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.
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.
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".
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)
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)
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..
There are similarities between Davidson's theory of meaning and that of Wttgenstein's Tractatus. But in Wittgenstein's later work the relation between meaning and use is seen in a completely different way and not in the least similar to Davidson's conception. In spite of this divergence, however, certain parallels exist between Wittgenstein's treatment of expressions which can be said to have secondary meanings and Davidson's notion of the metaphorical use of certain expressions.
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)
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)
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)
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 (with its Goethian overtones), the topic of solipsism, and the puzzling question of what is involved in the self's identification with the world.
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)
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)
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.
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".
Anhand eines Vergleichs mit den Stilbegriffen Spenglers und Goethes lassen sich in Wittgensteins Schriften wenigstens drei Bedeutungen des Wortes "Stil" auseinanderhalten: (1) Stil im Sinne einer individuellen, persönlichen Eigenart; (2) Stil im Sinnes des Geistes einer Kultur oder Epoche; (3) Stil im Sinne einer zeit- oder kulturtypischen Ausdrucksform, die zwar prägend, aber nicht zwingend verbindlich ist. Eine Erörterung des Stils in den Bedeutungen (2) und (3) zeigt, inwieweit dieser Begriff bei Wittgenstein "relativistisch" — d.h. kultur- und epochengebunden — aufgefaßt wird.
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)
There are similarities between Davidson's theory of meaning and that of Wttgenstein's Tractatus. But in Wittgenstein's later work the relation between meaning and use is seen in a completely different way and not in the least similar to Davidson's conception. In spite of this divergence, however, certain parallels exist between Wittgenstein's treatment of expressions which can be said to have secondary meanings and Davidson's notion of the metaphorical use of certain expressions.
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.
