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Wittgenstein im Kontext der analytischen Philosophie
Hacker (philosophy, Oxford U.) surveys Wittgenstein's impact on analytic philosophy from its beginning early in the century to its decline, and evaluates the major criticism of his later philosophy. He identifies Wittgenstein's main achievements and contrasts his ideas to those of Frege and Russell, the Vienna Circle, and leading Oxford figures, and in most detail, Quine. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.
- GenresPhilosophy
634 pages, Unknown Binding
First published September 1, 1996
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About the author
P.M.S. Hacker
50 books20 followersPeter Hacker was born in London in 1939. He read Philosophy, Politics and Economics at The Queen's College, Oxford from 1960-63, obtaining a Congratulatory First Class degree. He was elected to a graduate studentship at St Antony's College, Oxford, where he remained from 1963-65, writing a doctoral dissertation under the supervision of H.L.A. Hart on the subject of 'Rules and Duties'. In 1965 he was elected to a Junior Research Fellowship at Balliol College. In 1966 he completed his doctorate and was granted the D. Phil.
He became a Tutorial Fellow at St John's College in 1966, a post he held until his retirement in 2006, when he was appointed to an Emeritus Research Fellowship at St John's. He was College Librarian 1986-2006, and Keeper of the College Pictures 1986-1998. In 2010 he was elected to an Honorary Fellowship at The Queen's College, Oxford.
He was a visiting lecturer at Makere College, Uganda (1968), a visiting professor at Swarthmore College, Pa., U.S.A (1973), a visiting professor at University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, U.S.A. (1974), a Milton C. Scott Visiting Professor, Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario (1984). He was elected to a British Academy Research Readership in Humanities 1985-7. In 1986 he was again a visiting professor for a semester at Swarthmore College, Pa., U.S.A. He was elected to a Leverhulme Senior Research Fellowship (1991-4). From 1992 to 2010 he served as a member of the Rothschild Fellowships Academic Committee, Yad Hanadiv, Jerusalem. He was a visiting fellow at the Rockefeller Foundation at Bellagio, Italy in 2006. He was a visiting research fellow at the University of Bologna for a semester in 2009. In 2013 he was appointed Professor of philosophy at the University of Kent at Canterbury for three years.
He is an associate editor of Philosophical Investigations, and of Wittgenstein Studies. From 1997 to 2003 he was an associate editor, 20th century philosophers - Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. From 1998 to 2003 he was a Trustee of the Wittgenstein papers and Member of the Committee of Editors; since 2003 he has been a member and Secretary of the Advisory Committee of Wittgenstein Editors.
He became a Tutorial Fellow at St John's College in 1966, a post he held until his retirement in 2006, when he was appointed to an Emeritus Research Fellowship at St John's. He was College Librarian 1986-2006, and Keeper of the College Pictures 1986-1998. In 2010 he was elected to an Honorary Fellowship at The Queen's College, Oxford.
He was a visiting lecturer at Makere College, Uganda (1968), a visiting professor at Swarthmore College, Pa., U.S.A (1973), a visiting professor at University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, U.S.A. (1974), a Milton C. Scott Visiting Professor, Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario (1984). He was elected to a British Academy Research Readership in Humanities 1985-7. In 1986 he was again a visiting professor for a semester at Swarthmore College, Pa., U.S.A. He was elected to a Leverhulme Senior Research Fellowship (1991-4). From 1992 to 2010 he served as a member of the Rothschild Fellowships Academic Committee, Yad Hanadiv, Jerusalem. He was a visiting fellow at the Rockefeller Foundation at Bellagio, Italy in 2006. He was a visiting research fellow at the University of Bologna for a semester in 2009. In 2013 he was appointed Professor of philosophy at the University of Kent at Canterbury for three years.
He is an associate editor of Philosophical Investigations, and of Wittgenstein Studies. From 1997 to 2003 he was an associate editor, 20th century philosophers - Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. From 1998 to 2003 he was a Trustee of the Wittgenstein papers and Member of the Committee of Editors; since 2003 he has been a member and Secretary of the Advisory Committee of Wittgenstein Editors.
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October 22, 2024
AN EXCELLENT HISTORICAL ANALYSIS OF WITTGENSTEIN, AND HIS INFLUENCE
At the time this book was published in 1996, P.M.S. Hacker was a fellow at St. John's College, Oxford. He has also written books such as 'Wittgenstein: Meaning and Mind,' 'Insight and Illusion: Themes in the Philosophy of Wittgenstein,' 'The Intellectual Powers: A Study of Human Nature,' 'Human Nature: The Categorial Framework,' etc.
He wrote in the Preface, "In this book I have tried to paint a picture of the evolution of analytic philosophy in the twentieth century. From the beginning of the century and for the next seventy-five years, it was, in all its various transformations, the most distinctive style of philosophical thought of our times. To the extent that the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries can be characterized as above all the age of reason and enlightenment in philosophy, and the nineteenth century as the age of historicism and historical self-consciousness, then to that extent the twentieth century can be said to have been the age of language and logic.
"The task of exploring the philosophical consequences of the thought that man is above all a language-using creature fell to analytic philosophy. So too did that of clarifying the significance of the unprecedentedly powerful formal logic invented at the turn of the century, and of elucidating the relations between logical calculi, language and thought... Many figures played a role in its development, but none greater than that of Ludwig Wittgenstein."
He states, "The flaws in the Tractatus conception of logic lay in its metaphysical roots, in particular in the following points, all of which Wittgenstein was later to jettison...: (i) the conception of a general propositional form common to everything that can be called `a proposition'... (ii) the claim that bipolarity is the essence of the proposition; (iii) the contention that propositions are facts; (iv) the independence thesis for elementary propositions; (v) the claim that every proposition is a truth-function of elementary propositions; ... (vi) the insistence that the logical operators have no meaning... and that they are all replaceable by T/F notation... (vii) the thesis that the logical connectives and the propositions of logic are given by the essential nature of the proposition as such... His later philosophy cut his conception of logic and language free from the dogmatism ... and from metaphysical foundations... without necessitating reversion to the theses he had combatted in the Tractatus." (Pg. 35)
He points out, "His insight that sentences of metaphysics are pseudo-sentences devoid of cognitive content strengthened the conviction of members of the [Vienna] Circle, rendering it `more definite and radical.' Interestingly, Wittgenstein was scornful of this aspect of the Circle's ideology. On the one hand... there was nothing new about `abolishing metaphysics.' On the other hand, one may presume, what had seemed to him original in his anti-metaphysical remarks in the Tractatus was disregarded by the Circle." (Pg. 44)
He notes, "Wittgenstein, in the early 1930s was moving off in very different directions, repudiating much of what he had argued in the Tractatus and what he had propounded in 1929-1930 during his brief verificationist, constructionist phase. What sympathy he once had for reductive programmes of analysis evaporated as he demanded ever greater particularity, context-sensitivity and language-game relativity in his descriptions of the logic or `grammar' of segments of our language... and in his appreciation for the indefinite multiplicity of language-games." (Pg. 62)
He observes Bertrand Russell's "failure to grasp the overall nature of Wittgenstein's project... One deep misapprehension runs through Russell's introduction [to the Tractatus]: namely, that Wittgenstein was concerned with elaborating the conditions for a logically perfect language. This was no trivial misunderstanding, since the point of the book was to elaborate the logico-metaphysical conditions for any possible language. It was a treatise on the essential nature of any form of representation whatsoever---a metaphysics of symbolism.
"Almost equally grievous was Russell's failure to comprehend Wittgenstein's reasons for his doctrine of the limits of language, of what cannot be said in language but only shown. Russell disagreed with this doctrine (and indeed Wittgenstein was later to repudiate it), but the reasons for his disagreement showed that his understanding of the argument of the book was defective." (Pg. 69-70)
He says of the Philosophical Investigations, "Wittgenstein's originality manifested itself here with no less vividness than in the domains of philosophy of logic, language and mathematics. Here, too, he questioned the framework of the centuries-old debate, holding that philosophers do not place the question-marks deep enough down... What should be challenged in the inner/outer picture of the mind, the conception of the mental as a `world' accessible to its subject by introspection, the conception of introspection as an analogue of perception, the idea that the capacity to say how things are with us is a form of knowledge, the notion that human behavior is `bare bodily movement', the thought the voluntary action is bodily movement caused by acts of will, the supposition that explanation of human behavior in terms of reasons and motives is causal, and the ... picture of language which inclines us to think that psychological expressions are uniformly or typically names of mental objects, states, events and processes... Wittgenstein painstakingly dismantled the very structure of received thought about philosophical psychology." (Pg. 131)
He says, "The Philosophical investigations ploughed up the fields of philosophical thought afresh. On virtually every subject with which Wittgenstein engaged, he broke new ground. He was characteristically pessimistic about the impact of his work... His pessimism was in part justified, in part not. The `Investigations' was immediately hailed as a work of genius. It stimulated a flood of writing as philosophers struggled to come to grips with its ideas. It had a very great impact on analytical philosophy for the next quarter of a century. It put new themes on the philosophical agenda, and revitalized old ones. For a while, at least, it held a variety of philosophical diseases at bay---until they erupted again in new, virulent forms.
"But it was also widely misunderstood and misinterpreted. These misinterpretations often gave rise to further philosophical theories, defended in Wittgenstein's name but inimical to his work. And, as Wittgenstein knew, his philosophy was not in tune with the spirit of the late twentieth century... in the 1970s and 1980s the waters became increasingly muddied with the silt of misunderstood science a misconceived scientism." (Pg. 135-136)
He suggests, "Wittgenstein's philosophy of mathematics remains the least appreciated and, I venture to say, the most extensively misunderstood part of his philosophy." (Pg. 140) Later, he adds, "characterizing his philosophy of mathematics as an extremely implausible form of `full-blooded conventionism,' refutable by mere consideration of a few examples of elementary computation, is a deep misconstrual of his thought." (Pg. 264)
He concludes, "In the opening pages of this book, I suggested that the kinds of philosophy that displaced analytical philosophy in its post-war phase manifested the triumph not of the Tractatus, but of the SPIRIT of the Tractatus over the spirit of the Investigations." (Pg. 267)
This is an excellent book, that not only provides an excellent overview of Wittgenstein's philosophy, but of its influence upon modern philosophy---both for good, and even when misinterpreted.
At the time this book was published in 1996, P.M.S. Hacker was a fellow at St. John's College, Oxford. He has also written books such as 'Wittgenstein: Meaning and Mind,' 'Insight and Illusion: Themes in the Philosophy of Wittgenstein,' 'The Intellectual Powers: A Study of Human Nature,' 'Human Nature: The Categorial Framework,' etc.
He wrote in the Preface, "In this book I have tried to paint a picture of the evolution of analytic philosophy in the twentieth century. From the beginning of the century and for the next seventy-five years, it was, in all its various transformations, the most distinctive style of philosophical thought of our times. To the extent that the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries can be characterized as above all the age of reason and enlightenment in philosophy, and the nineteenth century as the age of historicism and historical self-consciousness, then to that extent the twentieth century can be said to have been the age of language and logic.
"The task of exploring the philosophical consequences of the thought that man is above all a language-using creature fell to analytic philosophy. So too did that of clarifying the significance of the unprecedentedly powerful formal logic invented at the turn of the century, and of elucidating the relations between logical calculi, language and thought... Many figures played a role in its development, but none greater than that of Ludwig Wittgenstein."
He states, "The flaws in the Tractatus conception of logic lay in its metaphysical roots, in particular in the following points, all of which Wittgenstein was later to jettison...: (i) the conception of a general propositional form common to everything that can be called `a proposition'... (ii) the claim that bipolarity is the essence of the proposition; (iii) the contention that propositions are facts; (iv) the independence thesis for elementary propositions; (v) the claim that every proposition is a truth-function of elementary propositions; ... (vi) the insistence that the logical operators have no meaning... and that they are all replaceable by T/F notation... (vii) the thesis that the logical connectives and the propositions of logic are given by the essential nature of the proposition as such... His later philosophy cut his conception of logic and language free from the dogmatism ... and from metaphysical foundations... without necessitating reversion to the theses he had combatted in the Tractatus." (Pg. 35)
He points out, "His insight that sentences of metaphysics are pseudo-sentences devoid of cognitive content strengthened the conviction of members of the [Vienna] Circle, rendering it `more definite and radical.' Interestingly, Wittgenstein was scornful of this aspect of the Circle's ideology. On the one hand... there was nothing new about `abolishing metaphysics.' On the other hand, one may presume, what had seemed to him original in his anti-metaphysical remarks in the Tractatus was disregarded by the Circle." (Pg. 44)
He notes, "Wittgenstein, in the early 1930s was moving off in very different directions, repudiating much of what he had argued in the Tractatus and what he had propounded in 1929-1930 during his brief verificationist, constructionist phase. What sympathy he once had for reductive programmes of analysis evaporated as he demanded ever greater particularity, context-sensitivity and language-game relativity in his descriptions of the logic or `grammar' of segments of our language... and in his appreciation for the indefinite multiplicity of language-games." (Pg. 62)
He observes Bertrand Russell's "failure to grasp the overall nature of Wittgenstein's project... One deep misapprehension runs through Russell's introduction [to the Tractatus]: namely, that Wittgenstein was concerned with elaborating the conditions for a logically perfect language. This was no trivial misunderstanding, since the point of the book was to elaborate the logico-metaphysical conditions for any possible language. It was a treatise on the essential nature of any form of representation whatsoever---a metaphysics of symbolism.
"Almost equally grievous was Russell's failure to comprehend Wittgenstein's reasons for his doctrine of the limits of language, of what cannot be said in language but only shown. Russell disagreed with this doctrine (and indeed Wittgenstein was later to repudiate it), but the reasons for his disagreement showed that his understanding of the argument of the book was defective." (Pg. 69-70)
He says of the Philosophical Investigations, "Wittgenstein's originality manifested itself here with no less vividness than in the domains of philosophy of logic, language and mathematics. Here, too, he questioned the framework of the centuries-old debate, holding that philosophers do not place the question-marks deep enough down... What should be challenged in the inner/outer picture of the mind, the conception of the mental as a `world' accessible to its subject by introspection, the conception of introspection as an analogue of perception, the idea that the capacity to say how things are with us is a form of knowledge, the notion that human behavior is `bare bodily movement', the thought the voluntary action is bodily movement caused by acts of will, the supposition that explanation of human behavior in terms of reasons and motives is causal, and the ... picture of language which inclines us to think that psychological expressions are uniformly or typically names of mental objects, states, events and processes... Wittgenstein painstakingly dismantled the very structure of received thought about philosophical psychology." (Pg. 131)
He says, "The Philosophical investigations ploughed up the fields of philosophical thought afresh. On virtually every subject with which Wittgenstein engaged, he broke new ground. He was characteristically pessimistic about the impact of his work... His pessimism was in part justified, in part not. The `Investigations' was immediately hailed as a work of genius. It stimulated a flood of writing as philosophers struggled to come to grips with its ideas. It had a very great impact on analytical philosophy for the next quarter of a century. It put new themes on the philosophical agenda, and revitalized old ones. For a while, at least, it held a variety of philosophical diseases at bay---until they erupted again in new, virulent forms.
"But it was also widely misunderstood and misinterpreted. These misinterpretations often gave rise to further philosophical theories, defended in Wittgenstein's name but inimical to his work. And, as Wittgenstein knew, his philosophy was not in tune with the spirit of the late twentieth century... in the 1970s and 1980s the waters became increasingly muddied with the silt of misunderstood science a misconceived scientism." (Pg. 135-136)
He suggests, "Wittgenstein's philosophy of mathematics remains the least appreciated and, I venture to say, the most extensively misunderstood part of his philosophy." (Pg. 140) Later, he adds, "characterizing his philosophy of mathematics as an extremely implausible form of `full-blooded conventionism,' refutable by mere consideration of a few examples of elementary computation, is a deep misconstrual of his thought." (Pg. 264)
He concludes, "In the opening pages of this book, I suggested that the kinds of philosophy that displaced analytical philosophy in its post-war phase manifested the triumph not of the Tractatus, but of the SPIRIT of the Tractatus over the spirit of the Investigations." (Pg. 267)
This is an excellent book, that not only provides an excellent overview of Wittgenstein's philosophy, but of its influence upon modern philosophy---both for good, and even when misinterpreted.
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