In the extensive oeuvre of the eminent Polish phenomenologist Roman Ingarden there are very few passages and hints which would enable one to determine his attitude towards analytic philosophy and its achievements. A brief sketch of an assessment of this philosophical movement is included in a letter to Henryk Skolimowski, which contains Ingarden’s response to a succinct account of his philosophy in Skolimowski’s book Polish Analytical Philosophy (1967). Ingarden emphasizes there that it is completely inaccurate to describe his contribution to philosophy as a fusion of German phenomenology and the so‑called Polish analytic philosophy. According to Ingarden he did learn nothing from analytic philosophy in its Polish version. His attitude towards analytic philosophy in its entirety is critical and hostile, since it has a general tendency to move all substantial issues on the linguistic level, and that pernicious tendency has led to a terrible impoverishment of philosophy.

In the paper I present the famous argument between Peter F. Strawson and Bertrand Russell on definite descriptions. I do not go into details of the two rival solutions to the problem of definite descriptions. Instead I present the controversy against the background of two traditions within analytic philosophy, i.e. the philosophy of natural language (Strawson) and the philosophy of ideal language (Russell). In consequence, the aim of this paper is to sketch the principal features of the two traditions and to indicate their influence on the argument. In the first paragraph I discuss Russell’s theory of descriptions and present it as a result of dramatic changes that he had made in his philosophy before he finally presented them in On Denoting in 1905. The second paragraph deals with the two traditions within analytic philosophy after the linguistic turn and underlines the role of Strawson in the philosophy of natural language. In the third paragraph I analyze in detail Strawson’s arguments against the theory of descriptions and I focus on some details that are usually omitted in standard presentations. The fourth paragraph discusses Russell’s response to Strawson’s objections, i.e. the counter-arguments formulated from the standpoint of philosophy of ideal language. I end with some suggestions about how to reconcile both approaches.

Seldom did Bertrand Russell discuss the movement or the trend that he himself contributed in a large measure to establish. He did not make frequent use of the term ‘analytic philosophy’, which was entering circulation in the first half of the twentieth century. However, he was fully aware of the distinctiveness of this movement that he described, using the lenses of his own philosophical preferences, referring to it as new realistic philosophy or scientific philosophy. In his later works Russell vehemently and inadequately attacked the linguistic version of analytic philosophy that originated with and was developed by Ludwig Wittgenstein in his Philosophical Investigations, to be later continued by Oxford ordinary language philosophers. The juxtaposition and consideration of various Russell’s statements on analytic philosophy from the successive stages of the development of his philosophical views help the reader to better understand Russellian metaphilosophy and follow the evolution of the philosophical tradition that he exemplified.

Analytic philosophy is sometimes understood in opposition to continental tradition. In this article, I would like to show that a Lviv‑Warsaw School shared many fundamental traits with analytic orientation. In afterwar Poland, this tradition clashed with the dialectical materialism that lacks strong scientific tradition but had the full support of the communist party. This situation produced a unique scenario in which the methodology of science could strive as a mainstream area. A crucial role was attributed to the theory of history.