Wittgenstein: A Very Short Introduction
Wittgenstein: A Very Short Introduction

Author: A. C. Grayling

Publisher: OUP Oxford

Published: 2001-02-22

Total Pages: 177

ISBN-13: 0191540382

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) was an extraordinarily original philospher, whose influence on twentieth-century thinking goes well beyond philosophy itself. In this book, which aims to make Wittgenstein's thought accessible to the general non-specialist reader, A. C. Grayling explains the nature and impact of Wittgenstein's views. He describes both his early and later philosophy, the differences and connections between them, and gives a fresh assessment of Wittgenstein's continuing influence on contemporary thought. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

Wittgenstein and the Limits of Language
Wittgenstein and the Limits of Language

Author: Hanne Appelqvist

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2019-11-25

Total Pages: 281

ISBN-13: 1351202650

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The limit of language is one of the most pervasive notions found in Wittgenstein’s work, both in his early Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and his later writings. Moreover, the idea of a limit of language is intimately related to important scholarly debates on Wittgenstein’s philosophy, such as the debate between the so-called traditional and resolute interpretations, Wittgenstein’s stance on transcendental idealism, and the philosophical import of Wittgenstein’s latest work On Certainty. This collection includes thirteen original essays that provide a comprehensive overview of the various ways in which Wittgenstein appeals to the limit of language at different stages of his philosophical development. The essays connect the idea of a limit of language to the most important themes discussed by Wittgenstein—his conception of logic and grammar, the method of philosophy, the nature of the subject, and the foundations of knowledge—as well as his views on ethics, aesthetics, and religion. The essays also relate Wittgenstein’s thought to his contemporaries, including Carnap, Frege, Heidegger, Levinas, and Moore.

Elucidating the Tractatus
Elucidating the Tractatus

Author: Marie McGinn

Publisher: OUP Oxford

Published: 2006-11-16

Total Pages: 332

ISBN-13: 0191529591

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Discussion of Wittgenstein's Tractatus is currently dominated by two opposing interpretations of the work: a metaphysical or realist reading and the 'resolute' reading of Diamond and Conant. Marie McGinn's principal aim in this book is to develop an alternative interpretative line, which rejects the idea, central to the metaphysical reading, that Wittgenstein sets out to ground the logic of our language in features of an independently constituted reality, but which allows that he aims to provide positive philosophical insights into how language functions. McGinn takes as a guiding principle the idea that we should see Wittgenstein's early work as an attempt to eschew philosophical theory and to allow language itself to reveal how it functions. By this account, the aim of the work is to elucidate what language itself makes clear, namely, what is essential to its capacity to express thoughts that are true or false. However, the early Wittgenstein undertakes this descriptive project in the grip of a set of preconceptions concerning the essence of language that determine both how he conceives the problem and the approach he takes to the task of clarification. Nevertheless, the Tractatus contains philosophical insights, achieved despite his early preconceptions, that form the foundation of his later philosophy. The anti-metaphysical interpretation that is presented includes a novel reading of the problematic opening sections of the Tractatus, in which the apparently metaphysical status of Wittgenstein's remarks is shown to be an illusion. The book includes a discussion of the philosophical background to the Tractatus, a comprehensive interpretation of Wittgenstein's early views of logic and language, and an interpretation of the remarks on solipsism. The final chapter is a discussion of the relation between the early and the later philosophy that articulates the fundamental shift in Wittgenstein's approach to the task of understanding how language functions and reveal the still more fundamental continuity in his conception of his philosophical task.

The Fall of Language
The Fall of Language

Author: Alexander Stern

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2019-04-08

Total Pages: 401

ISBN-13: 0674240634

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In the most comprehensive account to date of Walter Benjamin’s philosophy of language, Alexander Stern explores the nature of meaning by putting Benjamin in dialogue with Wittgenstein. Known largely for his essays on culture, aesthetics, and literature, Walter Benjamin also wrote on the philosophy of language. This early work is famously obscure and considered hopelessly mystical by some. But for Alexander Stern, it contains important insights and anticipates—in some respects surpasses—the later thought of a central figure in the philosophy of language, Ludwig Wittgenstein. As described in The Fall of Language, Benjamin argues that “language as such” is not a means for communicating an extra-linguistic reality but an all-encompassing medium of expression in which everything shares. Borrowing from Johann Georg Hamann’s understanding of God’s creation as communication to humankind, Benjamin writes that all things express meanings, and that human language does not impose meaning on the objective world but translates meanings already extant in it. He describes the transformations that language as such undergoes while making its way into human language as the “fall of language.” This is a fall from “names”—language that responds mimetically to reality—to signs that designate reality arbitrarily. While Benjamin’s approach initially seems alien to Wittgenstein’s, both reject a designative understanding of language; both are preoccupied with Russell’s paradox; and both try to treat what Wittgenstein calls “the bewitchment of our understanding by means of language.” Putting Wittgenstein’s work in dialogue with Benjamin’s sheds light on its historical provenance and on the turn in Wittgenstein’s thought. Although the two philosophies diverge in crucial ways, in their comparison Stern finds paths for understanding what language is and what it does.

Philosophy of Language and Linguistics
Philosophy of Language and Linguistics

Author: Piotr Stalmaszczyk

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2014-06-23

Total Pages: 304

ISBN-13: 3110342758

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The present volume investigates the legacy of Gottlob Frege, Bertrand Russell and Ludwig Wittgenstein in contemporary philosophy of language and linguistics. These philosophers inspired both the development of analytic philosophy and various philosophical approaches to the study of language. They have influenced technical discussions on truth, proper names, definite descriptions, propositions and predication, sense and reference, truth, and philosophical and linguistic inquiries into the relations between language, mind and the world. The studies gathered in this volume discuss most of these issues and aim to show that the results of this research are still of utmost importance, and that the three philosophers have significantly contributed to the linguistic turn in philosophy and the philosophical turn in the study of language. The volume includes contributions by: Joachim Adler (Zurich), Maria Cerezo (Murcia), Pawel Grabarczyk (Lodz), Arkadiusz Gutt (Lublin), Tom Hughes (Durham), Gabriele Mras (Vienna), Carl Humphries (Cracow), Gary Kemp (Glasgow), Siu-Fan Lee (Hong Kong), Jaroslav Peregrin (Prague), Ulrich Reichard (Durham), Piotr Stalmaszczyk (Lodz), Piotr Szalek (Lublin), Mieszko Talasiewicz (Warsaw).

Wittgenstein and Gadamer
Wittgenstein and Gadamer

Author: Chris Lawn

Publisher: A&C Black

Published: 2007-03-15

Total Pages: 180

ISBN-13: 0826493777

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This is the first comparative study of the pioneering work on language of Ludwig Wittgenstein and Hans-Georg Gadamer.

Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language
Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language

Author: Saul A. Kripke

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 1982

Total Pages: 164

ISBN-13: 9780674954014

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Table of Contents " Preface " Introductory " The Wittgensteinian Paradox " The Solution and the 'Private Language' Argument " Postscript Wittgenstein and Other Minds " Index.

Wittgenstein’s Language
Wittgenstein’s Language

Author: T. Binkley

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 1973-07-31

Total Pages: 244

ISBN-13: 9789024715411

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

One of the first things to strike the reader of Wittgenstein's writings is the unique power of his style. One immediately notices the intriguing and arrangement of the paragraphs in Philosophical Investi composition gations, or the stark assertiveness of the sentences in the Tractatus Logico Philosophicus. A sense of the singular style being employed is unavoidable, even before the reader understands anything of what is happening philos ophically. Perhaps precisely for this reason it is too often assumed that coming to understand either work has little or nothing to do with re sponding to its form. The unusual style is a mere curiousity decorating the vehicle of Wittgenstein's ideas. Form is assigned a purely incidental import, there is a coincidence of this or that rhetorical flair with the yet to be determined content of the thoughts. The remarkableness of the style is perhaps registered in a tidy obiter dictum standing beside the more arduous task of discovering the substance of the ideas being presented. our interest, or at Wittgenstein's peculiar way of writing ably captures least our attention, but it bears only minor philosophical import. Though not unprecedented as a form of philosophical composition, it does not conform to the currently acceptable conventions; hence Wittgenstein's style is often thought to stand in the way of understanding his meaning. Such assumptions can be harmless for certain types of writing; however it does not appear as though Wittgenstein's is one of these.

Language, Form(s) of Life, and Logic
Language, Form(s) of Life, and Logic

Author: Christian Martin

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2018-09-10

Total Pages: 342

ISBN-13: 3110518287

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This volume deals with the connection between thinking-and-speaking and our form(s) of life. All contributions engage with Wittgenstein’s approach to this topic. As a whole, the volume takes a stance against both biological and ethnological interpretations of the notion "form of life" and seeks to promote a broadly logico-linguistic understanding instead. The structure of this book is threefold. Part one focuses on lines of thinking that lead from Wittgenstein’s earlier thought to the concept of form of life in his later work. Contributions to part two examine the concrete philosophical function of this notion as well as the ways in which it differs from cognate concepts. Contributions to part three put Wittgenstein’s notion of form of life in perspective by relating it to phenomenology, ordinary language philosophy and problems in contemporary analytic philosophy.