The Modern era, as analytic philosophers reckon, started with Descartes. By contrast, the Recent era started when philosophy, in Richard Rorty's phrase, took the 'linguistic turn'. So it started with Frege or Russell, or early Wittgenstein, or the Vienna Circle; take your pick. Modern philosophy was mostly about epistemology: it wanted to understand what makes knowledge possible. Recent philosophy is mostly about meaning (or 'content') and wants to understand what makes thought and language possible. So, anyhow, we tell our undergraduates when we're in a hurry.

LRB 7 October 1993 | PDF Download