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[Expositions 9.2 (2015) 88–98]  Expositions (online) ISSN: 1747–5376 
 

The Challenge of Teaching Analytic Philosophy to Undergraduates1 

 
JEELOO LIU 

California State University, Fullerton 

 

 

Introduction 

 

Teaching at a four-year university with no graduate program in philosophy, I often struggle 

with enrollment in the upper-division courses that I teach on a regular basis: metaphysics, 

philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, philosophy of time, and senior seminars on 

related topics. My department has 100–150 majors, but my analytic courses sometimes 

face the threat of cancelation due to insufficient enrollment. Most of our majors flock to 

the many courses we offer in the continental tradition and to social/political philosophy 

courses such as Philosophy of Race and Gender or Philosophy of Sex and Love. Some of 

our majors could complete the program without ever taking any course in the analytic 

tradition. It seems that many philosophy undergraduates shy away from dipping into the 

“hard-core” analytic philosophy courses. Students perceive analytic philosophy to be 

“hard”; and more importantly, they find it too abstract, too nit-picking, too technical, and 

ultimately having no relevance to their lives or their concerns. I teach at a state university 

in southern California, where many students are working minimally 20–30 hours a week 

to support their studies. Some of them are first-generation college students, and they don’t 

have the luxury of engaging in abstract philosophical discourse with their peers or among 

family members. Many of them are uncertain about their future, about their job prospects, 

and about themselves. What could analytic philosophy offer them? How could analytic 

philosophers speak to them?  

The alienation between analytic philosophy and the current college student body is not 

a reflection of the demise of student intellect or the incompetence of instructors, but the 

current state of analytic philosophy. To begin with, finding the right readings for my 

students in these analytic courses has always been a challenge. I assign primary texts, as I 

believe that the best way to enhance students’ philosophical literacy is to have them learn 

directly from philosophers. However, many articles written by contemporary analytic 

philosophers are obsessed with reformulation of principles, outrageous counterexamples, 

and some even with excessive symbolization. At the end of plodding through a long, 

tedious and technical paper, I often found myself going through a loop just to come back 

to where I started. If the long analysis could bring me closer to understanding the issue, the 

effort put into reading is well worth it. However, it is often the case that at the end of the 



89  Liu 
 

paper the author simply reaches a formulation that he or she found to be satisfactory—until 

the next person comes around to challenge it. I cannot expect my students to be enlightened 

by reading these articles other than learning to see how these analytic philosophers play 

their skill of philosophical analysis to the extreme.  

Another challenge for teaching metaphysics, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of 

language in the analytic tradition is that some recent issues seem to be contrived and jargon-

laden. There are too many counterexamples that are trite and ridiculous, and too many “-

isms” or principles introduced just to be refuted. For example, in philosophy of mind, the 

notion supervenience was at the center of the mind-body problem for a while, and then 

various definitions of ‘supervenience’—strong, weak, local, global supervenience and 

even “superdupervenience”—were introduced. The rampant discussion on the 

conceivability of zombies and its associated problems such as whether conceivability 

entails possibility does not seem to lead to anything substantive. How do we motivate 

students to engage in a serious discussion on whether zombies are conceivable and 

therefore possible? In philosophy of language, all is well before the introduction of possible 

world semantics. Then suddenly we are dealing with primary intensions, secondary 

intensions, epistemic intensions, epistemic possible worlds, scenarios, etc. How do I expect 

my students, who already have a hard time grasping the notion of a priority, to appreciate 

the significance of making these distinctions? In contemporary metaphysics, concepts such 

as simples, gunk, junk, trope, perdurance, endurance, coincidence, fission, fusion, etc., all 

require advanced training and knowledge, and it is not easy to prepare my students to get 

excited about these topics when the upper-division metaphysics course may have been the 

first (and possibly the last) course in analytic philosophy that they take before graduation. 

I do want my students to think about the “big and hard” questions in Mind, Language and 

Metaphysic, but I also want to have an honest assessment of what they could walk away 

with from these courses.  

If philosophy majors in a four-year state university will have difficulty reading analytic 

philosophical papers and being engaged in the contemporary philosophical discourse, then 

those outside the discipline, including intellectuals in other disciplines in the humanities, 

are not going to have an easier time either. Many contemporary analytic philosophers seem 

to have forgotten their readers’ receptivity and intellectual interests when they write. This 

is no surprise, since they are writing for their peers, for the scores of people who are 

engaged in the same language game. They are trapped in their own circle of analytic 

philosopher compatriots and forget how to reach out to others, to motivate others to think 

with them. 

  

 



The Challenge of Teaching Analytic Philosophy to Undergraduates 90 
 

The Narrowing Circle of Experts with Analytic Philosophical Issues 

 

As a philosophical trend, analytic philosophy in the Anglo-American tradition is primarily 

a “problem-solving activity.”2 From the beginning, analytic philosophy “aims to solve 

particular problems, puzzles and paradoxes, and to build theories in answer to them. It 

prefers to work upon details and particular analyses, rather than to produce general 

syntheses.”3 However, the collective “problem-solving activities” within analytic 

philosophy are primarily performed by the specialists, and for the specialists, on those 

particular philosophical problems. As Neil Levy points out, “The analytic philosopher 

addresses specialists she knows will share her technical vocabulary and her sense of what 

problems she ought to be concerned with.”4 As a result, many of the papers published in 

peer-reviewed journals and further selected in standard anthologies are intelligible only to 

a small number of experts. Even analytic philosophers with the same area of specialization 

would find themselves becoming novices with issues that others have developed into a 

theoretical labyrinth, not to mention analytic philosophers working in other areas. This 

“clubbishness” within analytic philosophy creates nepotism and exclusionism that 

professionals and students alike become outsiders. According to Alexander Nehamas, 

“This has led to what I believe is a dangerous fragmentation in the field, with people who 

teach together in the same department having neither any idea of what their colleagues are 

doing nor any interest in ever finding out.”5 

At the same time, partly due to the time and rigor required to keep up with an ongoing 

philosophical discourse, but partly also due to the closed-mindedness of some analytic 

philosophers, any philosophical tradition or issue that is not in the “main stream” analytic 

philosophical circle is regarded with disinterest, apathy, or even scorn. Many contemporary 

analytic philosophers know very little beyond their own expertise, and their philosophical 

engagement is restricted only with those in their clique. Analytic philosophy isolates itself 

from the history of Western philosophy as well as histories of other philosophical traditions. 

According to Hilary Putnam, a feature of Anglo-American analytic philosophy is “the 

exclusion of ‘continental philosophy,” and he remarks, “This indifference of analytic 

philosophy departments to what interests the other humanities departments is not surprising, 

however, when one realizes that the self-image of analytic philosophy is scientific rather 

than humanistic.”6 Nehamas also reports that by the late 1940s, analytic philosophers 

“ceased to think of themselves as part of the enterprise to which their colleagues in 

literature and history departments were devoted; they started thinking of themselves instead 

as participants in the enterprise of science.”7 In addition to segregating itself from the rest 

of the humanities, analytic philosophy also “retreated from the public domain. It no longer 

saw itself as bearing a direct relation to the world.” Once analytic philosophy uproots itself 



91  Liu 
 

from the humanities and humanistic concerns, it also stops being relevant. Analytic 

philosophy stands opposed to “generalism,” but as a result it also risks falling into 

provincialism.  

Of course, all disciplines aim to develop expertise and their development depends on 

the interchange among specialists in the field. I am not suggesting that top analytic 

philosophical works have to be watered down to suit the general public. However, I do 

think that some contemporary analytic philosophers are self-indulgent when they write long 

formalistic papers that do not touch on real issues. They don’t seem to care whether their 

examples could motivate readers to think, or whether their conclusions could really “solve” 

a problem. As Neil Levy presents the accusation that others have made of analytic 

philosophy: Analytic philosophy “is a new scholasticism, where the concern for technique 

overwhelms the very problems that the techniques had originally been designed to solve.”8 

The intellectual rigor that defines analytic philosophy should not be translated into arid 

formulation after formulation of the same position. One rule that analytic philosophers 

should adhere to, but often do not, is the methodology of analytic philosophy—

philosophical analysis that aims to clarify in a concise manner. According to James Baillie, 

“The idea of analytic philosophy clearly rests on some notion of analysis. Analysis consists 

of breaking down a complex system into its component parts, thereby making the 

underlying elements and the relations between them explicit […]. The aim of philosophical 

analysis was to become clear about what was being said or thought.”9 What analytic 

philosophers criticize about the continental philosophical style—obscure, convoluted 

rhetoric and vacuous verbiage—should be used as a mirror on their own writings.  

In the current academic environment in the U.S., those universities with a graduate 

program in philosophy and those without seem to be of two cultures. According to the 

Philosophical Gourmet Report 2011 by Brian Leiter, “In the U.S., all the Ivy League 

universities, all the leading state research universities, all the University of California 

campuses, most of the top liberal arts colleges, most of the flagship campuses of the 

second-tier state research universities boast philosophy departments that overwhelmingly 

self-identify as “analytic”: it is hard to imagine a “movement” that is more academically 

and professionally entrenched than analytic philosophy.”10 This may be true for the 

research universities and top liberal arts colleges; however, many, if not most, 

undergraduate programs elsewhere strive to be diversified and pluralistic, and analytic 

philosophy has a difficult time attracting students when it is not the only tradition offered. 

Graduate programs train future philosophy instructors to be immersed in the analytic 

philosophical discourse and writing style, but these graduate students would need to 

readjust their expectation when they begin teaching undergraduate students who are 

encountering analytic philosophy for the first time.  



The Challenge of Teaching Analytic Philosophy to Undergraduates 92 
 

In four-year universities, philosophy courses are often offered as general education 

courses to non-majors, and many undergraduate students are drawn to philosophy courses 

because they found them interesting, thought-provoking, eye-opening and even life-

changing. Analytic philosophy is not a natural enemy to these students. They can learn to 

appreciate abstract speculation and meticulous philosophical analysis, but they also need 

to see the point. To stimulate these young minds and to inspire them to think outside the 

box, analytic philosophy needs to go back to the basics and restore the charm of analytic 

philosophy when substance takes precedence over form, and problem-solving activities 

aim at genuine philosophical problems rather than fabricated linguistic trivialities. There 

are numerous exciting topics that undergraduates could be fully engaged in because these 

topics “concern” them—not in the daily pragmatic sense, but on the deeper level of their 

own existence. 

 

Back to the Basics: Investigation of the Nature of Language and Reality  

 

In its heyday,11 analytic philosophy provided perspectives that challenged us to reflect on 

the nature of language and its relation to reality. Early analytic philosophers seemed to be 

more immersed in the history of Western philosophy, and their philosophical concerns 

reached far beyond the trifles of linguistic analysis. They made a point. Even if their 

writings are by no means easier to read, it is a rewarding experience in the end. The key to 

the future development of analytic philosophy, then, is to reestablish the link to general 

philosophical problems, to return to the questions that would make people reexamine their 

common assumptions about the nature of reality, and to find ways to draw in undergraduate 

students.  

In my Philosophy of Mind class, for example, students are eager to learn about the 

various contemporary theories on the mind-brain relationship, and although many of them 

came into this course with a Cartesian dualist mindset, most would end up defending a 

form of functionalism, reductive physicalism, or non-reductive physicalism. The issues of 

qualia and consciousness are especially engrossing for my students, and they would read 

things outside of reading assignments to be better acquainted with the ongoing discussion. 

The Turing Test and whether robots could have intelligence, thought, and emotions are of 

course the most fascinating topic for my students. From reflecting on the possibility of 

artificial intelligence, they also begin to examine the nature of mind or mental state.  

In Philosophy of Language, I select primarily earlier articles by Frege, Russell, 

Wittgenstein, Austin, Searle, Quine, Davidson, Donnellan, Putnam, and Kripke. Frege’s 

“Sense and Reference” and the ensuing debate between description theories and direct 

reference theories constitute the core of my syllabus. The aim is to make students think 



93  Liu 
 

about the following questions: What is the nature and function of language? What do we 

mean when we speak—is meaning determined primarily by our intentions or by what our 

words express? How do our words refer to objects in the world? How is the use of proper 

names established in our language? What is the connection between language and the 

world? How does language depict reality? What is the connection between thought and 

speech? Is private language possible? How is communication accomplished? How do we 

ascribe beliefs to others when we are using our words to capture what they have in mind? 

Among these topics, Wittgenstein’s ideas about language game and private language, 

Quine’s idea of radical translation, and Davidson’s theory of intersubjective interpretation 

generally draw appreciative nods from my students.  

In Philosophy of Time, I probe such questions as: Is time real or unreal? Does time exist 

on its own or is it merely a reflection of relations among things? Does time “flow” and is 

there a “passage of time”? What constitutes “the present”? Are the past and the future real? 

Is there a single timeline progressing as an arrow or are there multiple timelines in space? 

Is time travel possible conceptually, metaphysically or physically? Could there be a “causal 

loop” such that one goes back in time to cause things to happen for the present? However, 

I have to admit that other than McTaggart’s challenging but rewarding article on time and 

David Lewis’ fun article on time travel, I have had a hard time choosing the right articles 

for this course. Most anthologies of philosophy of time include highly sophisticated and 

technical articles that are not intended for newcomers. Some articles with intriguing titles 

end up doing more sophistry than touching on the enigma of time itself.  

Finally, in Metaphysics, I begin with the debate between realism and anti-realism, and 

ask students to ponder these questions: What is “reality”? Do we really know the reality? 

Is reality simply what we perceive, or is it what we as humans have created together? Is 

human science advancing toward reality, or are we simply shifting from one scientific 

paradigm to another? Is what we call ‘reality’ constructed out of humans’ conceptual 

schemes? What is truth? How can ‘truth’ be defined? Putnam’s version of realism and his 

challenge of the fact/value dichotomy generally make students examine their own 

conception of reality, and Goodman’s Ways of Worldmaking is both shocking and 

enlightening to my students. Once students loosen their grip on reality, they begin to 

entertain a variety of metaphysical positions.  

Good philosophy makes people think hard because it poses good questions. For analytic 

philosophers to produce good analytic philosophy, they must remember the primary goal 

of philosophy: to challenge people to think. Philosophical analysis is a tool, and we should 

not simply stare at the finger and forget the moon to which the finger points.  

 

 



The Challenge of Teaching Analytic Philosophy to Undergraduates 94 
 

Engaging Analytic Philosophy with Chinese Philosophy 

 

On a personal level, I have been reconstructing Chinese philosophy with the analytic 

methodology for years. Analytic philosophy and Chinese philosophy are not as incongruent 

as is commonly believed by philosophers on both sides. There are mutual benefits to gain 

if we engage Chinese philosophy with analytic philosophy: on the side of Chinese 

philosophy, we could employ a language of clarity and lucidity gleaned from analytic 

philosophy; on the side of analytic philosophy, we could broaden our perspectives of key 

philosophical issues prominent in the tradition of analytic philosophy.  

To engage Chinese philosophy with analytic philosophy is not to presume that the two 

traditions are naturally compatible. For one thing, the Daoist and the Buddhist traditions 

have always emphasized that one should go beyond linguistic expressions, to seek 

transcendent truth, to grasp the meaning behind words and to comprehend the teacher’s 

sayings with one’s intuitive understanding. This is why some people strongly oppose using 

the analytic methodology on Chinese philosophy.12 Eske Møllgaard argues that the analytic 

philosophical treatment of Chinese philosophy “hampers productive research in this 

area.”13 Bernard Faure argues that analytic philosophy “falls under the fascination of a 

particular kind of purely linguistic approach” and “restricting philosophy to grammar.”14 

However, the development of Chinese philosophy has a lot to gain from importing analytic 

philosophical methodology and issues into traditional Chinese philosophy. As mentioned 

before, the methodology of analytic philosophy is philosophical analysis—focusing on the 

clarification of philosophical concepts, the articulation of reasoning and argumentation, 

and the precise formulation of principles or definitions. This methodology of philosophical 

analysis is very useful in the study of Chinese philosophy, especially for the benefit of 

contemporary readers. Contemporary interpreters of ancient Chinese philosophical texts 

should aim to assist readers in their understanding, and the precise choice of words along 

with the clear formulation of views is an effective means. Granted, the analytic presentation 

of Chinese philosophy cannot exhaust the whole content of Chinese philosophy, but it is a 

start in the right direction. What analytic philosophy as a methodology can offer to Chinese 

philosophy, is the scholars’ conscious efforts aiming at conceptual clarity and precision of 

language. The analytic reconstruction of Chinese philosophy can help connect 

contemporary readers with these traditional philosophical issues. For example, the debate 

on realism and anti-realism is reflected in the Daoist conception of language and reality; 

the conviction of moral realism is implicit in the Confucian moral philosophy. There are 

many others who have engaged analytic philosophical issues or positions with classical 

Chinese philosophy—virtue ethics, moral psychology, political philosophy, and 

metaphysics are at present the most prominent areas of comparative study.   



95  Liu 
 

At the same time, analytic philosophical tradition challenges every participant to be a 

problem solver, a thesis presenter, and most importantly, to establish his or her own view. 

Expository work and textual analysis take backstage to the introduction of a novel solution. 

Any budding analytic philosopher is entitled to challenge the received view, as long as he 

or she has done the groundwork of research and has truly come up with something that can 

add to the discussion. It is this kind of equality that facilitates an open exchange of ideas 

in the circle of analytic philosophy. The historical tradition of Chinese philosophy, on the 

other hand, takes the pattern of adhering to one’s own philosophical school, which is 

marked by the hierarchy of one master and multiple students. Ancient texts are often 

students’ records of the master’s teachings of the classics. This long-held “awe” toward the 

masters and the classics dominated the intellectual culture of interpretation and 

reinterpretation, to the extent that even one’s novel ideas were disguised as textual 

commentary (as seen in the works of Neo-Confucians). To engage Chinese philosophy 

with analytic philosophy, therefore, one needs to begin with an attitude shift: from “textual 

interpretation” to “problem-solving,” from speculating on the original author’s intent to 

developing one’s own voice. The convergence between analytic philosophy and Chinese 

philosophy can take place at various junctures with some aim at lucidity of conceptual 

analysis and rigor in philosophical argumentation, while some others go for innovative 

problem-solving as a joint endeavor. 

Both philosophical analysis as a methodology and analytic philosophy as a 

philosophical interlocutor can contribute to the development of Chinese philosophy. The 

conceptual clarity gleaned from analytic philosophy can enable Chinese philosophers to 

better express their viewpoints. Analytic philosophy can also suggest many new topics and 

problems for the development of Chinese philosophy. Chinese philosophy, as well as other 

Asian philosophies, needs to be “reinvented” in order to become part of the global 

philosophical exchange. The analytic approach provides one way to philosophize Chinese 

thought, so that the question whether there is philosophy in Chinese history will no longer 

be pertinent.  

 

Conclusion: Putting Analytic Philosophy Back in the Humanities 

 

In my opinion, if analytic philosophy is to be a philosophical tradition that can make a 

cultural contribution to the world in the twenty-first century, then it needs to come out of 

the ivory tower—the graduate programs that teach exclusively analytic philosophy. 

Analytic philosophers should not think that their profession is only for the analytic elites, 

that their writings are only meant for trained experts, and that their serious philosophical 

pursuits are naturally urgent and important to others. They need to rethink the value of their 



The Challenge of Teaching Analytic Philosophy to Undergraduates 96 
 

projects and find believable examples to motivate them. If analytic philosophy cannot even 

reach out to undergraduate students who receive proper instruction from their professors, 

then it will hardly have any appeal to other intellectuals in our society. As Putnam puts it, 

“Good prose, whatever its subject, must communicate something worth communicating to 

a sensitive reader […]. The demand that we only say what can be said in the sort of prose 

that Bertrand Russell wrote, marvelous as that prose was, will, in fact, necessarily limit 

what one can talk about.”15 Nehamas also points out that “[analytic] philosophy needs to 

take seriously the need to communicate its concerns more broadly and to a larger 

audience.”16 Accessibility and relevance must be constant reminders when analytic 

philosophers write their prose.  

Furthermore, analytic philosophers need to have a broader philosophical training, so 

that their discourse makes more connections with other philosophical issues. Back in 1959, 

C. P. Snow criticized “the cultural divide” of the times: those in the culture of sciences and 

the culture of humanities “can’t talk to each other,”17 and he writes: “this polarization is a 

sheer loss to us all.”18 Now even within the philosophy circle, there is still the persistent 

polarization between analytic philosophy and any other philosophy that is supposedly non-

analytic—continental philosophy, Asian philosophy, to list just the obvious. Analytic 

philosophy needs to open its closed door, and analytic philosophers ought to become more 

informed of philosophical issues and traditions that are not born and bred in the analytic 

tradition per se. Current graduate students in analytic programs need to be more broadly 

educated in the history of Western philosophy as well as in more pluralistic philosophical 

traditions to make connections with other philosophical concerns. Analytic philosophy 

needs to be brought out of its exclusionist clique and present its philosophical findings in 

a way accessible to a broader readership. It should return to genuine human concerns and 

resituate itself in the humanistic departments. I share Putnam’s sentiment when he writes, 

“I am concerned about certain tendencies in analytic philosophy—by the tendency to 

scientism, the tendency to patronize the history of philosophy, the refusal to hear other 

sorts of philosophy—but fighting these tendencies is not the same thing as fighting analytic 

philosophy.”19 I believe that analytic philosophy has a lot to offer to our undergraduates, 

to the future intelligentsia of our society, but it needs to change its self-image first.  

 

 

Notes 
 

1. I wish to thank my colleague Andrew Howat for his input. 

2. Levy 2003, 293. 



97  Liu 
 

3. Engel 1999, 222. 

4. Levy 2003, 296. 

5. Nehamas 1997, 221. 

6. Putnam 1997, 201. 

7. Nehamas 1997, 212. 

8. Levy 2003, 286. 

9. Baillie 2003, ix. 

10. Leiter 2011. 

11. By this I refer to what Alexander Nehamas calls the “canon” of analytic philosophy: 

works by Frege, Russell, Carnap, Ayer, Ryle, Wittgenstein, Austin, Strawson, 

Quine, Davidson, Putnam, and Kripke. The list is of course not exhaustive. 

12. For example, Eske Møllgaard argues that the analytic approach “reduces unique 

thought to arguments and subsumes the specific under abstract categories.” Hence, 

“in the study of Chinese thought this philosophy must be rejected” (2005, 321). 

Bernard Faure calls professional analytic philosophy “a language game in and of 

itself,” which imposes a “straightjacket” on our understanding of reality (2004, 33). 

A Chinese scholar Fang Chaohui also criticizes the approach of analytic Chinese 

philosophy: “Employing Western disciplinary categories to interpret Confucian 

classics would turn Confucianism onto the path of being epistemized and 

philosophized.” (Fang 2007, 12, my translation)  

13. Møllgaard 2005, 321. 

14. Faure 2004, 31. 

15. Putnam 1997, 201–2. 

16. Nehamas 1997, 222. 

17. Snow 1961, 17. 

18. Snow 1961, 12. 

19. Putnam 1997, 202. 



The Challenge of Teaching Analytic Philosophy to Undergraduates 98 
 

Works Cited 
 

Baillie, James 2003. Contemporary Analytic Philosophy. 2nd Edition. Upper Saddle 

River, NJ: Prentice Hall. 

Engel, Pascal. 1999. “Analytic Philosophy and Cognitive Norms.” Monist 82.2: 218–

34. 

Faure, Bernard. 2004. Double Exposure: Cutting Across Buddhist and Western 

Discourses. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. 

Leiter, Brian. 2011. “Analytic and Continental Philosophy.” In The Philosophical 

Gourmet Report 2011. http://www.philosophicalgourmet.com/analytic.asp  

Levy, Neil. 2003. “Analytic and Continental Philosophy: Explaining the Differences.” 

Metaphilosophy 34.3: 284–304. 

Møllgaard, Eske. 2005. “Eclipse of Reading: on the ‘Philosophical Turn’ of American 

Sinology.” Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy 4.2: 321–340. 

Nehamas, Alexander. 1997. “Trends in Recent American Philosophy.” Daedalus 126.1 

(American Academic Culture in Transformation: Fifty Years, Four Disciplines): 

209–223.  

Putnam, Hilary. 1997. “A Half Century of Philosophy, Viewed from Within.” 

Daedalus 126.1 (American Academic Culture in Transformation: Fifty Years, Four 

Disciplines): 175–208. 

Snow, C. P. 1961. The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution. The Rede Lecture, 

1959. New York: Cambridge University Press.  


