Wittgenstein's Method Research Articles

Wittgenstein on mathematics

AbstractThe mature Wittgenstein's groundbreaking analyses of sense and the logical must—and the powerful new method that made them possible—were the result of a multi‐year process of writing, re‐arranging, re‐writing and one large‐scale revision that eventually produced the Philosophical Investigations and RFM I. In contrast, his struggles during the same period with questions of arithmetic and higher mathematics remained largely in first‐draft form, and he drops the topic entirely after 1945. In this paper, I argue that Wittgenstein's new method can be applied to the cases of arithmetic and set theory and that the result is innovative, recognizably Wittgensteinian, and independently appealing. I conclude by acknowledging the reasons Wittgenstein himself might have had to resist applying his own proven method to the case of mathematics—particularly to set theory—and by indicating why I think those reasons are ultimately unsound.

David Cockburn Wittgenstein Human Beings and Conversation (London: Anthem Press, 2022)

David Cockburn Wittgenstein Human Beings and Conversation (London: Anthem Press, 2022)

A Different Order of Difficulty: Literature after Wittgenstein by Karen Zumhagen-Yekplé

Reviewed by: A Different Order of Difficulty: Literature after Wittgenstein by Karen Zumhagen-Yekplé Michael McGillen A Different Order of Difficulty: Literature after Wittgenstein. By Karen Zumhagen-Yekplé. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2020. Pp. 342. Paper $32.50. ISBN 978-0226677156. Karen Zumhagen-Yekplé's thought-provoking A Different Order of Difficulty: Literature after Wittgenstein joins a burgeoning body of scholarship on Ludwig Wittgenstein's relationship to modernism. A study at the boundary of literary studies and philosophy, it explores both the literary qualities of Wittgenstein's philosophy and the philosophical implications of modernist literature. With chapters on Franz Kafka, Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, and J.M. Coetzee, the book offers a comparative analysis of Wittgenstein and these figures based on the affinities of their aesthetic approaches and ethical outlooks—and not a study of influence. What Wittgenstein shares with modernist literature, as Zumhagen-Yekplé demonstrates in a series of incisive readings, is an interest in riddles, puzzles, and parables. The book shows that modernism constructs puzzles that entail a different order of difficulty: they are solved not by finding an answer, but by engaging with problems and perplexities that admit no easy solutions. It is here that we discover a yearning for self-transformation—and for spiritual redemption—that Zumhagen-Yekplé defines as the locus of the ethical. Our encounter with the difficulties of parables and puzzles is ethical because it requires that we engage imaginatively with the limits of our everyday experience. Zumhagen-Yekplé's reading of Wittgenstein follows in the footsteps of Cora Diamond and James Conant, who advocate for a "resolute" account of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921). In its penultimate proposition, Wittgenstein indicates that the true aim of the book's exploration of logic and language was to prompt the reader to recognize the senselessness of these propositions and thereby engage in ethical self-reflection about what it means to live rightly. He likens the metaphysical propositions of the Tractatus to a ladder that, once it has been ascended, can be jettisoned. For "resolute" readers of Wittgenstein, the senselessness of the book's metaphysical propositions is categorical and allows for no distinction between meaningful and meaningless nonsense. Accordingly, "resolute" readers distinguish between the "frame" of the Tractatus (its ethical aim) and its "body" (its logical propositions): on its surface, the Tractatus is a book about philosophical logic, but if one penetrates the surface, one discovers a deeper ethical aim that follows from the recognition of the senselessness of metaphysics. As readers of Wittgenstein, we may rightfully ask ourselves: to what end should we contend with the book's logical propositions if, in the end, they are to be discarded as nonsense? Yet this perplexity, Zumhagen-Yekplé argues, is central to Wittgenstein's method, whose insights lie in the process of thought itself rather than in its results. Indeed, A Different Order of Difficulty proves most compelling when it shows that the "tactical" use of difficulty (in George Steiner's terms) gives way to an "ontological" [End Page 414] difficulty—one that can never be resolved because it is implicit in the conditions of our existence. With reference to Wittgenstein's Lectures on Ethics, the book notes that it is possible to use nonsense creatively and to engage with nonsense through the imagination. This link between ethical self-transformation and the imagination places Wittgenstein in close proximity to modernist literature, whose fundamental concern, Zumhagen-Yekplé suggests, is to probe the limits of human possibility. Comparing the Tractatus with Kafka's "On Parables" (1931), she shows how each is concerned with bridging a gap: between the world of facts and ethical experience (Wittgenstein) and between everyday life and literature (Kafka). Both Kafka and Wittgenstein present their readers with parables that do not communicate a lesson didactically, but rather subtly prompt their readers to change their way of seeing the world. In a chapter on Woolf's To the Lighthouse (1927), by contrast, Zumhagen- Yekplé shows how modernism confronts not only interpretative difficulties but also what Diamond calls the "difficulty of reality" in experiences of suffering, trauma, and death. These difficulties punctuate Woolf's novel, most palpably in the truncated experiences of loss in "Time Passes," and...

Метод Вітґенштайна і сучасні студії з історії аналітичної філософії. Kuusela, O. (2019). Wittgenstein on Logic as the Method of Philosophy. Re-examining the Roots and Development of Analytic Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford UP.

Метод Вітґенштайна і сучасні студії з історії аналітичної філософії. Kuusela, O. (2019). Wittgenstein on Logic as the Method of Philosophy. Re-examining the Roots and Development of Analytic Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford UP.

Aesthetic Puzzlements: Jonas Mekas's Diary Films and Ludwig Wittgenstein

In this article, I argue that by considering Ludwig Wittgenstein's methods, we can better understand and appreciate Jonas Mekas's diary films. Based on Wittgenstein's notion of “aesthetic puzzlement”, I identify the main confusions encountered by the viewer upon watching Mekas's films, such as: 1) fragmentation; 2) persistent repetition; and 3) the importance placed on the everyday. I discuss three films – Walden (1969), Lost Lost Lost (1976), and As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty (2000) – and demonstrate that the aesthetic puzzlements within them may be dissolved by looking at the format of Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations (1953). Mekas's lifelong interest in filming the most mundane and domestic scenes can be understood as a puzzlement in itself: why not just admire the ordinary whilst living in it? Wittgenstein's thought experiment in Culture and Value helps us understand the aesthetic puzzlement of Mekas's interest in filming, remembering and presenting an extensive array of everyday activities, and also explains why the viewer can find the most mundane and domestic activities in his films remarkable. Additionally, I discuss how Mekas's diary films may be regarded as coming close to Wittgenstein's aesthetic ideal of art as being able to represent “life itself”. I aim to show how Mekas's cinematic practice places extreme importance on ordinary acts and offers a mode of thinking which echoes Wittgenstein's own views on philosophy. I conclude with a discussion of “nomadism”, a notion that elucidates the peculiar form of the works of both Wittgenstein and Mekas.

Wittgenstein and the unity of good

AbstractThis paper discusses the problem of the unity of moral good, concerning the kind of unity that moral good or the concept thereof constitutes. In particular, I am concerned with how Wittgenstein's identification of various complex modes of conceptual unity, and his introduction of a methodology of clarification for dealing with such complex concepts, can help with the problem of unity, as it rises from the moral philosophical tradition. Relating to this I also address the disputed question, whether Wittgenstein regards good as a family‐resemblance concept, and make an attempt to characterize family‐resemblance concepts generally by way of their similarities and differences from certain other complex modes of conceptual unity. I argue that whilst Wittgenstein does regard good as a family‐resemblance concept, in the Philosophical Investigations he seeks to make a more general methodological point. I conclude with a suggestion of how Wittgenstein's methodological points can help us to put into a broader perspective famous criticisms of the moral philosophical tradition by Michael Stocker and Bernard Williams, and how Wittgenstein's methods more generally can help to address the problem of the unity of good. This illustrates one way in which Wittgensteinian methods can help resolve disputes in moral philosophy, where the main approaches, Aristotelian, Kantian and utilitarian theories, seem to be locked in a stalemate. As I argue, this situation has to do with their assumptions about the unity of moral good. The response isn't to reject those theories, however, but to re‐interpret them in a way consistent with the Wittgensteinian methodology.

IS WITTGENSTEIN PRESENTING AREDUCTIO AD ABSURDUMARGUMENT IN THE ‘PRIVATE LANGUAGE’ SECTIONS OFPHILOSOPHICAL INVESTIGATIONS§§ 243–315 ?

The ‘Private Language’ sections of the Philosophical Investigations (Wittgenstein: 1958) §§ 243–315 serve to undermine the idea that our ordinary felt sensations, e.g., of heat, or cold, or pain, together with our experienced impressions of colour or of sound, are ‘private’ or ‘inner’ objects, where an object mirrors in the mental realm what we associate with that of the physical. This paper explores Wittgenstein's method in these sections, together with the work of several of his commentators who agree with his ‘therapeutic’ approach to the denial of a possible private language. More significantly, however, it discovers a paradox in the fact that a number of philosophers who claim that his ‘Argument Against Private Language’ is unsuccessful point in reaching this conclusion to the very features concerning first-person sensation ascription that Wittgenstein employs to reveal that our ordinary sensations are not ‘private’ to us in that sense identified in § 243, which talks of ‘a language used to refer to what only its speaker can know’, viz, ‘his immediate private sensations’. This helps to explain why there is still no general agreement on the significance of §§ 243–315.

Wittgenstein and the study of politics

Introduction 1. Therapy, Scepticism, and Leaving the World Alone 2. The Primacy of Training in a Shared Form of Life 3. Wittgenstein's Method of Perspicuous Representation 4. Charles Taylor's Wittgensteinian Aspects 5. Quentin Skinner: Wittgenstein and the Historical Approach to Political Thought 6. James Tully's Aspectival Approach to the Study of Politics

Wittgenstein for adolescents? Post-foundational epistemology in high school philosophy

Drawing on experience teaching secondary philosophy students, I investigate meaningful engagement with Wittgenstein in a Grade 12 epistemology unit. The premise is that without some introduction to landmark philosophers of the early twentieth century, students are left out of many contemporary philosophical conversations: linguistic idealism or relativism, and nominalism versus realism. Wanting to share with students Foucault, Rorty, and Hacking, I need expedient avenues of approach. Using Wittgenstein's methods I offer practical, ‘shallow grounds’ for an eclectic syllabus conveying post-foundational epistemology, justifying Wittgenstein's inclusion in a textbook written for diverse teenagers. Acknowledging teens’ marginality, I draw on Hekman and Scheman's appropriation of Wittgenstein to advance feminist critiques of enthralling traps in [masculinist] language: exploring nature/nurture boundaries (ferals, cyborgs, and ‘gender performativity’) toward combating discrimination in schools. Heeding Cavell, I aver easy answers, ‘This is just what I do,’ taking responsibility for curricular choices and accounting for pedagogical moves.

Escaping the flybottle: solipsism and method in Wittgenstein's Philosophical Remarks

The paper supports a dialectical interpretation of Wittgenstein's method focusing on the analysis of the conditions of experience presented in his Philosophical Remarks. By means of a close reading of some key passages dealing with solipsism I will try to lay bare their self-subverting character: the fact that they amount to miniature dialectical exercises offering specific directions to pass from particular pieces of disguised nonsense to corresponding pieces of patent nonsense. Yet, in order to follow those directions one needs to allow oneself to become simultaneously tempted by and suspicious of their all-too-evident "metaphysical tone" - a tone which, as we shall see, is particularly manifest in those claims purporting to state what can or cannot be the case, and, still more particularly, those purporting to state what can or cannot be done in language or thought, thus leading to the view that there are some (determinate) things which are ineffable or unthinkable. I conclude by suggesting that in writing those remarks Wittgenstein was still moved by an ethical project, which gets conspicuously displayed in these reiterations of his attempts to cure the readers (and himself) from some of the temptations expressed by solipsism.

The Everyday's Fabulous Beyond: Nonsense, Parable, and the Ethics of the Literary in Kafka and Wittgenstein

This essay takes up the significance of Wittgenstein's philosophy for our understanding of literature (and vice versa) through a comparative reading of the stakes and aims of Kafka's and Wittgenstein's respective circa 1922 puzzle texts “Von den Gleichnissen” (“On Parables”) and the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. The essay builds upon the so-called resolute program of Wittgenstein interpretation developed by Cora Diamond, James Conant, and others, bringing its insights to bear on Kafka's perplexing work. The essay explores the ethical weight of these two writers' investment in the philosophical depth of riddles, irony, and parabolic and nonsensical expression as unorthodox modes of indirect instruction about ordinary language and world, the yearning for transcendence, and the failure to achieve it. Both demanding works deal with the ethical difference between “getting” the philosophical import of a story or joke and not getting it in the context of an examination of the relationship (or lack thereof) between the activities and difficulties of everyday life, on the one hand, and those of literary expression and/or spiritual or philosophical teaching, on the other. Both strive to open readers to experience — as revealed through everyday language — by leading us beyond the dichotomy of facticity and transcendence, away from the urge to transcend the limits of language, and toward a recognition of the possibility of seeing our ordinary dealing with things as presenting a face of significance that is at once linguistically meaningful and ethically valuable. The central aim of this discussion of Wittgenstein's Tractatus and “Lecture on Ethics” alongside Kafka's parable is to examine the ways in which Wittgenstein's philosophical outlook, writing, and method (shaped by his general attraction to the Book and book writing as well as by his reading of certain works of literature) are deeply relevant to literary studies, and particularly to our understanding of literary modernism.

A “RESOLUTE” LATER WITTGENSTEIN?

Abstract: “Resolute readings” initially started life as a radical new approach to Wittgenstein's early philosophy, but are now starting to take root as a way of interpreting the later writings as well—a trend exemplified by Stephen Mulhall's Wittgenstein's Private Language (2007) as well as by Phil Hutchinson's “What's the Point of Elucidation?” (2007) and Rom Harré's “Grammatical Therapy and the Third Wittgenstein” (2008). The present article shows that there are neither good philosophical nor compelling exegetical grounds for accepting a resolute reading of the later Wittgenstein's work. It is possible to make sense of Wittgenstein's philosophical method without either ascribing to him an incoherent conception of “substantial nonsense” or espousing the resolute readers' preferred option of nonsense austerity. If the interpretation here is correct, it allows us to recognize Wittgenstein's radical break with the philosophical tradition without having to characterize his achievements in purely therapeutic fashion.

Mensurable Confusion?: Wittgenstein's Meter-Stick and Beyond

Mensurable Confusion?Wittgenstein's Meter-Stick and Beyond Kelly Dean Jolley I certainly find it easier to recognize the deep continuities within Wittgenstein's thought, than the real nature of the contrasts: one only comes to recognize these for what they are after prolonged engagement with the two works. —R. M. White, Understanding Wittgenstein 23 Introduction Heather Gert has offered a reading of Investigations §§ 46-50. Her attention devolves primarily on the notorious standard meter paragraph of § 50. Important to her reading is her conviction about what it is from the Tractatus that is being criticized and about how it is being criticized. I believe Gert's reading of the passage is mistaken. Gert fails to get fully into focus what is happening in the distance, in the Tractatus, and she fails to get into focus what is happening nearby, in Investigations §§ 46-50. Her failures to get these happenings into focus seem to be the result, in part, of a misunderstanding of Wittgenstein's philosophical method, of his metaphilosophical remarks. Her failures also seem to be the result, in part, of a prephilosophical conviction about the standard meter, of what is supposedly obviously true of it. My article runs beyond Gert's. I say this by way of warning, but not (much) by way of apology. My interest in Gert's article is, so to speak, larger than Gert's article itself. While Gert's article is, in a way, the subject of this article, I am primarily interested in her article as exhibitory of a number of confusions about Wittgenstein's philosophizing. So, I often widen my focus, examining more than Gert's article itself. This means that I may, on occasion, give Gert's minutiae less than the central place in what I say, and that I may, again on occasion, attribute a generic view to Gert without sorting out in full detail the specific view she holds. Of course, I intend my attributions of a generic view to be correct. Since Gert expends a lot of energy providing [End Page 105] and talking about readings of Wittgenstein, I expend a lot of energy on those tasks too. My changes of focus slow the development of the argument, but they are meant ultimately to deepen it.1 Gert opposes what she calls "the received interpretation" of the meter-stick passage. I oppose her opposition; I support the received interpretation—at least, I support a version of it. I start with Gert's reading of the focal passage, the second paragraph of § 50. I then move, in part at Gert's prodding, into a discussion of Tractarian ultimate elements. Next, I look more closely at Gert's reasons for reading the meter-stick passage as she does, and I look more carefully at her reading of the remarks leading up to the focal passage, §§ 46-49, especially § 48. After more discussion of § 50, I fasten on Gert's way of understanding language-games, and I show both that her way of understanding them generally is mistaken, and that her mistake is crucial to the way that she reads § 50. I also diagnose her mistake. I then marshal forces both from the Tractatus and the Investigations, and I use them to attack further Gert's reading of the focal passage. I turn at that point to the task of giving my specific version of the received interpretation. The final section of the article I devote to discussing Wittgenstein's method and Gert's misunderstanding of it. Gert Begins Her Reading Gert begins her reading by reminding her readers of some of the difficulties of reading the Investigations. She points out that, throughout the remarks that compose the book, Wittgenstein speaks in voices—sometimes his own, sometimes that of a philosophical alter-ego. But these are not all Wittgenstein's voices. There is another voice, Wittgenstein's, yet not Wittgenstein's—a voice in which Wittgenstein quesserts (to twist Richard Grandy's handy term). Passages quesserted are passages in which Wittgenstein rephrases a view he is about to attack, or in which he describes a problematic view in terms meant to highlight, or help highlight, its problems. Having told us...

IS THERE A TENSION IN WITTGENSTEIN'S PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION?

This paper responds to Severin Schroeder's recent charge that Wittgenstein's philosophy of religion contains an ‘unresolved tension’ between three propositions, namely: (1) ‘As a hypothesis, God's existence (&c) is extremely implausible’; (2) ‘Christian faith is not unreasonable’; and (3) ‘Christian faith does involve belief in God's existence (&c)’. I argue as follows: that the first of these propositions has no place in Wittgenstein's thinking on religion; that the second is ill‐phrased and should be re‐worded as the proposition that ‘Christian faith is neither unreasonable nor reasonable’; and that the third proposition (contrary to what Schroeder seems to assume) tells us nothing about the nature of the objects of religious belief. It follows from my argument that Schroeder has not exposed a tension in Wittgenstein's thoughts on religion. I end with some positive remarks about Wittgenstein's method.

The Complexity of Wittgenstein's Methods

AbstractIn claiming to draw out an inconsistency between Wittgenstein's declarations on method and his actual practice, John Cook argues that Wittgenstein retained a radical distinction between material things (bricks) and immaterial things (spooks). I argue that on the contrary Wittgenstein showed in detail how this dichotomy is to be rejected in favour of a spectrum of more or less ‘minded' beings, at one pole of which are persons as animated bodies. Discussing the grammar of ‘know', Cook claims that Wittgenstein depended on philosophers' distinctions rather than a surview of vernacular uses. I argue that it was the expression/description distinction that Wittgenstein used to make sense of the grammar of ‘know'.

Koan Zen and Wittgenstein's Only Correct Method in Philosophy

Koan Zen is a philosophical practice that bears a strong family resemblance to Wittgenstein's approach to philosophy. In this paper I hope to show that this resemblance is especially evident when we compare the Zen method of koan with Wittgenstein's suggestion, towards the end of his Tractatus, about what would constitute the only correct method in philosophy. Both koan Zen and Wittgenstein's method set limits to the reach of philosophical discourse. Each rules metaphysical speculation out of bounds. Neither, however, represents a rejection of the metaphysical. Where Wittgenstein enjoins silence in the face of the unsayable, a silence that allows the metaphysical to show itself, koan Zen calls for concrete demonstrations of that which cannot be captured in rational discourse. I attempt to illustrate this through discussion of a number of koans that serve as reminders that the philosopher (and Zen master) should say nothing except what can be said.

Nonsense on Stilts? Wittgenstein, Ethics, and the Lives of Animals

Wittgenstein is often invoked in philosophical disputes over the ethical justifiability of our treatment of animals. Many protagonists believe that Wittgenstein's philosophy points to a quantum difference between human and animal nature that arises out of humans' linguistic capacity. For this reason – its alleged anthropocentrism – animal liberationists tend to dismiss Wittgenstein's philosophy, whereas, for the same reason, anti‐liberationists tend to embrace it. I endorse liberationist moral claims, but think that many on both sides of the dispute fail to grasp the import of Wittgenstein's philosophy. My argument proceeds through close engagement with Michael Leahy's Against Liberation, which makes extensive use of Wittgenstein's ‘notion of language‐games’ as an ‘essential methodological aid’ in its defence and justification of the moral status quo. Leahy's understanding and application of that method exemplifies an entrenched interpretative stance in the wider Wittgensteinian scholarship which I seek to counter. This enables me to show that far from entailing conservatism, as some of his critics and followers contend, Wittgenstein's philosophical method is just as conducive to radical moral and political critique as it is to any other normative position.

… Perspicuous Representation and the Logic of

In what follows, I will concentrate on the type of temporality which structures Wittgenstein's method of a or of a (). I will argue that the temporal order which applies to (giving) a perspicuous representation is best to be described as retroactivity, deferred action or afterwardness (), a concept which calls into question the ordinary conception of time as a linear and irreversible process as well as of a clear break between present and past. First, I will turn to Sigmund Freud and the way he developed the concept of or retroactivity in some of his case-studies. The basic idea here is that the meaning or content of a past experience is constituted by repeating it in a or way. I will then argue that the relation between a and what is made perspicuous is best interpreted as a relation of . This interpretation also accounts for the involvement of the subject in the object made perspicuous—as it is stressed by Wittgenstein and illustrated by his discursive method.

The Facets of Law: Appropriating Wittgenstein's Methods

In response to arguments made by Professors Levvis, Patterson and Eisele, I attempt to clarify a few of the main themes of my book, Law's Premises, Law's Promise. Professor Levvis’ paper gives me the opportunity to contrast the status of propositions held true by disputants in legal debate with propositions held fast as bedrock convictions about the nature of reality and experience. Professor Patterson's arguments allow me to show how legal decision making as a deliberative or interpretative practice rests, as all practices do, on a foundation of shared understanding (of mutually “knowing one's way about”). And Professor Eisele's remarks stimulate a discussion of the relation of conceptual analysis and the analysis of practices.

Review: Wittgenstein's Method: Neglected Aspects

Review: Wittgenstein's Method: Neglected Aspects