

Instead, he saw a very narrow role for philosophy: "Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language." It was not supposed to be about finding things out, but rather about preventing them from being obscured by inherently sloppy words and man's seeming determination to misconstrue things. Presumably, if we ever develop some perfect way of communicating ideas, philosophy would become completely unnecessary altogether.

Not too many other philosophers really agreed with him on these and other points. There is reason to believe that even Wittgenstein didn't entirely either (perhaps he was being provocative to make a point or putting an idea forward that was not necessarily his own view as other existentialists have). But this was his most publicized view, at least, whatever became of it later.

Answer 4

I believe you are talking about Ludwig Wittgenstein an Analytic Philosopher. He wrote that what he called "language games" by which expression he wishes to call attention to the fact that speaking a language is part of an activity or of a form of life. In order to know more of language,however, Wittgenstein asks that we look closely at the actual uses of language. These are found to be greatly varied, so much so that no reduction of them to a set classification of uses is possible. Only "family resemblances" not a common essence, exist among them. Not only do the uses of language have no single structure, but, in the same way, meanings have no fixed, single structure or boundary. Rather, they can be known and determined solely by a study of the ordinary meanings of a language. To put it another way, Wittgenstein holds that "an expression has meaning only in the stream of life." The meaning of a word, that is, is its use in the language. Philosophy can't interfere with the actual use of language. It can only put things before us in the sense of putting words, sometimes torn by the philosopher from their place in ordinary language, back into their everyday use. Therefore philosophy is not a set of theses but rather more like the treatment of an illness, aiming to remove the disease of puzzlement.