Although reflection on the nature of philosophy has constituted an integral part of this discipline from its beginnings, the term „metaphilosophy” referring to such a reflection only made its first appearance in the middle of the twentieth century. In the course of discussions concerning the book by C.J. Ducasse about the subject-matter and method of philosophy, the term was introduced in the United States by C.G. Hempel and M. Lazerowitz, and in Poland by M. Choynowski. Subsequently, two different metaphilosophical programs, which disseminated this category, were put forward by Lazerowitz and J. Kalinowski. They had dissimilar objectives and assumptions, though for both of them a crucial problem was the diversity of philosophical conceptions and persistent disagreements in philosophy.
Inspired by some ideas of Ludwig Wittgenstein, Alice Ambrose maintained that philosophical statements do not serve to make empirically established or a priori justified statements about the world, but are hidden recommendations regarding the use of language, and, in particular, modifications of grammatical categories contained in it. This view was further developed and supplemented by her husband Morris Lazerowitz, who emphasized that the real source of philosophical modifications and terminological changes are the subconscious mental states of philosophers, especially their repressed desires, anxieties, and drives. The metaphilosophical views of Ambrose and Lazerowitz were very much criticized in the second half of the XX century for their dogmatic epistemological foundations. However, instead of returning to those apparently accurate criticisms, it is worth trying to construe these views as an early form of metaphilosophical expressivism, according to which philosophical statements are primarily, if not exclusively, an expression of non-cognitive mental attitudes of those who endorse them.
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