STEBBING, L. Susan, Logical Positivism and Analysis (Humphrey Milford, London), 1933 [first separate issue, from The Proceedings of the British Academy, Vol. XIX]

4to; pp. 37

Scarce separate printing of Stebbing’s important early lecture on logical positivism. Here Stebbing elides differences between the Vienna Circle and Wittgenstein and criticises both for what she describes as a form of ‘methodological solipsism’. However, Stebbing freely admits that her reading of Wittgenstein is based on the Tractatus combined with second-hand reports from Schlick, Carnap and other members of the Vienna Circle.

Of greater substance than her critique of logical positivism is her defence of the ‘Cambridge School’ of analysis, derived largely from the work of G.E. Moore. For Stebbing, the logical positivists have got things the wrong way around when they search first for meaning, and then true or false statements. Following Moore she advocates beginning with a set of ‘givens’ based largely on everyday experience, and then clarifying our statements about them. This, of course, is not at all incompatible with what Wittgenstein was really thinking around the time of this lecture.

Good condition: spine taped; edges worn and chipped; occasional notes, mostly in pencil, some in pen.