Wittgenstein’s Ambivalent Attitude toward Science and Culture
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Ilse Somavilla
Abstract:
Wittgenstein’s ambivalent attitude toward science (and philosophy) can be observed as early as in the Tractatus – both in the preface and toward the end, e. g. on 6.52, 6.54 and also implicitly inherent in his final sentence “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.”
Thus, despite his analytical method and apparently high appreciation of science, he was aware of its limits – as well as of its dangers. This awareness becomes increasingly obvious in the course of the later years, among others marked by a shift from analysis to description and a turning to other ways of knowledge than scientific ones: Ways of showing instead of saying viz. verbal and scientific explanations. These alternatives he saw in literature, art and music.
However, even as concerns these fields, he sometimes holds a critical attitude toward culture, above all within the development of the civilization of his century. His resentment of the gradual moral and intellectual decline at the turn of the 20th century leads to a highly suspicious attitude toward any progress in the fields of culture and science, which he clearly expresses in his preface to the Philosophical Remarks, distancing himself from the so-called typical western scientist, whose spirit he considers “alien & uncongenial’ to his”. (Cf. CV 1998: 8e)
Bibliography
Baruch, Spinoza: Ethics. Treatise on The Emendation of the Intellect and Selected Letters, Seymour Feldman (ed.), transl. by Samuel Shirley, Indianapolis 1992.Search in Google Scholar
Kierkegaard, Søren: Kritik der Gegenwart, transl. by Theodor Haecker, 2nd edition, Innsbruck 1922.Search in Google Scholar
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© 2018 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Titelseiten
- Titelseiten
- Articles
- Hinweis für Leser / Note for Readers
- Wittgenstein’s Vienna around 1900
- Wittgenstein’s Ambivalent Attitude toward Science and Culture
- Wittgenstein and the Theatre of Confession
- “What belongs to a language game is a whole culture.”
- Lebensform and “socio-cultural background”
- Culture as a Monastic Rule
- Frontverläufe in Wittgensteins Prototractatus
- Recherchen zu „Teil II“ der Philosophischen Untersuchungen und zur von Wittgenstein erstellten „C-Sammlung“ im Nachlass
- Wittgenstein’s Criticism of the “Atmosphere” Conception of Meaning in PI § 117
- Revisiting the Philosophical Investigations’ Children
- On Certainty, Epistemic Incommensurability and Epistemic Relativism
- „Das Buch ist voller Leben …“
- Die Autorinnen und Autoren des Bandes / Authors of this Volume
- Bisher erschienene Bände / Previously published Volumes
Articles in the same Issue
- Titelseiten
- Titelseiten
- Articles
- Hinweis für Leser / Note for Readers
- Wittgenstein’s Vienna around 1900
- Wittgenstein’s Ambivalent Attitude toward Science and Culture
- Wittgenstein and the Theatre of Confession
- “What belongs to a language game is a whole culture.”
- Lebensform and “socio-cultural background”
- Culture as a Monastic Rule
- Frontverläufe in Wittgensteins Prototractatus
- Recherchen zu „Teil II“ der Philosophischen Untersuchungen und zur von Wittgenstein erstellten „C-Sammlung“ im Nachlass
- Wittgenstein’s Criticism of the “Atmosphere” Conception of Meaning in PI § 117
- Revisiting the Philosophical Investigations’ Children
- On Certainty, Epistemic Incommensurability and Epistemic Relativism
- „Das Buch ist voller Leben …“
- Die Autorinnen und Autoren des Bandes / Authors of this Volume
- Bisher erschienene Bände / Previously published Volumes
