Susan Stebbing was a leading figure in British philosophy between theFirst and Second World Wars. She made significant contributions to thedevelopment of the analytic tradition, both in establishing itinstitutionally and in showing how its ideas and techniques could beapplied in a wide range of domains. Her early work focused on logicand during her lifetime she was celebrated chiefly forA ModernIntroduction to Logic (1930), which offered an account of bothtraditional, Aristotelian logic and the new mathematical logicassociated particularly with the work of Russell and Whitehead. Shewent on to be both a leading figure in what came to be known as theCambridge School of Analysis and an important advocate of therelevance of logic to everyday questions and problems. In her earlywork on logic and increasingly in her later work on thinking andreasoning, she stressed the ways in which language is used and misusedin ordinary communication and argued that philosophers must pay heedto these uses and misuses. Stebbing felt increasingly compelled toengage with practical contemporary issues and to address a widerpublic audience.Philosophy and the Physicists (1937) andThinking to Some Purpose (1939) offer, respectively,critiques of the language used in popular science communication and ineveryday genres such as political speeches, advertisements, andnewspaper editorials. Towards the end of her life, her interests inlogic and language became increasingly socially directed andpolitically engaged. Stebbing’s work foreshadowed a number ofimportant subsequent developments both in philosophy itself and inlinguistics.

• 1. Life
• 2. Logic
• 3. Cambridge Analysis
• 4. Logical Positivism
• 5. Politics and Critical Thinking
• 6. Last Work and Legacy
• 7. Conclusion
• Bibliography
  • Primary Sources: Works by Stebbing
  • Secondary Sources
• Academic Tools
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• Related Entries

1. Life

Stebbing lived through some remarkably turbulent decades, in termsboth of social and political upheavals and of philosophicaldevelopments, and these are reflected in the direction and developmentof her work. She was born in 1885 in North London, the youngest of sixsurviving children of a fish merchant. She went up to Girton CollegeCambridge in 1904, a time at which University study for women was verymuch the exception and long before Cambridge awarded degrees or evenfull University membership to women. Apparently her first interest wasto study science, but this was deemed by her family to be toodemanding for her on the grounds of her delicate health, so shematriculated in History. Whether or not it was a legitimate bar toscientific study, it is true that Stebbing suffered from ill healththroughout her life. In particular, she was afflicted withMenière’s disease, a disorder of the inner ear whichcaused her fits of vertigo, severe headaches, and forced prolongedperiods of bed rest. In later life, this condition led to hearingimpairment and decreased mobility.

While at Cambridge, Stebbing developed an interest in philosophy,apparently after happening on a copy of F. H. Bradley’sAppearance and Reality (1893). After completing her studiesin History she took the first part of the Moral Sciences Tripos atCambridge and then moved to King’s College London to take an MAin Moral Science, graduating in 1912. After various short-term andpart-time posts teaching in schools and universities, she wasappointed to a lectureship at Bedford College for women, in theUniversity of London, in 1920. In 1933 she made the nationalnewspapers when she became the first woman in the UK to be appointedto a full professorship in philosophy, again at Bedford College.(Bedford College became coeducational in the 1960s but was merged withRoyal Holloway College in 1985, though the philosophers there moved toKing’s College London, which now has an established chair ofphilosophy named after Stebbing.) During the late 1930s and early1940s she knew, or worked or corresponded with, many of the majorfigures in mid-twentieth century philosophy. At the same time shedevoted a great deal of time, influence, and personal income, tosecuring the safety of refugees from Germany and Nazi occupiedcountries: both exiled scholars and orphaned or fugitive children.However, her health continued to deteriorate. She suffered andapparently recovered from one bout of cancer, but the cancer returned,and she died in 1943 at the age of 57.

Stebbing’s given names were “Lizzie Susan”. Shedisliked the “Lizzie” and was universally known throughouther life as “Susan”. In her writing and professional work,she generally preferred to use just initials, and at least to beginwith, she published as “L. S. Stebbing”. One friendsuggested that Stebbing preferred philosophical debates not to becomeside-tracked by details of gender or status that might be indicated byfirst names or titles. (For a fuller account of her life, see Chapman2013).

2. Logic

Stebbing’s first significant work, which established herreputation, wasA Modern Introduction to Logic. Firstpublished in 1930, it was revised in 1933, and might justly beregarded as the first textbook of analytic philosophy: it went throughseveral editions and was still being reprinted in the early 1960s. Itsmain aim was to introduce readers to the developments in logic thathad taken place over the previous five decades, though she leads intothis through discussion of traditional Aristotelian logic. Its titlewas “A Modern Introduction to Logic”, not “AnIntroduction to Modern Logic”. Divided into three parts, thefirst deals with topics that are now familiar in analytic philosophy,such as names and descriptions, logical form, the theory ofdescriptions, inference and implication, as well as offering anaccount of syllogistic theory. The second deals with scientificmethodology, covering induction and causality, in particular. Thethird discusses definition, abstraction, and the nature and historicaldevelopment of logic.

Stebbing’s conception of logic is made clear in the first andlast two chapters of the book. Logical thinking is“directed” thinking, aimed at answering a question orsolving a problem. As such it involvesreasoning: identifyingand articulating the premises by means of which, by validargumentation, to arrive at relevant conclusions. Reasoning proceedsin accord with certain rules and exhibits certain forms of inference,and one of the tasks of logical theory is to articulate these rulesand make explicit these forms of inference—as Aristotle firstdid in developing his theory of the syllogism. One reason thatStebbing included discussion of syllogistic theory was that the rulesand forms are relatively simple, so that the dependence of thevalidity of an inference on its logical form, for example, could bemore easily ascertained and elucidated. But she was also concerned tointroduce modern logic. She explains the basic symbolism of Whiteheadand Russell’sPrincipia Mathematica in chapter 8, forexample, and the theory of relations in chapter 10. She does not giveany systematic presentation of the predicate calculus, however. Inkeeping with her conception of directed thinking, her concern isprimarily with explaining the various concepts and doctrines, such asthe concept of a proposition and Russell’s theory ofdescriptions, which help us in understanding logical thinking andlogical theory.

Logic, according to Stebbing, is not an art, understood as “aset of rules the learning of which may fit some one to dosomething”, but a science—the science of possible forms(1933b: 473–4). Insofar as the logical forms that the science oflogic discovers arenorms of thinking, logic can be describedas a normative science. But its normativity is not its distinguishingfeature, she argues, but is merely a by-product of the fact that normsare what are discovered in logic. She offers an account of thedevelopment of logic as the science of form in the final chapter ofthe book, tracing it from its roots in Aristotle’sPriorAnalytics to Whitehead and Russell’sPrincipiaMathematica, in which it is finally shown, she claims, that“Demonstration as such is purely formal” (1933b: 488).

In 1934 Stebbing publishedLogic in Practice, a very shortbook directed at a more general audience. She continues to regardlogic as the science of forms, the chief task of which is to makeexplicit the norms of reasoning. But she does indeed become moreinterested in the art of thinking. In the preface she writes:

The study of logic does not in itself suffice to enable us to reasoncorrectly, still less to think clearly where our passionate beliefsare concerned. Thinking is an activity of the whole personality.Given, however, a desire to be reasonable, then a knowledge of theconditions to which all sound thinking must conform will enable us toavoid certain mistakes into which we are prone to fall. There is sucha thing as a habit of sound reasoning. This habit may be acquired byconsciously attending to the logical principles of sound reasoning, inorder to apply them to test the soundness of particular arguments.(1934a: vii–viii)

Logic in Practice is intended to help people reasoncorrectly, with stress laid on “the importance of consideringlanguage, which is an instrument of our thinking and is imperfect, asare all human creations” (1934a: viii). This marks a transitionin Stebbing’s work: from the mid 1930s onwards she becomes moreconcerned with what would now be described as critical thinking.

3. Cambridge Analysis

Stebbing was an early proponent of what we now know as analyticphilosophy. InA Modern Introduction to Logic, she emphasisedthe difference between the logical form of a proposition and thegrammatical form in which that proposition might be expressed, andalso the distinction between understanding a proposition and knowingits analysis. G. E. Moore had appealed to this latter distinction inarguing in “A Defence of Common Sense” (1925), forexample, that one can know, with certainty, that various “commonsense” propositions, such as that one exists, has a body, is ahuman being, and so on, are true even if one cannot give the analysisof them. All that is necessary to know that these propositions aretrue is to understand them (understand their meaning, as Moore putit). Indeed, Moore argued, one could not even raise the question ofits correct analysis (or judge the correctness of any analysis thatwas offered) if one did not understand the proposition in the firstplace. This distinction is also fundamental to Wittgenstein’sTractatus, though whether it was Wittgenstein who influencedMoore or Moore (in earlier thinking) who influenced Wittgensteincannot be discussed here. Whatever their mutual influence, however,the distinction became central to the conception of analysis that wascharacteristic of what came to be known as the Cambridge School ofAnalysis, whose members included John Wisdom and Austin Duncan-Jonesas well as Moore and Stebbing. It also included, or at least wasinfluenced by the ideas of, Bertrand Russell, Frank P. Ramsey and C.D. Broad. (For further details, see Baldwin 2013.) Stebbingcorresponded with Moore throughout her career and on several occasionsrecorded her thanks for his criticisms of her work. Early commentatorstended to emphasise Moore as an influence on Stebbing’s thinking(see, for instance, Wisdom in Aristotelian Society 1948). More recentscholarship, however, has questioned the extent of such influence,highlighting the independence and originality of Stebbing’sideas about analysis, and the extent to which she both differed fromand challenged Moore (see, for instance Coliva 2021; Jannsen-Lauret2022b; Chapman 2025).

In 1932 Stebbing read a paper to the Aristotelian Society entitled“The Method of Analysis in Metaphysics”, in which shesought to spell out and justify the presuppositions of the conceptionof analysis of the Cambridge School. She identifies three mainassumptions, which she formulates as follows (1932: 85):

1. If \(p\) [standing for any proposition] is to be analysed, then\(p\) must be understood. It follows that there is at least oneexpression which unambiguously expresses \(p\).
2. If \(p\) is to be analysed, then it is not always the case that\(p\) is known to be false, and it is sometimes the case that \(p\) isknown to be true.
3. Directional analysis is possible.

The first, which she characterizes as logical, she defends byappealing to the distinction, which she attributes to Moore, betweenunderstanding a proposition and knowing its analysis, making explicitthe presupposition that if one can understand a proposition, thenthere must be some unambiguous formulation of it. The second, whichshe describes as metaphysical (though it is also epistemological),expresses the further assumption that any process of analysis musttake it as granted that the proposition we are seeking to analyse canbe known to be true. Stebbing here merely states that the assumptionis plausible and that she has no reasons to reject it (1932: 92).

The third assumption gives her the most difficulty, however. Shedivides it into a number of more specific presuppositions, but what iscrucial is the assumption that analysis must be “directed”towards, i.e., end in, what she calls “basicfacts”—absolutely simple or atomic facts. Just such anassumption was made in Wittgenstein’sTractatus as wellas in Russell’s form of logical atomism, for example. But onceStebbing has made explicit all these presuppositions, she comes to theconclusion that not only are they unjustified but they are not evenvery plausible (1932: 86–7).

To illustrate the conception of metaphysical analysis that Stebbing isseeking to articulate, let us consider one of Stebbing’sexamples:

(1)

Every economist is fallible.

Let us suppose that we need to give some unambiguous formulation ofthis. Here is one possibility:

(2)

For all \(x\), if \(x\) is an economist, then \(x\) isfallible.

We can see this as providing a logical analysis of (1). It could bereadily formalized in the predicate calculus as

But what is its metaphysical analysis? One suggestion might be thatthe analysis of (1) ends in a conjunction of propositions expressingthe specific facts about the fallibility of each economist:

(3)

Karl Marx is fallible and John Maynard Keynes is fallible andMuhammad Yunus is fallible and …

It seems clear that we can understand (1) without knowing thesuggested analysis expressed in (3), so to this extent the Mooreandistinction seems justified. To understand (3), taken as ellipticalfor the full conjunction, I would need to know the names of all theeconomists, and this is something that very few—if any—ofus know. But if this is right, then can we really say that (3)analyses the “meaning” of (1), which is how Moore seemedto want to put it? Does (1) have the same “meaning” as(3)? Even if we take (1) as an abbreviation of the (full) conjunctionexpressed in (3), would we not at the very least have to add at theend “and that is all the economists there are”? And howshould this last clause be analysed? What kind of fact does thatexpress? In any case, can “facts” such as that Keynes isfallible, etc., be regarded as “basic”? Can they not beanalysed further? (3) was only offered as one suggestion, natural asit might have seemed. Are there not other possible analyses, taking arather different form? Might the truth (if such it is) of (1) not begrounded, instead, in facts about the nature of being aneconomist—that economists have to idealize situations and henceare bound to get some things wrong, for example?

There is room for argument, then, as to what the“metaphysical” analysis of a proposition such as (1) is;and in the early 1930s members of the Cambridge School did indeeddebate the issue of the analysis of a whole range of types ofproposition in great detail. Stebbing was at the centre of thisdebate. She drew a distinction between logical and metaphysicalanalysis in just the way we have outlined: logical analysis wasintended to give an “unambiguous” formulation andmetaphysical analysis was intended to uncover the “basicfacts” on which the meaning or truth of the proposition to beanalysed was grounded. Logical analysis was alternatively described as“same-level” analysis and metaphysical analysis as“new-level” or “reductive” or“directional” analysis.

Once this distinction is drawn, it becomes possible to rejectmetaphysical analysis without rejecting analysis altogether. We canallow logical analysis to provide us with“unambiguous”—or at least clearer—formulationsof the proposition we want to analyse. This may be sufficient toelucidate its logical form or to remove certain confusions to which itmay give rise. This is what Max Black (1933), for example, advocatedin a reply to Stebbing that he also read to the Aristotelian Society afew months later (see Beaney 2003). We can also allow“partial” metaphysical analyses. We might“reduce” propositions about the decisions of committees,for example, to propositions about the activities of its constituentmembers, which may be enough to explain the decisions that were madewithout having to further analyse what it is to be a member of acommittee or indeed what it is to be a person (rational or otherwise).The correctness or usefulness of an analysis is relative to ourpurposes in seeking it. This purpose-relative approach to analysis wasthe one that Stebbing herself came to adopt. (For more on the debatesabout analysis in the 1930s, see Baldwin 2013; Beaney 2003, 2016. Forfurther discussion of Stebbing’s thinking about metaphysicalanalysis, see Janssen-Lauret 2022a and forthcoming; Coliva 2021.)

4. Logical Positivism

Stebbing played a major role in introducing logical positivism intoBritain. She first met Moritz Schlick in Oxford in 1930 when theyspoke in a panel together at the Seventh International Congress ofPhilosophy, and Schlick came to England again in 1932 to lecture atKing’s College London. In 1934 she invited Rudolf Carnap to givea series of three lectures (later published asPhilosophy andLogical Syntax) in London, where Carnap met Russell and A. J.Ayer for the first time. She was on the organization committee for theInternational Congress for the Unity of Science, which was held inParis in 1935 and in Cambridge in 1938.

What Stebbing found attractive in logical positivism was its respectfor science and the value it placed on logic. What she rejected wasits repudiation of metaphysics. (She endorsed the“logical” and “empiricism” but not the“positivism”, in other words, of the movement for whichboth “logical empiricism” and “logicalpositivism” are used as names, more or less interchangeably.) Wecan see her 1932 paper, “The Method of Analysis inMetaphysics”, as seeking to defend the conception ofmetaphysical analysis of the Cambridge School in response to thelogical positivists’ critique of metaphysics. But it is in apaper she read to the British Academy in March 1933, “LogicalPositivism and Analysis”, that she attempts to engage directlywith logical positivism and say what she finds objectionable about it.She takes “logical positivism” to include the views ofWittgenstein, as filtered through the reports and writings of variousmembers of the Vienna Circle such as Schlick, Carnap, and FriedrichWaismann. Focusing especially on Carnap, she criticizes his conceptionof “logically constructed systems” (as found in hisAufbau of 1928, for example) for being too abstract. Howeveruseful such a system may be in showing what can be constructed withthe fewest possible assumptions and primitive terms, she argues, theworld itself is not such a system. She also attacks Carnap’s“methodological solipsism” on what she calls “thebest of grounds … namely, that Iknow it to befalse” (1933a: 77).

Stebbing’s assertion of what sheknows is hardly likelyto be seen as a knockdown argument against any form of solipsism. Shegoes on to accuse Wittgenstein, and the logical positivists who wereinfluenced by him, of confusing “direct experience” and“content”, but no evidence is offered for saddlingWittgenstein with the views she claims he had. However, in the lastquarter of the paper, she makes clear that what is really at issue, inher view, is a conflict between two different conceptions of analysis,which she calls “directional analysis” and“postulational analysis”. Directional analysis is the formof analysis that she had attempted to defend in her 1932 paper.Postulational analysis is what is used “in the construction of adeductive system” (1933a: 80). Axioms are stipulated andeverything else in the system is derived by the rules ofinference.

What Stebbing means by a constructed system here is a system that ispostulated as areplacement for a conceptual system used inour everyday life—in the way that set theory might be seen aspostulating a replacement for our ordinary system of arithmetic. Onthis view, our everyday concepts and propositions are vague and needto be replaced—or “explicated”, to useCarnap’s later term—by precisely defined concepts, clearlystated axioms and logically derived propositions. Stebbing’sfundamental objection to this conception of postulational orexplicatory analysis is that it misunderstands the role of analysis,which is “to understand something more clearly” (1933a:81). Simply replacing our ordinary vague concepts by precise ones doesnot genuinely show what it was we understood. Consider, for example,the “replacement” of our ordinary concepts of colour byconcepts scientifically defined in terms of the wavelengths of light,etc. Arguably, this can never do justice to what it is we experiencewhen we see colours and describe them in the ordinary ways we do: itdoes not capture the phenomenology of our experience. In the same way,we might question whether defining numbers as sets genuinely showswhat we “really mean” by number terms.

According to Stebbing, the logical positivists—and shespecifically mentions Schlick in this regard—put “thepursuit of meaning” before the determination of the truth-valueof propositions (1933a: 83). But this gets things precisely the wrongway around, on Stebbing’s view: webegin withpropositions that we understand (in some sense) and canknowto be true, and in seeking an analysis of these propositions, we aimto clarify that understanding by identifying the facts that make themtrue or false. This is precisely the conception of analysis that shehad attempted to articulate and defend in her 1932 paper. On theexplicatory conception (as Stebbing seems to construe it), on theother hand, wepostulate something with a meaning that isintended to be clear once and for all, with the aim of thereby guidingor constraining our subsequent determinations of the truth-value ofthe relevant propositions.

At the very end of her lecture, in explaining how she disagrees withthe “linguistic” approach of Wittgenstein and the logicalpositivists, Stebbing summarises her view as follows:

What we ordinarily say, we say unclearly. We speak unclearly becausewe think unclearly. It is the task of philosophy to render ourthoughts clear. … We cannot clarify our thoughts by thinkingabout thinking, nor by thinking about logic. We have to thinkabout what wewere thinking about. The philosopherconsiders agiven expression, and analyses it in order tofindanother expression which saysmore clearly whatthe original expression saidless clearly. This investigationis not linguistic. We must firstknow what facts are the casebefore we can fruitfully employ analysis for the purpose of clarifyingour thoughts about the world. Accordingly, Logical Positivism fails, Ithink, in so far as it attempts to start froma prioriassumptions with regard to the nature of language and the principlesof symbolism, and, by means of these, to draw limits with regard towhat wecan think. Their mistake is that they seek to makeeverything clear at once. But it is not in this way thatphilosophy can develop. We must proceed step by step, beginning withpropositions which weknow to be true, not ruling outinitially what does not fit in. (1933a: 86)

What emerges from the two papers that Stebbing wrote on analysis in1932 and 1933? As she admitted herself, some of her arguments mightwell seem unconvincing or inconclusive. On the one hand, she confessesthat she can find no justification for the presuppositions ofdirectional analysis, her favoured form of analysis, at least as faras the commitment to “basic facts” is concerned. On theother hand, her objection to postulational analysis seems to amount,at times, to no more than the charge that it is not directionalanalysis. (For a fuller account of her critique of logical positivism,see Beaney 2016; Jannsen-Lauret 2017.) In attempting to clarify bothdirectional analysis and postulational analysis, and to defend theformer and criticise the latter, however, she helped sharpen theissues in dispute between the Cambridge School and logical positivism.Furthermore, by encouraging dialogue between the two, in both herwritings and her organizational activities, she also helped fosterthat critical engagement between the “ordinary language”and “ideal language” wings of analytic philosophy, as theylater came to be called, which has continued to this day. In short,what she promoted, above all, was critical reflection on the nature ofanalysis and hence of the essential characteristics of the two mainschools of thought that were to come together under the heading of“analytic philosophy”.

5. Politics and Critical Thinking

During the mid 1930s, Stebbing engaged increasingly with a general oreven popular, as opposed to an exclusively philosophical or academic,audience. That is, she was active in what has recently become known as‘public philosophy’. This development in her work wasdriven by her belief that the structures and principles of formallogic need not be seen as a closed, isolated system, but rather couldprofitably be applied to the problems and issues of modern life. Thiswas coupled with a commitment to the practical analysis of the textsin which these problems were presented and discussed, in order toidentify any illogical, flawed or misleading thinking. InLogic inPractice (1934) she had already aimed at a more generalreadership, including more overt political commentary than inAModern Introduction to Logic, offering examples drawn frompolitical speeches and newspaper reports to demonstrate examples ofmuddled argument and biased description. InPhilosophy and thePhysicists (1937), her focus was on the language used byscientists to explain their ideas—particularly by scientists whoproposed to present these ideas in a way that was palatable, andindeed entertaining, to a popular audience. Stebbing worried thatimprecise, impressionistic or sensational uses of language obscuredthe nature of recent scientific advances and, worse still, encouragedunjustified inferences and beliefs to be drawn from them.

One of Stebbing’s main targets was Sir Arthur Eddington, a thenprominent public figure whose photographs of the eclipse in 1919 hadhelped to confirm Einstein’s theory of relativity. Eddingtonliked to grip his readers’ attention and their imagination byrequiring them to consider everyday experiences in the light ofscientific discoveries. In this passage from his popular bookTheNature of the Physical World (1935), he is concerned with theatomic theory of matter:

I am standing on the threshold about to enter a room. It is acomplicated business. In the first place I must shove against anatmosphere pressing with a force of fourteen pounds on every squareinch of my body. I must make sure of landing on a plank traveling attwenty miles a second round the sun—a fraction of a second tooearly or too late, the plank would be miles away. I must do thiswhilst hanging from a round planet head outward into space, and with awind of aether blowing at no one knows how many miles a second throughevery interstice of my body. The plank has no solidity of substance.To step on it is like stepping on a swarm of flies. Shall I not slipthrough? No, if I make the venture one of the flies hits me and givesa boost up again; I fall again and am knocked upwards by another fly;and so on. I may hope that the net result will be that I remain aboutsteady; but if unfortunately I should slip through the floor or beboosted too violently up to the ceiling, the occurrence would be, nota violation of the laws of Nature, but a rare coincidence. (1935:328)

Stebbing disliked this way of explaining physics, because of thecasual misuse it made of everyday language, and also because of themuch larger implications Eddington encouraged his reader to draw fromit. InPhilosophy and the Physicists she drew attention tothese issues. She argued, for instance, that it simply made no senseto say “the plank has no solidity of substance”. The word“solid” just means having properties such as those of aplank. Whatever developments in physics may indicate, a plank with nosolidity is simply a nonsense, or a contradiction. Science must findother language in which to express these findings, since usingeveryday language to do so will only mislead and confuse. In fact,although Eddington ignored or even concealed this fact, scientists hadfound it necessary to develop new and highly formal systems forexpressing their findings, since they were describing a very differenttype of reality from that of everyday experience. Eddington’spersistent use of everyday language to describe scientific knowledgewas designed to have an emotional rather than an informative impact onhis readership. Here is Stebbing’s own version of the businessof walking into a room:

I enter my study and see the blue curtains fluttering in the breeze,for the windows are open. I notice a bowl of roses on the table; itwas not there when I went out. Clumsily I stumble against the table,bruising my leg against its hard edge; it is a heavy table andscarcely moves under the impact of my weight. I take a rose from thebowl, press it to my face, feel the softness of the petals, and smellits characteristic scent. I rejoice in the beauty of the gradedshading of the crimson petals. In short—I am in a familiar room,seeing, touching, smelling, familiar things, thinking familiarthoughts, experiencing familiar emotions. (1937: 45)

Stebbing’s point is that ordinary language very adequately andindeed very accurately describes everyday experience. That descriptiondoes not coincide with the scientific understanding of matter, and norshould it; for that a different type of language is necessary. Thedanger was that once Eddington had got his readership thinking aboutthe scientific conception of matter in relation to everyday language,he was able to manipulate their understanding of the possibleconsequences of recent scientific developments for our understandingof other areas of human experience, including the spiritual and eventhe religious. Eddington argued that the behaviour of material objectswas now shown to be random and unpredictable, rather than controlledby determinate laws of physics. Our understanding of the world aroundus as relatively stable and ordered was imposed on reality by our ownperceptions. This, in turn, opened up the possibility of thescientific viability of other types of truth or reality, including themental, the spiritual and, for Eddington, the divine.

IfPhilosophy and the Physicists was written to guard itsreadership against imprecise or misleading use of language byscientists, Stebbing’s next major publication had an even moreearnest and urgent purpose.Thinking to Some Purpose waspublished in 1939. It was a direct result of the increasing pressureon Stebbing to become a more prominent commentator on current affairsand to contribute to public intellectual debate; the BBC commissioneda series of talks from Stebbing which she was unable to deliverbecause of ill health but which she published instead in the newlyestablished Penguin series of “original non-fiction books oncontemporary issues”. Although Stebbing was reluctant to play aprominent public role, she was committed to the necessity of academicscontributing to the discussion of crucial social and political issues.Thinking to Some Purpose was written before the beginning ofthe Second World War, but it was produced at a time when Stebbing,like many others, was well aware of the gravity of the national andinternational situation, and of what was at stake. She was convincedthat it was imperative that the electorate, now universally franchisedand generally literate, should be equipped to deal with the type ofrhetoric that was being directed at them:

the citizens must be able to think relevantly, that is, to think tosome purpose. Thus to think is difficult. Accordingly, it is notsurprising, however saddening it may be, that many of our statesmen donot trust the citizens to think, but rely instead upon the arts ofpersuasion. (1939: 14)

The book is full of analyses of actual uses of language by thosetrying to persuade others to take a particular course of action:advertisers, journalists, clergymen and, particularly, politicians.Stebbing urged readers to hone their critical skills in order toidentify uses of language that introduce assumptions rather than makedirect statements, or that hide parts of an argument that in logicwould need to be made explicit. A repeated target is Sir StanleyBaldwin, several times Conservative Prime Minister. For instance,Stebbing quoted the following extract from a speech he gave whilecampaigning on behalf of the National Government in the 1931 GeneralElection. Baldwin’s task was to explain how it would be possiblefor Liberals and Conservative to work together in Government.

There must undoubtedly be some difficulty over the question oftariffs. Liberals would approach the problem with a Free Trade biasbut with an open mind to examine and decide whether there weremeasures of dealing with the problem apart from tariffs. Conservativeswould start with an open mind but with a favour for tariffs. Theywould start with an open mind to examine alternative methods, and theCabinet as a whole would sit down with perfect honesty and sincerityto come to a decision on that matter. (quoted by Stebbing 1939:66)

Stebbing focussed on some of Baldwin’s specific lexicalchoices:

You will notice that Baldwin speaks of a Liberalbias forFree Trade and of a Conservativefavour for tariffs. The word“bias” carries with it an emotional significance of havingprejudged the matter in a way that could hardly be regardedas consistent with having an “open mind”. The word“favour” does not, I think, have this significance. (1939:66–7)

In numerous other examples inThinking to Some Purpose,Stebbing drew attention to the ways in which speakers and writers canpotentially have a strong influence on the beliefs and actions oftheir audiences, not just through what they literally say but throughhow their choice of words introduces ideological assumptions ordisguises necessary steps in an argument. (For more onStebbing’s work in public philosophy, see Duran 2019; West 2022aand 2024; Dunning forthcoming; Körber and Tubolyforthcoming.)

6. Last Work and Legacy

Soon after the outbreak of war, Stebbing moved to Cambridge as part ofthe general evacuation of Bedford College. During her last years, herwork became increasingly socially and politically engaged, althoughshe herself continued to shun public recognition or any suggestion ofpersonal political activism. InIdeals and Illusions (1941)she urged the importance in all main spheres of life of identifyingand pursuing specific ideals, and distinguishing these frompotentially comforting but misleading illusions. She targeted a numberof what she saw as such dangerous illusions, including both politicaland religious illusions, such as in cases where religion was used tocondone or excuse social inequality or injustice. Stebbing struggledagainst ill health to finishA Modern Elementary Logic(1943), a textbook on logic that was aimed particularly at studentswho were starting out in their philosophical studies, perhaps withoutthe benefit of philosophical instruction, as would be the case withthose serving in the military. Her final philosophical contributionwasMen and Moral Principles, delivered as a London School ofEconomics Hobhouse Memorial Lecture a few months before she died andpublished posthumously as a pamphlet in 1944. Stebbing defended thevalidity of moral discussion and the reality of moral principles,based on humanistic rather than religious credentials. She argued thatmoral judgments needed to be considered in their full context and onan individual basis. Her approach allowed for complete sets of idealsto be evaluated and compared in relation to complex real-lifesituations, but prompted some later criticism that it left her withoutan intellectual basis for her own condemnation of a number ofpolitical systems, including Fascism.

Stebbing’s obituaries focused largely on her logical andanalytical work. This work is indeed still worth celebrating in itsown right and on its own terms, particularly in her bringing togethertraditional and modern logic and in her contributions to the key ideasand doctrines of the Cambridge School of Analysis. Her role as anearly British interpreter and critic of logical positivism and thedialogue she promoted between the two main branches of analyticphilosophy are also extremely significant.

Subsequent developments in how language has been studied and discussedin both philosophy and linguistics, however, suggest other ways ofevaluating Stebbing’s legacy and her significance. She combinedher commitment to formal logic with a belief in the importance ofpractical analysis of everyday texts and as a result in the necessityof public engagement by philosophers, in a manner which was at thetime rare in academia. She saw no discrepancy between the rigours oflogical argument and the requirements of practical problem solving,and stressed the need for clarity and transparency in language use. Inthis, she championed the importance to philosophers of payingattention to ordinary language and the varieties of its everyday usesomewhat in advance of the rise of “ordinary languagephilosophy” in Oxford after the Second World War.

In some ways, Stebbing went even further than the most committedphilosophers of ordinary language such as Ryle, Austin and Strawson.She did not just argue that philosophers should pay attention toordinary language; she illustrated her philosophical writings with awealth of real life examples taken from everyday communicativeinteractions, including newspaper editorials, political speeches andadvertising copy. Mary Warnock comments that Stebbing’s“determination to find in language both the source and sometimesthe solution of traditional philosophical puzzles” was centralto later developments in ordinary language philosophy, and highlightsStebbing’s early “understanding of the philosophicalsignificance of this approach, which can properly be described asrevolutionary” (1996: 93). Stebbing’s work was recognizedat the time in this respect. Urmson (1953), in particular, praised herassault on Eddington for its insistence on attending to how peopleordinarily use language; “solid” is used to describeproperties such as those displayed by a plank of wood, so to describea plank as having no solidity is simply nonsensical.

Further developments in the study of language, more recent in originand associated with the discipline of linguistics rather than that ofphilosophy, have some striking resonances with Stebbing’s laterwritings, and suggest a modern re-evaluation of her contribution.Stebbing became increasingly interested not just in the significanceand potentialities of everyday language but also in the social andideological implications of how it is used in society, particularly bythose in authority. A number of branches of recent and presentlinguistics share this commitment to studying language in context.Pragmatics, which can trace a direct descent from ordinary languagephilosophy through figures such as Austin and Grice, considers meaningin relation to the intentions, functions and contexts associated withthe use of linguistic forms. Sociolinguistics is concerned with socialinfluences on the use of language and with the effects of language useon society.

Perhaps the strongest affinities between Stebbing’s work andcurrent linguistics are in the area of Critical Discourse Analysis(CDA). CDA emerged as an identifiable branch of linguistics during thefinal decades of the twentieth century. Its focus is on the closeanalysis of actual language use to reveal how specific choices made byspeakers and writers can introduce ideological assumptions into texts,often assumptions that are concealed beneath the surface message ofthe text. Some of the methodological commitments and objectives of CDAare remarkably similar to the things that Stebbing was saying aboutlanguage half a century or more earlier. For instance, CDA mostcommonly engages with examples of language use sourced fromcontemporary newspaper articles, advertisements and politicalspeeches. It also has a specific agenda in terms of its intendedeffect, reminiscent of Stebbing’s mission to educated herreadership as informed and responsible consumers and voters:

CDA aims to make its users aware of, and able to describe anddeconstruct, vectors and effects in texts and semiotic materialsgenerally which might otherwise remain to wield power uncritiqued. Inthese respects CDA may be a kind of wake-up call, orconsciousness-raising, about the coercive or anti-democratizingeffects of the discourses we live by (Toolan 2002: xxii).

(For a fuller discussion of the relationship between Stebbing’swritings and more recent developments in linguistics, including CDA,see Chapman forthcoming a)

Recent years have seen a resurgence of interest in Stebbing’swork, including her writings on logic and analysis, her relationshipto the ideas and some of the individual members of the Vienna Circle,her philosophy of science and her popular publications on language andpolitics (see Secondary Sources, below). This new scholarship ischaracterised by a growing emphasis on the originality and importanceof Stebbing’s ideas. 2022 saw the republication by Routledge ofThinking to Some Purpose, which had long been out of printand also a new monograph on Stebbing (Janssen-Lauret 2022b). In 2025,an edited selection of Stebbing’s papers has been published byOxford University Press, and two separate collections of new essays onher work are scheduled to appear (Chapman 2025, forthcoming b, andColiva and Doulas forthcoming).

7. Conclusion

Stebbing played a major role in the development of analytic philosophyin the 1930s, writing what was in effect the first textbook ofanalytic philosophy,A Modern Introduction to Logic (1930).Although she was a leading member of the Cambridge School of Analysis,she also sought to engage with logical positivism and thereby helpedto bring the two together into the wider movement that we now know asanalytic philosophy. In her later writings she sought to show therelevance of her logical and analytic work to everyday thinking and tosocial and political debate.Philosophy and the Physicists(1937) andThinking to Some Purpose (1939), her two mostimportant books addressed to a more general audience, can also beregarded as among the first books of critical thinking, anticipatingdevelopments in sociolinguistics, pragmatics and critical discourseanalysis. Both her governing idea of “purposive thinking”and the emphasis she placed on clarity of thought and expression weremanifested in all her writing, which was also characterized—asindeed, were her teaching and organizational activities—by anexceptional degree of intellectual honesty and moral integrity.

Bibliography

Primary Sources: Works by Stebbing

• 1914,Pragmatism and French Voluntarism, Cambridge:Cambridge University Press.
• 1930,A Modern Introduction to Logic, London:Methuen.
• 1932, “The Method of Analysis in Metaphysics”,Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 33: 65–94.doi:10.1093/aristotelian/33.1.65
• 1933a, “Logical Positivism and Analysis”,Proceedings of the British Academy, pp. 53–87.
• 1933b,A Modern Introduction to Logic, London: Methuen,2nd edition.
• 1934a,Logic in Practice, London: Methuen.
• 1934b, “Analysis and Philosophy”,ThePhilosopher, XII: 149–155.
• 1934c, “Constructions”,Proceedings of theAristotelian Society, 34: 1–30.doi:10.1093/aristotelian/34.1.1
• 1936, “Thinking”, in C. Day Lewis and L. SusanStebbing,Imagination and Thinking, London: British Instituteof Adult Education, pp. 14–29.
• 1937,Philosophy and the Physicists, London:Methuen.
• 1939,Thinking to Some Purpose, Harmondsworth: Penguin;reprinted 1959.
• 1941,Ideals and Illusions, London: Watts and Co.
• 1942, “Moore’s Influence”, in Paul Schilpp(ed.),The Philosophy of G. E. Moore, La Salle, Ill: OpenCourt, pp. 517–532.
• 1943,A Modern Elementary Logic, London: Methuen;reprinted 1961, London: Barnes and Noble.
• 1944,Men and Moral Principles, Oxford: Oxford UniversityPress.
• 2025,Susan Stebbing: Philosophical Papers (edited withan introduction and notes by Siobhan Chapman), Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press.

Secondary Sources

• Aristotelian Society, 1948,Philosophical Studies: Essays inMemory of L. Susan Stebbing, London: Allen & Unwin.
• Baldwin, Thomas, 2013, “G. E. Moore and the Cambridge Schoolof Analysis”, in Michael Beaney (ed.),The Oxford Handbookof the History of Analytic Philosophy, Oxford: Oxford UniversityPress, pp. 430–50.doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199238842.013.0010
• Beaney, Michael, 2003, “Susan Stebbing on Cambridge andVienna Analysis”, in Stadler 2003: 339–50.doi:10.1007/0-306-48214-2_27
• –––, 2006, “Stebbing, Lizzie Susan(1885–1943)”, in A.C. Grayling, Andrew Pyle and NaomiGoulder (eds.),The Continuum Encyclopedia of BritishPhilosophy, 4 vols. London: Thoemmes Continuum, IV, pp.3023–8.
• –––, 2016, “Susan Stebbing and the EarlyReception of Logical Empiricism in Britain”, in ChristianDamböck (ed.),Influences on the Aufbau (Vienna CircleInstitute Yearbook 18), Switzerland: Springer, pp. 233–56.doi:10.1007/978-3-319-21876-2_12
• Black, Max, 1933, “Philosophical Analysis”,Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 33: 237–58.doi:10.1093/aristotelian/33.1.237
• Chapman, Siobhan, 2013,Susan Stebbing and the Language ofCommon Sense, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
• –––, 2020, “Susan Stebbing(1885–1943)” in Barry Lee (ed.), Philosophy of Language:The Key Thinkers, London: Bloomsbury, pp. 115–140.
• –––, forthcoming, “‘HelpfulCriticisms’: A Modern Introduction to Logic and Stebbing’sCorrespondence with Moore”, in Siobhan Chapman (ed.) forthcomingb.
• –––, forthcoming a, “Susan Stebbing:Philosophy, Pragmatics and Critical Discourse Analysis” inAnnalisa Coliva and Louis Doulas (eds.).
• –––, (ed.) forthcoming b,Susan Stebbing onLogic and Analysis, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
• Coliva, Annalisa, 2021, “Stebbing, Moore (and Wittgenstein)on Common Sense and Metaphysical Analysis”,British Journalfor the History of Philosophy 29(5): 914–934.
• Coliva, Annalisa and Louis Doulas (eds.), forthcoming,SusanStebbing: Analysis, Common Sense, and Public Philosophy, Oxford:Oxford University Press.
• Douglas, Alexander and Jonathan Nassim, 2021, “SusanStebbing’s Logical Interventionism”,Journal for theHistory and Philosophy of Logic, 42(2): 101–117.
• Dunning, David E., forthcoming, “‘The Ordinary Man WhoHappens also to Have a Great Deal of Scientific Knowledge’:Susan Stebbing‘s Philosophy of Physicists”, in SiobhanChapman (ed) forthcoming b.
• Duran, Jane, 2019, “Stebbing on ‘Thinking to SomePurpose’”,Think, 18(51): 47–61.
• Eddington, Arthur, 1935,The Nature of the PhysicalWorld, London: J. M. Dent and Sons.
• Egerton, Karl, 2021, “Susan Stebbing and the TruthmakerApproach to Metaphysics”,Logique & Analyse, 256:403–423.
• Franco, Paul, 2024, “Susan Stebbing on Logical Positivismand Communication”,Ergo, 10(48): 1378–1402.
• Janssen-Lauret, Frederique, 2017, “Susan Stebbing,Incomplete Symbols, and Foundherentist Meta-ontology”,Journal for the History of Analytical Philosophy, 5(2).doi:10.15173/jhap.v5i2.2928
• –––, 2022a, “Susan Stebbing’sMetaphysics and the Status of Common Sense Truths” in JeannePeijnenburg and Sander Verhaegh (eds.)Women in the History ofAnalytic Philosophy, Cham: Springer Nature, pp.167–190.
• –––, 2022b,Susan Stebbing, Cambridge:Cambridge University Press.
• –––, 2023, “Susan Stebbing onWell-Foundedness”,Dialectica, 77(4): 23–55.
• –––, 2024, “Grandmothers and FoundingMothers of Analytic Philosophy: Constance Jones, Bertrand Russell, andSusan Stebbing on Complete and Incomplete Symbols”, in Landon D.C. Elkind & Alexander Mugar Klein (eds.),Bertrand Russell,Feminism, and Women Philosophers in his Circle, London: PalgraveMacmillan, pp. 207–239.
• –––, forthcoming, “Directional Analysis inSusan Stebbing’s Philosophy of Physics”, in SiobhanChapman (ed) forthcoming b.
• Körber, Silke, 2019, “Thinking About the ‘CommonReader’: Otto Neurath, L. Susan Stebbing and the (Modern)Picture-Text Style”, in Jordi Cat and Adam Tamas Toboly (eds.),Neurath Reconsidered: New Source and Perspectives, Cham:Switzerland, pp. 451–470.
• Körber, Silke and Adam Tamas Tuboly, 2025, “SusanStebbing on the Scientific Attitude and Moral Philosophy: Context andComments,” in Georg Schiemer (ed.),The Legacy of The ViennaCircle, Cham: Springer.
• –––, forthcoming, “Thinking Clearly for aModern Democracy: Susan Stebbing and Otto Neurath”, in SiobhanChapman (ed) forthcoming b.
• Kouri Kissel, Teresa, forthcoming, “Stebbing and Reid onCommon Sense”, in Siobhan Chapman (ed) forthcoming b.
• Milkov, Nikolay, 2003, “Susan Stebbing’s Criticism ofWittgenstein’sTractatus”, in Stadler 2003:351–363. doi:10.1007/0-306-48214-2_28
• Moore, G. E., 1925, “A Defence of Common Sense”, in J.H. Muirhead (ed.),Contemporary British Philosophy: PersonalStatements (Second Series), London: George Allen & Unwin, pp.193–223.
• Pickel, Bryan, 2022, “Susan Stebbing’sIntellectualism”,Journal for the History of AnalyticalPhilosophy, 10(4): 1–24.
• Stadler, Friedrich (ed.), 2003,The Vienna Circle and LogicalEmpiricism (Vienna Circle Institute Yearbook 10), Netherlands:Springer.
• Toolan, Michael, 2002, “General Introduction”, inMichael Toolan (ed.),Critical Discourse Analysis, London:Routledge, pp. xxi–xxvi.
• Tuboly, Adam Tamas, 2020, “Knowledge Missemination: L. SusanStebbing, C. E. M. Joad, and Philipp Frank on the Philosophy ofPhysicists”,Perspectives on Science, 28(1):1–34.
• Urmson, J. O., 1953, “Some Questions ConcerningValidity”,Revue Internationale de Philosophie, 7:217–29; reprinted in Antony Flew (ed.) 1956,Essays inConceptual Analysis, London: Macmillan, pp. 120–133.
• Vrahimis, Andreas and Demetris Portides, forthcoming,“Stebbing on Science and Abstraction”, in Siobhan Chapman(ed) forthcoming b.
• Warnock, Mary (ed.), 1996,Women Philosophers, London:Everyman.
• –––, 2004, “Stebbing, (Lizzie) Susan(1885–1943)”,Oxford Dictionary of NationalBiography, Oxford: Oxford University Press.doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/36259
• West, Peter, 2022a, “The Philosopher Versus the Physicist:Susan Stebbing on Eddington and the Passage ofTime”,British Journal for the History of Philosophy,30(1): 130–151.
• –––, 2022b, “L Susan StebbingPhilosophy and the Physicists (1937): a Re-appraisal”,British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 30(5):859–873.
• –––, 2022c, “Introduction”, in SusanStebbing,Thinking to Some Purpose, London: Routledge, pp.xv–xxviii.
• –––, 2024, “The Philosopher Versus thePhysicist: Eddington’s Rejoinder to Stebbing”,BritishJournal for the History of Philosophy, 1–16.
• –––, forthcoming, “Stebbing andIdealism”, in Siobhan Chapman (ed) forthcoming b.
• West, Peter and Matyas Moravec, 2023, “Stebbing andEddington in the Shadow of Bergson”,History of PhilosophyQuarterly, 40(1): 59–84.

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