This book suggests that to know how Wittgenstein’s post-Tractarian philosophy could have developed from the work of Kant is to know how they relate to each other. The development from the latter to the former is invoked heuristically as a means of interpretation, rather than a historical process or direct influence of Kant on Wittgenstein. Ritter provides a detailed treatment of transcendentalism, idealism, and the concept of illusion in Kant’s and Wittgenstein’s criticism of metaphysics. Notably, it is through the conceptions of transcendentalism and idealism that Wittgenstein’s philosophy can be viewed as a transformation of Kantianism. This transformation involves a deflationary conception of transcendental idealism along with the abandonment of both the idea that there can be a priori 'conditions of possibility' logically detachable from what they condition, and the appeal to an original ‘constitution’ of experience. The closeness of Kant and post-Tractarian Wittgenstein does not exist between their arguments or the views they upheld, but rather in their affiliation against forms of transcendental realism and empirical idealism. Ritter skilfully challenges several dominant views on the relationship of Kant and Wittgenstein, especially concerning the cogency of Wittgenstein-inspired criticism focusing on the role of language in the first Critique, and Kant's alleged commitment to a representationalist conception of empirical intuition.
This book explores the idea that there is a certain performativity of thought connecting Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason and Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. On this view, we make judgments and use propositions because we presuppose that our thinking is about something, and that our propositions have sense. Kant’s requirement of an a priori connection between intuitions and concepts is akin to Wittgenstein’s idea of the general propositional form as sharing a form with the world. Aloisia Moser argues that Kant speaks about acts of the mind, not about static categories. Furthermore, she elucidates the Tractatus’ logical form as a projection method that turns into a so-called ‘zero method’, whereby propositions are merely the scaffolding of the world. In so doing, Moser connects Kantian reflective judgment to Wittgensteinian rule-following. She thereby presents an account of performativity centering neither on theories nor methods, but on the application enacting them in the first place.
Wittgenstein’s Whewell’s Court Lectures contains previously unpublished notes from lectures given by Ludwig Wittgenstein between 1938 and 1941. The volume offers new insight into the development of Wittgenstein’s thought and includes some of the finest examples of Wittgenstein’s lectures in regard to both content and reliability. Many notes in this text refer to lectures from which no other detailed notes survive, offering new contexts to Wittgenstein’s examples and metaphors, and providing a more thorough and systematic treatment of many topics Each set of notes is accompanied by an editorial introduction, a physical description and dating of the notes, and a summary of their relation to Wittgenstein’s Nachlass Offers new insight into the development of Wittgenstein’s ideas, in particular his ideas about certainty and concept-formation The lectures include more than 70 illustrations of blackboard drawings, which underline the importance of visual thought in Wittgenstein’s approach to philosophy Challenges the dating of some already published lecture notes, including the Lectures on Freedom of the Will and the Lectures on Religious Belief
This Element concerns Wittgenstein's evolving attitude toward the opposition between realism and idealism in philosophy. Despite the marked – and sometimes radical – changes Wittgenstein's thinking undergoes from the early to the middle to the later period, there is an underlying continuity in terms of his unwillingness at any point to endorse either position in a straightforward manner. Instead, Wittgenstein can be understood as rejecting both positions, while nonetheless seeing insights in each position worth retaining. The author traces these “neither-nor” and “both-and” strands of Wittgenstein's attitude toward realism and idealism to his – again, evolving – insistence on seeing language and thought as worldly phenomena. That thought and language are about the world and happen amidst the world they are about undermines the attempt to formulate any kind of general thesis concerning their interrelation.
Women and Philosophy in Eighteenth-Century Germany showcases the vibrant and diverse contributions on the part of women in eighteenth-century Germany and explores their under-appreciated influence upon philosophical debate in Germany in this period. Among the women profiled in this volume are Sophie of Hanover, Dorothea Christiane Erxleben, Johanna Charlotte Unzer, Wilhelmina of Bayreuth, Amalia Holst, Henriette Herz, Elise Reimarus, and Maria von Herbert. Their contributions span the range of philosophical topics in metaphysics, logic, and aesthetics, to moral and political philosophy, and pertain to the main philosophical movements in the period. They engage controversial issues of the day, such as atheism and materialism, but also women's struggle for access to education and for recognition of their civic entitlements, and they display a range of strategies for intellectual engagement in doing so. This collection vigorously contests the presumption that the history of German philosophy in the eighteenth century can be told without attending to the important roles that women played in the signature debates of the period.
A stellar collection of articles relating the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) to core problems in the theory and philosophy of literature, written by the most prominent figures in the field.
Do we all, today, live in a "secular age"? Examining this open question, the book focuses, in Part 1, "The (Re)Emerging Philosophical Discourse on Religion," on recent interpretations of human existence in Asian, European, and American thought. Part 2.1, "The Weakening of Dogmatic Scientism," discusses Wittgenstein's, Derrida's, Habermas's, and Taylor's critiques of (abstract modes of) Enlightenment. Part 2.2, "Various Approaches to Religious Faith in Pragmatism and Neo-Pragmatism," deals with the writings of Peirce, James, Dewey, Rorty, West, and Putnam, and explores the significance of Josiah Royce's thought for contemporary global debates on religious belief.
This book is a manual for reading Witttgenstein´s Nachlass 1929 – 1951 based on hundreds of original manuscripts, and not the highly edited paper books published by Blackwell. The book shows how al thought, language and psychology entangles in body language as this language develop within cultural frameworks. The book further shows that Wittgenstein´s platform are viewpoints of Goethe, and that the methodological strategy of Wittgenstein relates to the architectural system of the works of Kant. The book makes clear that Wittgenstein had six philosophical projects 1929 – 1951. The project of “philosophical investigations” is only one of these six projects. The book published with that title in 1953 does not belong to that project. The book discusses three successive versions of “philosophical investigations” and shows how they follow the order of Kant´s First Critique; a teaching of Form, an Analytic, and a Dialectic. The book further shows that the idea of a “Third Wittgenstein” is absurd. The writings 1949 – 1951 have one and only one theme concerning the rightfulness of human behaviour. The Nachlass in shorthand: What is a human being? According to Wittgenstein s(he) is a ceremonial animal. Phylogenies and cultural background form the “natural history of Mankind”. Wittgenstein´s texts are contributions to this history. Accordingly, there is an embeddedness of the individual human being in the natural history of Mankind. Individuals internalize this embeddedness through drilling (Abrichtung), through an overwhelming normatively and severe formation of individuals. However, the outcome of this drilling is, in principle a free, imaginative, self- assured adult human being. The “pupils” never copy the “teachers”, and no two pupils are alike. The result is drilled individuals. The main capacity of these drilled individuals is The Attention enabling the individuals to search for things, look at things, and observe things in accordance with interests, needs, feelings, and inclinations that in a sense both were there “anyway” - before the drilling - and in another sense were shaped and empowered by the drilling. The adult human individual is at rest with the drilling s(he) was exposed to. One can regulate, nourish, and guide a human life in that way. Thus, we have the emergence of The Calm Look of the individual adults. However, the teachers witnessing these adults pay attention to a diversity and surprising variety of the outcome of their drilling. The Teachers pay attention to a Living Look they did not anticipate. The Teachers have an instrument making sure that the Living Look does not run wild. They can chain The Attention of the individuals exercising The Living Look. Prime example is Mathematics. There are many other examples of such being civilized, meeting the standards of a social setting or institution. A milder approach of the teachers is trying to induce imaginations within the attention of others without severely chaining The Attention. This brings forth The Induced Look. Now, pupils can both chain and induce the attention of other pupils. Thereby arises The Seducing Look. However, there is a limit to seduction. That is the theme of Shakespeare’s Othello, and theme of Wittgenstein´s last writings, autumn 1949 – Spring 1951: How do evidence and the rightful understanding of others relate? The answer is that if person´s expressions meets certain norms, then there is a diverse and open character of behaviour that other people have no reason not to find rightful Which behaviour is right can be very diverse.
Originally published in 1986, this book subverts an attitude towards the moral dimension of life which the author terms ‘ethical cynicism’. It discusses a theory of moral powers – a theory which shows that moral values are immensely potent sources of power. The author argues that there is a conceptual affinity between the Wittgensteinian account of language and the Marxist theory of history such that the two complement and even require one another in various aspects.
