Wittgenstein: Connections and Controversies
Wittgenstein: Connections and Controversies

Author: P. M. S Hacker

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2001-11-22

Total Pages: 400

ISBN-13: 019924569X

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Wittgenstein: Connections and Controversies consists of thirteen thematically linked essays on different aspects of the philosophy of Wittgenstein, by one of the leading commentators on his work. After an opening overview of Wittgenstein's philosophy the following essays fall into two classes: those that investigate connections between the philosophy of Wittgenstein and other philosophers and philosophical trends, and those which enter into some of the controversies that, over the last two decades, have raged over the interpretation of one aspect or another of Wittgenstein's writings. The connections that are explored include the relationship between Wittgenstein's philosophy and the humanistic and hermeneutic traditions in European philosophy, Wittgenstein's response to Frazer's Golden Bough and the interpretation of ritual actions, his attitude towards and criticisms of Frege (both in the Tractatus and in the later philosophy), the relationship between his ideas and those of members of the Vienna Circle on the matter of ostensive definition, and a comparison of Carnap's conception of the elimination of metaphysics and of Strawson's rehabilitation of metaphysics with Wittgenstein's later criticisms of metaphysics. The controversies into which Hacker enters include the Diamond-Conant interpretation of the Tractatus (which is shown to be inconsistent with the text of the Tractatus and with Wittgenstein's explanations of and comments on his book), Winch's interpretation of the Tractatus conception of names, Kripke's interpretation of Wittgenstein's discussion of following a rule (which is demonstrated to be remote from Wittgenstein's intentions), and Malcolm's defence of the idea that Wittgenstein claimed that mastery of a language logically requires that the language be shared with other speakers. These far-ranging essays, several of them previously unpublished or difficult to find, shed much light upon different aspects of Wittgenstein's thought, and upon the controversies which it has stimulated.

Wittgenstein: Connections and Controversies
Wittgenstein: Connections and Controversies

Author: P. M. S Hacker

Publisher: Clarendon Press

Published: 2001-11-22

Total Pages: 400

ISBN-13: 0191529745

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Wittgenstein: Connections and Controversies consists of thirteen thematically linked essays on different aspects of the philosophy of Wittgenstein, by one of the leading commentators on his work. After an opening overview of Wittgenstein's philosophy the following essays fall into two classes: those that investigate connections between the philosophy of Wittgenstein and other philosophers and philosophical trends, and those which enter into some of the controversies that, over the last two decades, have raged over the interpretation of one aspect or another of Wittgenstein's writings. The connections that are explored include the relationship between Wittgenstein's philosophy and the humanistic and hermeneutic traditions in European philosophy, Wittgenstein's response to Frazer's Golden Bough and the interpretation of ritual actions, his attitude towards and criticisms of Frege (both in the Tractatus and in the later philosophy), the relationship between his ideas and those of members of the Vienna Circle on the matter of ostensive definition, and a comparison of Carnap's conception of the elimination of metaphysics and of Strawson's rehabilitation of metaphysics with Wittgenstein's later criticisms of metaphysics. The controversies into which Hacker enters include the Diamond-Conant interpretation of the Tractatus (which is shown to be inconsistent with the text of the Tractatus and with Wittgenstein's explanations of and comments on his book), Winch's interpretation of the Tractatus conception of names, Kripke's interpretation of Wittgenstein's discussion of following a rule (which is demonstrated to be remote from Wittgenstein's intentions), and Malcolm's defence of the idea that Wittgenstein claimed that mastery of a language logically requires that the language be shared with other speakers. These far-ranging essays, several of them previously unpublished or difficult to find, shed much light upon different aspects of Wittgenstein's thought, and upon the controversies which it has stimulated.

Wittgenstein
Wittgenstein

Author: Peter Michael Stephan Hacker

Publisher:

Published: 2005

Total Pages: 375

ISBN-13: 9780191602245

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The controversies into which Hacker enters include the Diamond-Conant interpretation of the Tractatus (which is shown to be inconsistent with the text of the Tractatus and with Wittgenstein's explanations of and comments on his book), Winch's interpretation of the Tractatus conception of names, Kripke's interpretation of Wittgenstein's discussion of following a rule (which is demonstrated to be remote from Wittgenstein's intentions), and Malcolm's defence of the idea that Wittgenstein claimed that mastery of a language logically requires that the language be shared with other speakers. These far-ranging essays, several of them previously unpublished or difficult to find, shed much light upon different aspects of Wittgenstein's thought, and upon the controversies which it has stimulated.

Wittgenstein
Wittgenstein

Author: P. M. S. Hacker

Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell

Published: 1993-10-08

Total Pages: 340

ISBN-13: 9780631190646

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This third volume of the monumental commentary on Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations covers sections 243-427, which constitute the heart of the book. Like the previous volumes, it consists of philosophical essays and exegesis. The thirteen essays cover all the major themes of this part of Wittgenstein's masterpiece: the private language arguments, privacy, avowals and descriptions, private ostensive definition, criteria, minds and machines, behavior and behaviorism, the self, the inner and the outer, thinking, consciounesss, and the imagination. The exegesis clarifies and evaluates Wittgenstein's arguments, drawing extensively on all the unpublished papers, examining the evolution of his ideas in manuscript sources and definitively settling many controversies about the interpretation of the published text. This commentary, like its predecessors, is indispensable for the study of Wittgenstein and is essential reading for students of the philosophy of mind. A fourth and final volume, entitled Wittgenstein: Mind and Will will complete the commentary.

Wittgenstein's Poker
Wittgenstein's Poker

Author: David Edmonds

Publisher: Harper Collins

Published: 2002-09-17

Total Pages: 355

ISBN-13: 0060936649

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On October 25, 1946, in a crowded room in Cambridge, England, the great twentieth-century philosophers Ludwig Wittgenstein and Karl Popper came face to face for the first and only time. The meeting -- which lasted ten minutes -- did not go well. Their loud and aggressive confrontation became the stuff of instant legend, but precisely what happened during that brief confrontation remained for decades the subject of intense disagreement. An engaging mix of philosophy, history, biography, and literary detection, Wittgenstein's Poker explores, through the Popper/Wittgenstein confrontation, the history of philosophy in the twentieth century. It evokes the tumult of fin-de-siécle Vienna, Wittgentein's and Popper's birthplace; the tragedy of the Nazi takeover of Austria; and postwar Cambridge University, with its eccentric set of philosophy dons, including Bertrand Russell. At the center of the story stand the two giants of philosophy themselves -- proud, irascible, larger than life -- and spoiling for a fight.

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

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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.

Wittgenstein
Wittgenstein

Author: Joachim Schulte

Publisher: State University of New York Press

Published: 1992-08-25

Total Pages: 206

ISBN-13: 1438419147

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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 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

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

Wittgenstein's Nephew
Wittgenstein's Nephew

Author: Thomas Bernhard

Publisher: Vintage

Published: 2009-10-13

Total Pages: 114

ISBN-13: 1400077567

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It is 1967. In separate wings of a Viennese hospital, two men lie bedridden. The narrator, named Thomas Bernhard, is stricken with a lung ailment; his friend Paul, nephew of the celebrated philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, is suffering from one of his periodic bouts of madness. As their once-casual friendship quickens, these two eccentric men begin to discover in each other a possible antidote to their feelings of hopelessness and mortality—a spiritual symmetry forged by their shared passion for music, strange sense of humor, disgust for bourgeois Vienna, and great fear in the face of death. Part memoir, part fiction, Wittgenstein’s Nephew is both a meditation on the artist’s struggle to maintain a solid foothold in a world gone incomprehensibly askew, and a stunning—if not haunting—eulogy to a real-life friendship.