Band 9, Heft 1

Abstract: Even more than 60 years after his death the interest in Wittgenstein’s philosophy is still unbroken. Within the last two or three decades, however, we can observe an additional emphasis on the philosopher’s personality and his socio-cultural background. One way of explaining this development is the assumption that the work of an author, artist, or other intellectual cannot be separated from the person and his or her biographical setting. If this thesis is correct, one also has to take into account the lifeworld context within which any kind of intellectual oeuvre is ingrained. In this paper I try to give a very rough sketch of Wittgenstein’s Vienna and its socio-economic and cultural milieu around 1900.

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)

Abstract: In this article we perform a juxtaposition of Wittgenstein’s confession with the art of drama. Our aim is to transpose the private language argument criticizing the ostensive definition of internal objects (beetle in a box thought experiment) onto confession and the art of drama performance. The play (possibly called “game”) of the actor is not an expression of his soul interior, but an autonomous necessity in the most decisive meaning – which means: the only thing to be done. Correspondingly, confession doesn’t express any interior misery – it is an acting (the double sense of this word will be further developed), the only possible acting within these conditions, the only possible response to one’s condition – a condition of mutilation where human misery appears very distinctly. Confession creates neither a relation of power (as Foucault was demonstrating in his late writings) nor a form of emotional exhibitionism but a language game consisting on words judging oneself, immune to interpretation, explanation, and vanity coming from their expression. Irreplaceable words become the agent of salvation.1 This article is the effect of great encounters that helped me – a non-Wittgensteinian – to “see” Wittgenstein perhaps more than understand his philosophy. I should first address many thanks to Dr. Ilse Somavilla who welcomed me on the beautiful roof of the Brenner Archives in Innsbruck together with its director Prof. Ulrike Tanzer (Thank you!). It is through Ilse Somavilla’s writings and archive editing work that I could engage myself and follow her on a path of reading Wittgenstein with a sensibility for religion and art. I owe also a lot of thankfulness to Prof. Alois Pichler for long lasting, repeated hospitality in the Wittgenstein Archives at the Bergen University and great patience for my plans of developing research plans about Wittgenstein in the Polish Galicia. The ability to visit these two places, Norway and Austria, have left inside myself a Wittgensteinian imagery that creates the scenography of my philosophical attempt inside this article. My research would not be possible without receiving the scholarship of the Republic of Austria OEAD for which I also express my deep gratitude. I am also very grateful to Kasia Mala for her linguistic revision of my article. And finally, what triggered this Winn-gensteinian performance were unforgettable dinners with Maja, my Mother Agata, and my son Światopełek – to say they were inspiring is not enough…

Abstract: Wittgenstein remarks that “What belongs to a language game is a whole culture”, and that describing the language games in which the “words we call expressions of aesthetic judgement” are used implies describing “the culture of a period” (LA 1966: 8). Without aiming at a full reconstruction, the paper addresses the gradual emergence of the close conceptual connection between “language game” and “culture” in Wittgenstein’s manuscripts. The apparently obvious idea that “language game” and “form of life” (or “culture”) belong together or even coincide was originally missing. The paper picks out few episodes from Wittgenstein’s philosophical development. The first chapter shows that the topic of cultural diversity emerges in Wittgenstein’s reception of Oswald Spengler’s The Decline of the West , but still plays only a limited role in his first criticism of James Frazer’s The Golden Bough. The second chapter discusses the emergence of the term “language game” and establishes that Wittgenstein’s first language games do not yet imply something like an “anthropological view”. Real and imaginary “peoples” and “tribes” make their first appearance in remarks that ascribe a “primitive” arithmetic to them (chapter 3). Finally, with an eye to the possible influence of Sraffa and Malinowski, the fourth section shows how the Brown Book conceives translation as holistic cultural comparison.

Abstract: The main part of the philosophical activity of Charles Taylor may be characterized as philosophical anthropology. This philosophical anthropology is above all an attempt to overcome what he calls the epistemological construal i. e. a set of false anthropological beliefs spread in the modern western philosophy like: disengaged subject, the punctual self and social atomism. His critique of the anthropological beliefs draws, among other thinkers, heavily on Ludwig Wittgenstein's reflections on language and his social nature in Philosophical Investigations. To the disengaged subject and punctual self Taylor opposes the embodied subject, a human agent that is impossible to define without his language depending entirely on the “form of life”, an inescapable social context in which he is embedded. Thus Taylor emphasizes the basic connection between the self and the community, which is being falsely compromised by social atomism. This emphasis on the community, on the essential role of the link between individual and his social environment rank him among so called communitarians, the critics of the predominant individualistic liberal way of thinking. In his more recent works, especially A Secular Age Taylor reflects on the phenomenon of secularization of the modern West. Here the notion, inspired partially by Wittgenstein, of “background” – an implicit framework for the beliefs of an agent – plays an important role. The following text will show more in detail the most important Wittgensteinian inspirations in the philosophical reflection of Charles Taylor considering modern western culture.

Abstract: The German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk has taken a considerable interest in Wittgenstein’s concept of culture. The title of his book Du mußt dein Leben ändern , which is a quote from Rilke, also reflects one of Wittgenstein’s remarks, and Sloterdijk devotes a whole chapter to another quote, namely that “Culture is a monastic rule”, as Wittgenstein put it in 1948. Sloterdijk argues that Wittgenstein’s philosophy was, from the beginning, irreversibly formed by the secessionist movement in fin-de-siecle Vienna, and that he remained a cultural elitist at heart through his whole life. Thus Sloterdijk regards the concept of “language games” as ascetic instructions en miniature and reads Wittgenstein’s late philosophy as a veiled criticism of the so-called culture of his society, that is, “life forms” among ordinary language users who are blind to their own proclivities. I regard this interpretation as a gross misconception of Wittgenstein’s inclinations but also as a welcome opportunity to make some necessary distinctions between Wittgenstein’s views of culture in different phases of his philosophy.

Abstract: Wittgenstein’s finally published version of his Tractatus — his Logisch-Philosophische Abhandlung — covers material and thoughts from the years 1913 to 1922. What, deeply inspired by Frege’s works, started as collaboration with Russell in Cambridge soon developed into an independent and critical position. Main parts of Wittgenstein’s early logical system were developed during his military service in First World War, so e. g. the formulations of his famous picture theory of proposition arise during his stay in Krakau and his service on the ship “Goplana” in autumn 1914. We partly can follow this development of Wittgenstein’s ideas by reading his war time notebooks. The most important document of this time is manuscript MS 104, which contains the so-called Prototractatus , which normally is seen as an early, but fairly complete version of the Tractatus. But in fact the manuscript contains much more interesting information about the actual formation of the Tractatus itself, when it is read as a kind of log book of the ongoing composition procedure. The actual order of the propositions differs considerably from the published order and enables us to follow the step by step integration of new propositions into the growing structure of the Tractatus. The paper will give a chronological outline and an overview about the surviving pre-Tractarian sources and their setup, and it will argue for a reading of MS 104 allowing a detailed reconstruction of the textual composition as well as serving at the same time as a basis for an interpretation of the war time notebooks.

Abstract: In 1953 — two years after Wittgenstein’s death — the Philosophical Investigations as we know them today have been published in a bilingual (German-English) edition by Elizabeth Anscombe and Rush Rhees. This publication is divided into two parts – entitled “Part I” and “Part II”. In the revised 4 th edition by Peter Hacker and Joachim Schulte from 2009 the title “Part II” was deleted and renamed to “Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology — A Fragment”. This article presents some new research results about the genesis of the Philosophical Investigations in general and about “Part II” / “A Fragment” in particular. Furthermore, the so-called “C-Collection” arranged by Wittgenstein himself will be introduced in detail.

Abstract: In recent years, so-called “therapeutic” readings of the later Wittgenstein have centered on the claim that his treatment of questions involving “meaning” should not be seen as playing a foundational role for his approach of treating philosophical problems by clarifying the grammar of expressions. As they argue, the treatment of problems involving “meaning” should not be seen as playing a special role for this approach as such. Now in Philosophical Investigations §117, Wittgenstein is bringing in his criticism of the “atmosphere” conception of meaning – which he links directly to his approach of clarifying the grammar of expressions figuring in philosophical problems. Assuming the widespread view that what should be pitted against this “atmosphere” conception are remarks clarifying the grammar of “meaning”, the problem apparently confronting therapeutic readings here is that the clarification of the grammar of this particular word might thus appear to assume yet a special relevance for Wittgenstein’s clarificatory approach as a whole. My aim in this paper is to show that this dilemma is not a real one – by showing that there is actually a problem with the view that remarks clarifying the grammar of “meaning” could play a privileged role in debunking the type of misconception Wittgenstein introduces in PI § 117.

Abstract: In my 2003 article “The Philosophical Investigations’ Children” I offered a non-essentialist reading of the child in Wittgenstein’s work, arguing that such a reading challenged previous interpretations of the text by analysing an a priori reliance on a “real child” as part of a reliance on a “real world” somehow outside of textuality. I further argued that my anti-essentialist reading of the child is authorised by the Philosophical Investigations’ own arguments and positions and that interpretations of this text that maintain an investment in a materialist “real” (including the child as real or actual) fail fully to understand the nature of Wittgenstein’s interest in and definition of “language games” and an attendant engagement with issues of perspectives and their implications. In this article, I follow up on the current status of readings of the child in relation to Philosophical Investigations and the wider implications of those readings, including for ideas of the “pedagogy” of Philosophical Investigations itself, including demonstrating how both subsequent essentialist and non-essentialist readings of Philosophical Investigations continue to overlook implications of non-essentialist thinking about childhood.

Abstract: In this paper, I present Wittgenstein’s remarks on the structure of reason, drawing on the notions of “hinges” he developed in On Certainty. I then outline some of the unpalatable relativistic consequences that can be extracted by Wittgenstein’s epistemological views. Then, developing the similarities between Wittgenstein’s treatment of “hinges” and his views on metrology and religious beliefs, I aim to show that his remarks on the structure of reason, once correctly understood and developed, can help us to block rather than license relativistic conclusions. I argue that following Wittgenstein’s views on epistemology, we should be able to dismiss all the cases of apparent unsolvable disagreement between communities committed to radically different worldviews; this is so because, once seen in the light of his conception of the structure of reason, these disagreements are either solvable, as they are based on lack of knowledge and can thus be solved through education and training, or are mere pseudo-problems that stem from misguided comparisons between constitutively different language games and are thus the result of a misleading way of representing the nature and aim of our epistemic practices.