Ludwig Wittgenstein

Jacques Derrida

duck-rabbit

gestalt psychology

epistemology

metaphysics

fact

fishing

suicide

action figure

Christmas

Easter

Bertrand Russell

is like an atomic bomb, a tornado — people don't appreciate that.

He was like an atomic bomb, a tornado — people don't appreciate that.

, lacking any notion of contradiction, evacuated time from language, and thereby converted it into an ahistorical absolute.

It was Wittgenstein who evacuated time from language, and thereby converted it into an ahistorical absolute. He was able to do this because he lacked any notion of contradiction. The idea that linguistic change proceeds by an internal dialectic generated by incompatibilities between different rule-systems within it, which give rose to radically new concepts at determinate historical moments, was beyond his horizon. It presupposed an idea of language as neither a monist unity (Tractatus) nor a heteroclite plurality (Investigations), but as a complex totality, necessarily inhabited by different contradictions. It is striking that today, French philosophy is largely concentrated on the problem of the conditions of appearance of new concepts—precisely the problem that English philosophy is designed to avert. The work of Canguilhem and Bachelard is a close study of the historical emergence in the west of the scientific concepts which revolutionized biology and physics. Such an inquiry is a diametric opposite of the whole drift of Wittgenstein's philosophy, and indicates its parochialism. To emphasise the social nature of language, as he did, is not enough: language is a structure with a history, and it has a history because its contradictions and discrepancies themselves are determined by other levels of social practice. The magical harmony of language affirmed by English philosophy was itself merely the transcript of a historically becalmed society.

is, with Heidegger, responsible for the realization that the search for foundations (metaphysics) is misguided.

The philosophical tradition that goes from Descartes to Husserl, and indeed a large part of the philosophical tradition that goes back to Plato, involves a search for foundations: metaphysically certain foundations of knowledge, foundations of language and meaning, foundations of mathematics, foundations of morality, etc. […] Now, in the twentieth century, mostly under the influence of Wittgenstein and Heidegger, we have come to believe that this general search for these sorts of foundations is misguided.

is the first really independent thinker to engage in the union of logic and empiricism.

The union of logic and empiricism was solemnized in the first really independent philosophical writings of the first man to combine the requisite logical and philosophical expertise, in Our Knowledge of the External World (1914) and Philosophy of Logical Atomism (1918) of Bertrand Russell. …

is most similar to Pascal and Tolstoy among great men because he too could play with metaphysical intricacies as cleverly as Pascal with Hexagons or Tolstoy with emperors, but he too threw away this talent and debased himself before the peasants — in each case from an impulse of pride.

There are two great men in history with whom he [Wittgenstein] somewhat resembles. One was Pascal, other was Tolstoy. Pascal was a mathematician of genius, but abandoned mathematics for piety. Tolstoy sacrificed his genius as a writer to a kind of bogus humility which made him prefer peasants to educated men and Uncle Tom's Cabin to all other works of fiction. Wittgenstein, who could play with metaphysical intricacies as cleverly as Pascal with Hexagons or Tolstoy with emperors, threw away this talent and debased himself before the peasants — in each case from an impulse of pride. I admired Wittgenstein's Tractatus but not his later work, which seemed to me to involve an abnegation of his own best talent very similar to those of Pascal and Tolstoy.... [M]ental torments which made him and Pascal and Tolstoy pardonable in spite of their treachery to their own greatness.

is basically unscientific, for he rejected generalization. Scientific questions were of no great interest to him; they merely addressed the working of the natural world while he was interested in the way in which language may shape our reality.

Wittgenstein was basically unscientific. He knew that science was partly driven by a desire to generalize, and he rejected generalization. Scientific questions were of no great interest to him; they merely addressed the working of the natural world. Wittgenstein spent much of his later life examining the way in which language may shape our reality. This is not a subject that is irrelevant to science.

's basic program has to be rejected. Philosophy cannot be content to leave everything as it is ,for linguistic practice is not immune to, and may well stand in need of, revision.

Wittgenstein's basic programme thus had to be rejected: 'philosophy cannot be content to leave everything as it is,' for 'linguistic practice is not immune to, and may well stand in need of, revision.'

's notion that all language-games can find their warrant in culturally variable 'forms of life', was inevitably to afford a franchise for intellectual relativism.

Wittgenstein's eventual pragmatics—his notion that all language-games can find their warrant in culturally variable 'forms of life', as apprehended by Spengler—was inevitably to afford a franchise for intellectual relativism. Initially close to Wittgenstein's legacy, Dummett came through his prolonged work on Frege to a reaffirmation of the central importance of the assertoric dimension of language—the specificity and necessity of its claims to accurate report of the world—as against the performative functions so favoured by Austin, for whom there could be no critique of current usages. Wittgenstein's basic programme thus had to be rejected: 'philosophy cannot be content to leave everything as it is,' for 'linguistic practice is not immune to, and may well stand in need of, revision.'

Ludwig Wittgenstein, n.Definitions

Ludwig Wittgenstein