Perspicuous representation, Wittgenstein offers, is not another methodology, but it consists in seeing the connections. The Wittgensteinian perspicuous representation is therapeutic. The method he suggests for philosophy is the same method he suggests for social sciences. In both of these cases, he tries to get us to see the confusions we become entangled in when philosophizing and theorizing. In both of these disciplines he warns us not to advance explanatory, metaphysical theories. In this paper, I connect this concern with Wittgenstein’s (...) critique of Frazer. In criticizing Frazer, Wittgenstein adopts the important part of Spengler’s view. Nonetheless, there are differences between Wittgenstein’s views and those of Spengler; this paper aims to show similarities as well as these differences. The first part of the paper briefly summarizes Frazer’s views. The second part focuses on Wittgenstein’s critique of Frazer concerning science and technology. The third part gives an account of his critique regarding method of social sciences and philosophy. The last part concentrates on Wittgenstein’s critique of Frazer pertaining to the tolerance towards alternative forms of life. Key Words: context-free vacuum • evolutionary explanation • incommensurability • methodology of social sciences • perspicuous representation • science • technology • tolerance • totem and taboo. (shrink)

It is sometimes argued that there are pre-political, ‘natural’ characteristics that have a significant role in rendering political subjects, for instance that women are the subjects of feminism. These same arguments criticise transfeminism as a usurper of feminist priorities because it changes focus to the rights of groups whose members are not exclusively women. This essay challenges such criticism. It begins by defining transfeminism as a form of activism and an epistemological tool, in order to cogently address some of the (...) views that oppose it. I then propose a way out of the conflict by showing how we can make better sense of transfeminism aided by Wittgenstein’s concept of forms of life, since both views contend that there are biological and environmental features that constitute the uniqueness as well as the diversity of the given human form of life, without implying that said diversity leads to relativism. The paper concludes that transfeminism, when conceptualised correctly, can indeed work with other feminisms and political movements in order to counter institutionalised and market-driven gender politics that only simulate to address feminist concerns. Key words: transfeminism, Wittgenstein, forms of life, Judith Butler, feminist subject. (shrink)

The logical problem of artificial intelligence—the question of whether the notion sometimes referred to as ‘strong’ AI is self-contradictory—is, essentially, the question of whether an artificial form of life is possible. This question has an immediately paradoxical character, which can be made explicit if we recast it (in terms that would ordinarily seem to be implied by it) as the question of whether an unnatural form of nature is possible. The present paper seeks to explain this paradoxical kind of possibility (...) by arguing that machines can share the human form of life and thus acquire human mindedness, which is to say they can be intelligent, conscious, sentient, etc. in precisely the way that a human being typically is. (shrink)

This article grows out of the conviction that (some) films can philosophise. It looks to juxtapose the film Dogtooth and Wittgenstein's builders' example, such that they are seen as philosophising in similar ways over similar issues. Both strike me as probing the possibility—or denial—of a future with language. Using Stanley Cavell and Rush Rhees' responses to Wittgenstein's builders, I register the significance and meaning of themes from the film and Wittgenstein's work in a mutually enlightening way: language, games and breaking (...) free. This results in two different pictures of our hope of a future in and with language. (shrink)

(1997). Wittgenstein and post‐analytic philosophy of education: Rorty or Lyotard? Educational Philosophy and Theory: Vol. 29, No. 2, pp. 1-32. doi: 10.1111/j.1469-5812.1997.tb00018.x.

I was thinking about my philosophical work and saying to myself: ‘I destroy, I destroy, I destroy…’Context: The ‘linguistic turn’ of Western philosophy ; and correlatively, the decline of universalist discourses. The weariness with regard to ‘theory’, and the miserable slackening that goes along with it. The time has come to philosophize.…there is no danger of philosophy's ‘coming to an end’. Religion did not come to an end in the Enlightenment, nor painting in Impressionism. Even if the period from Plato (...) to Nietzsche is encapsulated and ‘distanced’ in the way Heidegger suggests, and even if twentieth‐century philosophy comes to seem a stage of awkward transitional backing and filling, there will be something called ‘philosophy’ on the other side of the transition. (shrink)

COVV: I say to myself that the earth is extinguished, though I never saw it lit. (Pause.) It’s easy going. (Pause.) When I fall I’ll weep for happiness. (Pause. He goes towards door.)HAMM: Clov! (C...

This article explains Wittgenstein's distinction between good, bad, and vacuous modern music which he introduced in a diary entry from January 27, 1931. I situate Wittgenstein's discussion in the context of Oswald Spengler's ideas concerning the decline of Western culture, which informed Wittgenstein's philosophical progress during his middle period, and I argue that the music theory of Heinrich Schenker, and Wittgenstein's critique thereof, served as an immediate link between Spengler's cultural pessimism and Wittgenstein's threefold distinction. I conclude that Wittgenstein's distinction (...) between bad and vacuous modern music is analogous to Schenker's distinction between the compositional fallacies of the progressive and the reactionary composers of his time. Concomitantly, Wittgenstein's philosophically problematic notion of good modern music transcended the conceptual framework of both Schenker and Spengler. In this context, I examine Wittgenstein's remarks on Gustav Mahler as well as his remark on the music of the future as monophony, which, I conclude, should be understood ultimately as an ellipsis of his much later view of musical meaning and intelligibility. (shrink)

This essay accounts for the notion of _Lebensform_ by assigning it a _logical _role in Wittgenstein’s later philosophy. Wittgenstein’s additions of the notion to his manuscripts of the _PI_ occurred during the initial drafting of the book 1936-7, after he abandoned his effort to revise _The Brown Book_. It is argued that this constituted a substantive step forward in his attitude toward the notion of simplicity as it figures within the notion of logical analysis. Next, a reconstruction of his later (...) remarks on _Lebensformen_ is offered which factors in his reading of Alan Turing’s “On computable numbers, with an application to the _Entscheidungsproblem_“, as well as his discussions with Turing 1937-1939. An interpretation of the five occurrences of _Lebensform_ in the PI is then given in terms of a logical “regression” to _Lebensform_ as a fundamental notion. This regression characterizes Wittgenstein’s mature answer to the question, “What is the nature of the logical?”. (shrink)

O objetivo deste texto é apresentar e explorar uma imagem de Wittgenstein que ainda permanece nas margens da produção acadêmica de comentários sobre seus escritos: a imagem de um filósofo que não se ocupa de teses e teorias filosóficas, mas de um conflito com sua herança filosófica e com o mundo que habita. Um conflito que não termina, que nos exibe ambiguidades que não são abandonadas através de soluções definitivas para o que assombra o filósofo. As vozes de Wittgenstein nos (...) falam tentações e formas hegemônicas de pensar a filosofia que ainda se fazem presentes, de questões que ainda podem ser colocadas para as comunidades filosóficas, e isso nos leva a pensar que pertinência ainda pode haver em sua demanda por um procedimento terapêutico. Nesse sentido, alguns assuntos serão tratados como: a filosofia como uma forma de terapia antifilosófica, a relação entre a “doença de uma época” e os escritos e aspectos biográficos de Wittgenstein, o desejo de autenticidade e a possibilidade de soluções individuais para os problemas relativos à “escuridão desta época”. (shrink)

In 1931, writing in a personal journal, Wittgenstein enumerated the names of those thinkers whom he deemed to have been his most important intellectual influences. He makes the strong claim that these are thinkers whose seminal ideas he has taken over, further elaborated and incorporated into his own work. Here are the names he lists in their order of appearance: Boltzmann, Hertz, Schopenhauer, Frege, Russell, Kraus, Loos, Weininger, Spengler, Sraffa. At the time of the first publication of this list in (...) Culture and Value, those familiar primarily with the most widely read and influential writings on Wittgenstein and his philosophical influences, Norman Malcolm's Memoir and Toulmin and Janik's Wittgenstein's Vienna, would most likely have been surprised by the inclusion of Spengler's name. His is the only one on the list that does not appear in either book. Every other thinker named is not only mentioned as an influence on Wittgenstein in one or the other work, but some of the purported details of that influence are offered. And the appearance of Spengler's name is doubly surprising, given the relatively low esteem in which his work is generally held. Of the others listed, perhaps only Weininger fails to emerge as a respected figure. (shrink)

This paper establishes a dialogue between the later works of Wittgenstein, those of Cavell and the novels of J. M. Coetzee concerning the problem of violence, authority and the authoritative voice. By drawing on J. M. Coetzee's Waiting for the Barbarians and Diary of a Bad Year, the paper discusses lessons and insights on the nature of violence and the ways in which it can be accepted as “normal.” The term “normalization” is used in order to show how violence and (...) cruelty can become a “form of life” that develops according to its own actors, cultural practices and legitimacies. (shrink)

Wittgenstein mentions “forms of life” only on a limited number of occasions in his writings; however, this concept is at the core of his approach to language, as the vast literature on the subject shows. My aim in this paper is neither to adjudicate which of the many competing interpretations of “forms of life” is correct nor to propose a new one. I start with a methodological take on this notion and test it by applying it to a specific case. (...) In my view, the notion of forms of life is a methodological tool that Wittgenstein uses to draw attention to the embeddedness of language in our lives and practices. This reading, I suggest, allows us to oppose those who want to see in Wittgenstein a conservative thinker, based on his remark on forms of life as “the given” that must be accepted. In particular, it becomes possible to put his notion to use in the study of linguistic and social change. Hence, I propose as an example the case of innovative language games in trans communities. In this context, the notion of forms of life enables us to see with more clarity how linguistic change occurs, which also helps us better understand phenomena such as disagreement, conflict, and hermeneutical injustice. (shrink)

In this paper, I hope to i. briefly explain Nyaya dualist ontology and identify the implications involved in accepting this view, ii. provide a comparison of Nyaya dualism to Cartesian dualism, and iii. provide an analysis of Nyaya dualism vis-à-vis some contemporary non-dualist theories of mind, in an attempt to gauge the viability of Nyaya Dualism as a theory of mind. I will briefly identify the context and history of this school in Indian Philosophy and will attempt to describe how (...) this paper approaches and interprets Nyaya thinking. (shrink)

In this paper I reconsider James and Wittgenstein, not in the quest for what Wittgenstein might have learned from James, or for an answer to the question whether Wittgenstein was a pragmatist, but in an effort to see what these and other related but quite different thinkers can help us to see about animals, including ourselves. I follow Cora Diamond’s lead in discussing a late paper by Vicki Hearne entitled “A Taxonomy of Knowing: Animals Captive, Free-Ranging, and at Liberty”, which (...) draws on Wittgenstein and offers some insights that accord with pragmatist accounts of knowledge. (shrink)

I've been teaching Wittgenstein's On Certainty lately, and coming again to the question of Wittgenstein's relation to pragmatism.1 This is of course a question Wittgenstein raises himself when he writes in the middle of that work: 'So I am trying to say something that sounds like pragmatism'.2 He adds to this sentence the claim that 'Here I am being thwarted by a kind of Weltanschauung', but in the remarks to follow I want to focus not on Wittgenstein's differences from or (...) antipathy to pragmatism, nor on the world view that he felt thwarted him, but on those elements of his philosophy that sound like pragmatism-as he says. I will work primarily from On Certainty but also from the Philosophical Investigations, which intersects with that late, unfinished work at various places, and which also, at times, sounds like pragmatism. (shrink)

Despite their differences, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Leo Strauss share two key philosophical commitments. They recognize that philosophy cannot establish or discover a conceptual structure to which one might appeal to justify what one says. And they agree that the task of philosophical writing is to convey a way of thinking set apart from that which seeks to establish or discover conceptual structures. Yet each knows that his writing, in the absence of a universal ground of appeal, will (...) mostly fail to convey that way of thinking, and so will be, to that extent, esoteric. What differentiates them is their rendering of philosophy's inherent esotericism. -/- Wittgenstein's late interest in aspect-seeing and aspect-blindness grows out of his well-documented despair that his writing would fall before uncomprehending eyes. The correlation here rests on noticing, contra Stephen Mulhall, that Wittgenstein's aspect-seeing remarks are inspired by aesthetic matters, not least by the 'subjective universality' of aesthetic judgments. Indeed, Wittgenstein's appeals to grammatical criteria are rightly understood, not as appeals to rules in a game, but as cousin to the form of justification in aesthetics. But then, as in aesthetic justification, there may be no reason for a speaker's inability to convey to another the connections he or she may see. Emerson, whose approach to writing comes into view alongside parallel strategies in jazz and film, begins with the fact that he can write the way he does---relying on the transformative possibilities of words whose multiple meanings he acquired the way anyone does---and concludes that no one is precluded from finding in his writing a model for transforming thinking. Strauss begins with the fact that esoteric writing works the way it does---conveying the writer's true thoughts to some while withholding them from the majority---and concludes that such writing reveals a natural order of rank among readers. Yet nothing in the nature of writing philosophy as Strauss understands it compels one, in the end, to accept Strauss's conclusion. (shrink)