Reading Wittgenstein with Anscombe, Going on to Ethics by Cora Diamond

Abstract

Reviewed by: Reading Wittgenstein with Anscombe, Going on to Ethics by Cora Diamond Jude P. Dougherty DIAMOND, Cora. Reading Wittgenstein with Anscombe, Going on to Ethics. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2019. 344 pp. Cloth, $39.95 This book is written by a professor of philosophy for like-minded colleagues. It is a technical treatise with implications for, as the subtitle suggests, a broader but highly educated public. It addresses a once popular topic whose relevance seems to have dimmed as the decades have rolled by. The focus of Professor Diamond's treatise is a series of essays by Ludwig Wittgenstein translated by Elizabeth Anscombe and published in 1958 under the title Tractatus. The translation cemented the growing reputation of Ludwig Wittgenstein, whose previous essays, notably "Remarks on the Foundation of Mathematics," first brought him international attention. Ludwig Wittgenstein (1883–1951), born in Vienna, was an Austrian citizen noted for his work in logic, mathematics, and the philosophy of language. His work attracted attention in Britain and led to an appointment at Cambridge University that he held from 1929 until 1947. Given that he wrote in German, he had to be translated for a larger English-speaking public. He did not write much. During his lifetime he published only one major work, Tractatus Logico Phiosophicus (1921). Anscombe, who undertook the work of translating the 1921 book, had previously gained attention herself by her Modern Moral Philosophy (1958). That was followed by An Introduction to the Tractatus (1963). So much for background. Cora Diamond in the present book admirably recreates a period of philosophy in the last quarter of the twentieth century by focusing on the dialogue that took place in British analytic circles, a dialogue that included participants such as Bertrand Russell, Gottlob Frege, and P. F. Strawson. The topics of discussion were many: truth conditions, contingent propositions, mathematical propositions, how words present reality, concepts, and other tools for thought and communication, and the list [End Page 788] could go on. The favored periodicals of the day were Philosophy, The Philosophical Quarterly, and The Proceeding of the Aristotelian Society. Diamond notes that when Anscombe was writing her introduction, the Tractatus was generally read as a form of British empiricism, in a class with Russell's atomism. Anscombe, to the contrary, held that the Tractatus should not be read as the work of a latter-day Hume. She took the main thesis of the Tractatus to be that propositions (spoken, written, or merely thought) are pictures representing reality. Pictures and truth functions, she argued, are one and the same. Anscombe's introduction to Wittgenstein's Tractatus, generally acclaimed, had one flaw. It was so demanding that one could hardly recommend it to students. In her own study Diamond opens with a section entitled "Finding One's Way into the Tractatus." She divides her book into three parts: "Wittgenstein, Anscombe and the Activity of Philosophy," "Wittgenstein, Anscombe and What Can Only be True," and "Going on to Think About Ethics." A final chapter is devoted to a discussion between Bernard Williams and David Wiggens on the morality of slavery as found in the essays they wrote on "truth in ethics," and published in the journal Ratio in 1995. Given that the University of Virginia was founded by Thomas Jefferson, who like George Washington, James Madison, and other prominent Virginians owned slaves, the topic was bound to come up. The exchange between Williams and Wiggens is worth revisiting. A brief review cannot recapitulate the many complex arguments and exchanges advanced throughout this volume. The most that can be done here is to call attention to the book. It may not be out of place to say that the book may also be read as informative about the German sources of British analytic philosophy. Jude P. Dougherty The Catholic University of America Copyright © 2019 The Review of Metaphysics