In this book, translated from the German by the author, Joachim Schulte uses the discussions of psychological concepts in Wittgenstein's late manuscripts as a basis of reconstructing the central arguments and ideas developed by Wittgenstein during that period. This reconstruction yields valuable insights not only in the philosophy of psychology, but also in aesthetics and the theory of meaning.
Incorporating significant editorial changes from earlier editions, the fourth edition of Ludwig Wittgenstein's _Philosophical Investigations_ is the definitive _en face_ German-English version of the most important work of 20th-century philosophy The extensively revised English translation incorporates many hundreds of changes to Anscombe’s original translation Footnoted remarks in the earlier editions have now been relocated in the text What was previously referred to as ‘Part 2’ is now republished as _Philosophy of Psychology – A Fragment_, and all the remarks in it (...) are numbered for ease of reference New detailed editorial endnotes explain decisions of translators and identify references and allusions in Wittgenstein's original text Now features new essays on the history of the _Philosophical Investigations_, and the problems of translating Wittgenstein’s text. (shrink)
Zwischen Goethes Morphologiebegriff und Wittgensteins philosophischer Methode bestehen deutliche Parallelen, insofern man sie als Verfahren oder Anleitungen zur Erklärung und Darstellung natürlicher Phänomene (Goethe) bzw. der Begriffsbildung und -Verwendung (Wittgenstein) betrachtet. Den von Goethe als Entwicklungsmodelle und Vergleichshilfen gedeuteten Begriffen "Typus" und "Urbild" entsprechen Wittgensteins "Paradigmen" und "Muster"; beiden geht es um "übersichtliche" Darstellungen, und beide betonen die erklärungsrelevante Rolle der "Urphänomene".
Joachim Schulte’s introduction provides a distinctive and masterful account of the full range of Wittgenstein’s thought. It is concise but not compressed, substantive but not overloaded with developmental or technical detail, informed by the latest scholarship but not pedantic. Beginners will find it accessible and seasoned students of Wittgenstein will appreciate it for the illuminating overview it provides.
Wittgenstein's last work, On Certainty , is widely regarded as his third masterpiece of philosophy and one of his most enigmatic writings. On Certainty explores the ways in which claims of indisputable knowledge are expressed, and how language forms the basis of such claims. On Certainty has largely been read as representing a break with Wittgenstein's previous thinking, but this study places these ideas firmly in the development of his thought since the 1930s. Wittgenstein on Certainty and Doubt illuminates Wittgenstein's (...) examination of the logical features of epistemic terms—such as 'know', 'believe' and 'doubt'—and his interrogation of the foundations of human knowledge, the extent to which our knowledge is immune from doubt, and the conflicts between different articulations of knowledge. (shrink)
These are commented on in this volume, which will also include a publication of new or previously scattered material and an overview of Waismann 's life.
It is often claimed that certain remarks by Wittgenstein reveal him to have been an unsympathetic reader of Shakespeare and an unappreciative judge of the latter’s achievements. In the present paper, I attempt to show that this sort of observation is not only wrong but due to an inadequate perspective. An examination of the relevant remarks may bring to light a number of more or less interesting principles of evaluation, or aesthetic maxims and appraisals, but these do not say much (...) about Shakespeare’s works, nor are the meant to be instructive in this way. What Wittgenstein’s remarks are really about is his own intellectual physiognomy: it is by way of contrast, by comparing certain features of Shakespeare with what he supposes to be characteristic of himself, that he hopes to learn about the limits and potentialities of his own personality. (shrink)
Partly by way of contrast with a conception described by Kleist, Wittgenstein's notions of world?picture and mythology are explained and three types of statement playing a particularly important role with respect to our world?picture or pictures distinguished. Problems concerning sentences which contain normative elements are discussed and a test for what to count as a statement giving information about our world?picture is proposed. A mythology in Wittgenstein's sense is characterized as a structured, systematic set of models permitting analogical development and (...) the gradual change of previous paradigms. (shrink)
It is often claimed that certain remarks by Wittgenstein reveal him to have been an unsympathetic reader of Shakespeare and an unappreciative judge of the latter’s achievements. In the present paper, I attempt to show that this sort of observation is not only wrong but due to an inadequate perspective. An examination of the relevant remarks may bring to light a number of more or less interesting principles of evaluation, or aesthetic maxims and appraisals, but these do not say much (...) about Shakespeare’s works, nor are the meant to be instructive in this way. What Wittgenstein’s remarks are really about is his own intellectual physiognomy: it is by way of contrast, by comparing certain features of Shakespeare with what he supposes to be characteristic of himself, that he hopes to learn about the limits and potentialities of his own personality. (shrink)
In 1929 Wittgenstein left Vienna for Cambridge, and Waismann grew into the role of spokesman for his absent hero. The story of his relation with the man so greatly esteemed by his much-admired mentor Schlick contains dramatic elements: there were moments of friction and of coldness, announcements of withdrawal from a shared project, accusations of plagiarism or, at least, insuffi cient acknowledgement. What we know of this story has been told by Brian McGuinness and Gordon Baker. If one wishes to (...) gauge the extent to which Waismann succeeded in fulfi lling his task as spokesman for Wittgenstein, one must start from the basic fact that between 1929 and 1936 the two men collaborated, trying to realize the common plan of producing a systematic exposition of Wittgenstein’s philosophy. (shrink)
Zwischen Goethes Morphologiebegriff und Wittgensteins philosophischer Methode bestehen deutliche Parallelen, insofern man sie als Verfahren oder Anleitungen zur Erklärung und Darstellung natürlicher Phänomene bzw. der Begriffsbildung und -Verwendung betrachtet. Den von Goethe als Entwicklungsmodelle und Vergleichshilfen gedeuteten Begriffen "Typus" und "Urbild" entsprechen Wittgensteins "Paradigmen" und "Muster"; beiden geht es um "übersichtliche" Darstellungen, und beide betonen die erklärungsrelevante Rolle der "Urphänomene".
Das (wie die erhaltenen historischen Belege zeigen) zuerst von Wittgenstein vorgeschlagene Verifikationsprinzip fungiert als Sinnkriterium wie auch als Kriterium der Sinribestimmung. Durch Waismanns Vermittlung wird es in der letzteren Funktion zur ausschließlichen Grundlage von Schlicks Semantik, die jedoch einerseits an ungenügenden Unterscheidungen zwischen Wahrheitsbedingungen, Verifikationsbedmgungen und Verifikationsmethode krankt, andererseits durch eme zu optimistische, die intersubjektive Kontrollierbarkeit entbehrende Sprachauffassung an Überzeugungskraft verliert. Wittgenstems späteres hochkomplexes Bedeutungskonzept, das durch Einbeziehung von Kontext und Äußerungssituation das Verifikationsprinzip zu emem unter mehrerenbedeutungsrelevanten Momenten sprachlicher Äußerungen (...) degradiert, hat Schlick nicht mehr berücksichtigt. (shrink)
This paper is an attempt at presenting a convincing reading of the first sentences of PI § 109, especially of its third sentence. There Wittgenstein mentions what he calls "the pneumatic conception of thought", which by Miss Anscombe is translated as "the conception of thought as a gaseous medium". By comparing the relevant sentences with their sources in Wittgenstein's manuscripts and additional parallels it is found that Anscombe's rendering is liable to be misleading. Wittgenstein's notion of "pneuma" is likely to (...) be inspired by a conception of the kind elucidated by Oswald Spengler, for instance, according to whose account pneuma is to be understood as a sort of body (Seelenkörper). If you take this as your central image, the pneumatic conception alluded to in PI § 109 is one which can be tracked down in Wittgenstein's early as well as in his middle-period work. In this remark (PI § 109), Wittgenstein tries to mention both helpful and misleading features of his earlier ways of thinking, and what he now calls the "pneumatic conception" can be seen to be the foil for both sorts of features. The central idea is that the core of language contains a scaffolding of rules whose ("pneumatic") substance is the same as that of our thought. In accordance with this view the logical structure of thought is held to be identical with that of language and reality—a notion which fits parts of the Tractatus as well as parts of the original "grammatical" conception developed in the early 1930ies. (shrink)
Les lettres reproduites ici furent échangées au début de 1935 entre Ludwig et son frère Paul, le pianiste qui avait perdu un bras à la guerre, et dédicataire des concerti pour la main gauche de Ravel et Prokofiev entre autres... La relation entre les deux frères était toute de spontanéité, dénuée de contrainte et de formalisme. Nous verrons en quoi...
Das zuerst von Wittgenstein vorgeschlagene Verifikationsprinzip fungiert als Sinnkriterium wie auch als Kriterium der Sinribestimmung. Durch Waismanns Vermittlung wird es in der letzteren Funktion zur ausschließlichen Grundlage von Schlicks Semantik, die jedoch einerseits an ungenügenden Unterscheidungen zwischen Wahrheitsbedingungen, Verifikationsbedmgungen und Verifikationsmethode krankt, andererseits durch eme zu optimistische, die intersubjektive Kontrollierbarkeit entbehrende Sprachauffassung an Überzeugungskraft verliert. Wittgenstems späteres hochkomplexes Bedeutungskonzept, das durch Einbeziehung von Kontext und Äußerungssituation das Verifikationsprinzip zu emem unter mehrerenbedeutungsrelevanten Momenten sprachlicher Äußerungen degradiert, hat Schlick nicht mehr berücksichtigt.
The question of who or what the happy man mentioned in Wittgenstein's Tractatus really is leads to a discussion of connected issues, e.g. the question of the Schopenhauerian origins of certain key notions of Wittgenstein's early philosophy, the import of the concept of a world-soul, the topic of solipsism, and the puzzling question of what is involved in the self's identification with the world.
Essays on Wittgensteinian Themes Dedicated to Brian McGuinness Joachim Schulte, Göran Sundholm. PREFACE For thirty-five years the international community of philosophers have known Brian McGuinness as a major authority on the ...
This paper is an attempt at bringing out various aesthetically relevant points alluded to by Wittgenstein in what I call ‘the Engelmann remark’ – a longish manuscript remark written by Wittgenstein in 1930 and painstakingly discussed by Michael Fried in the context of elucidating what is strikingly new in the work of a photographer like Jeff Wall. One part of this paper is dedicated to summarizing and briefly examining the account given by Fried while another part is meant to clarify (...) some of Wittgenstein’s points by way of contrasting their import with the story told by Fried. In this second part Wittgenstein’s late observations on aspect change are used to show in which ways these observations may help us to gain a better understanding of the idea of a specific ‘perspective’ claimed to go with a given work of art. (shrink)
This paper aims to clarify certain aspects of the connections between music and (word) language alluded to in various manuscript passages by Wittgenstein. Three points are emphasized: (1) Wittgenstein’s willingness to speak of music as a language; (2) the importance of context; (3) the possibility of distinguishing various ways of explaining our hearing certain sequences of sounds as expressive of gestures or states of mind etc. Several attempts at elucidating the idea of understanding music lead to the realization that, according (...) to Wittgenstein, a prior grasp of his notion of a language-game is required to make headway in this area. (shrink)
Philosophical Superlatives: Machines as Symbols. – In this paper, my chief aim is to present a close reading of parts of a central sequence of remarks from Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations. The apparent theme of this sequence is the idea of a ‘machine as a symbol of its mode of operation’. Obviously, this idea requires a good deal of clarification, and the present paper attempts to elucidate relevant passages which, in their turn, are discussed in the hope of succeeding in spelling (...) out some of the points Wittgenstein has in mind in appealing to the picture of a machine as a symbol of its mode of operation. What will serve as a kind of framework of these elucidations is the notion of a philosophical superlative appealed to by Wittgenstein in a number of remarks that can be seen as particularly characteristic of his later thought. In the course of developing the idea of a philosophical superlative six aspects, or types, of superlatives are distinguished, and the last of these is found to shade into the image of a machine as symbol in a way that allows us to draw on various superlatives in striving to clarify the train of thought underpinning the sequence PI 191 – 197 and related passages. (shrink)
Wittgenstein's rule‐following considerations have often been discussed in terms of the debate occasioned by Kripke's interpretation of the so‐called ‘paradox’ of rule‐following. In the present paper, some of the remarks that stood in the centre of that debate are looked at from a very different perspective. First, it is suggested that these remarks are, among other things, meant to bring out that, to the extent we can speak of ‘reason’ in the context of rule‐following, it is a very restricted form (...) of reason – one which is basically to be understood as a kind of conformity. Second, by telling part of the story of the genesis of the relevant remarks it is pointed out that there is a certain tension between the ‘liberating’ character of earlier remarks bearing on rule‐following and the ‘sinister’ side of later remarks like §§198–202, which helps explain why it took Wittgenstein such a long time to arrive at the views expressed in his rule‐following considerations. (shrink)
