Wittgenstein and the Creativity of Language

Abstract

This volume is the first to focus on a particular complex of questions that have troubled Wittgenstein scholarship since its very beginnings. Today, readers continue to be struck by the creative style of this genius of 20th-century philosophy. At the same time, his writings provided the ground for several subsequent philosophical movements, such as logical positivism and so-called ordinary language philosophy, which have often been regarded as being inherently scientistic or conservative, or even in some sense anti-creative. The chapters of this volume set out to re-examine Wittgenstein's lasting intellectual influence in this respect. To this end, they present recent work on Wittgenstein's fundamental insights into the workings of human linguistic behaviour, its creative extensions and its philosophical capabilities, as well as Wittgenstein's own creative use of language—thus insightfully connecting issues from a variety of topics such as painting, politics, literature, poetry, literary theory, mathematics, philosophy of language, aesthetics and philosophical methodology.