This book explains in down-to-earth language what analytical philosophy is, and presupposes no previous knowledge of the subject. Analytical philosophers aim at obtaining insight into the traditional topics of philosophy by logical, conceptual and linguistic analysis. In this book William Charlton answers relativist attacks on this ambition and argues that its methods can still provide fresh insight into the traditional problems of philosophy. Taking such central philosophical problems as meaning, time, causation and thought, the author shows why they are problems for philosophy rather than for any other discipline, and thereby illustrates and supports a new general theory of the nature and scope of philosophical enquiry.

The Analytic Ambition is both an introduction to readers fresh to philosophy and a challenge to professional thinking that has become set in its ways.

William Charlton teaches philosophy at the University of Edinburgh. He has previously taught at the Universities of Glasgow, Trinity College, Dublin and Newcastle-upon-Tyne. He is the author of a number of books including Aristotle's Physics I and II (1970), Aesthetics: An Introduction (1970), Philosophy and Christian Belief (1988) and Weakness of Will (1988).