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معماری زبان و ذهن در فلسفهٔ ویتگنشتاین
Preface
Abbreviations in References to Works by Wittgenstein
Biographical Sketch of Wittgenstein's Philosophy
The Legacy of Frege & Russell
The Criticism of Principia
The Picture Theory of the Proposition
The Metaphysics of Logical Atomism
The Dismantling of Logical Atomism
Anticipation, Intentionality & Verification
Understanding, Thinking & Meaning
Language-Games
Private Languages
On Scepticism & Certainty
The Continuity of Wittgenstein's Philosophy
Suggestions for Further Reading
Index
Abbreviations in References to Works by Wittgenstein
Biographical Sketch of Wittgenstein's Philosophy
The Legacy of Frege & Russell
The Criticism of Principia
The Picture Theory of the Proposition
The Metaphysics of Logical Atomism
The Dismantling of Logical Atomism
Anticipation, Intentionality & Verification
Understanding, Thinking & Meaning
Language-Games
Private Languages
On Scepticism & Certainty
The Continuity of Wittgenstein's Philosophy
Suggestions for Further Reading
Index
343 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1973
24 people are currently reading
387 people want to read
About the author
Anthony Kenny
177 books115 followersSir Anthony Kenny is an English philosopher whose interests lie in the philosophy of mind, ancient and scholastic philosophy, the philosophy of Wittgenstein, and the philosophy of religion.
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
March 4, 2019
Anthony Kenny made a difficult subject not just painless but actually a pleasure to read! My favourite chapter was Private Languages
January 19, 2016
"The philosopher is not a citizen of any community of ideas. That is what makes him a philosopher."--Ludwig Wittgenstein.
"Philosophy gives no pictures of reality and can neither confirm nor confute scientific investigations."--LW.
"Philosophy teaches us the logical form of propositions: that is its fundamental task."--LW.
During his military service, LW wrote his philosophical thoughts into notebooks which he carried in his rucksack. Most of them were destroyed at his orders in 1950, but three survived and have been published posthumously. Out of those notes grew the only philosophical book he published in his lifetime, the Tractatus. He composed it by selecting the best thoughts out of his notebooks and reordering and numbering them until he was satisfied with their sequence. One of his preliminary orderings has been discovered and published under the title Prototractatus.
He sent the Tractatus from prison camp to Russell through the good offices of Keynes. Those two men discussed the manuscript line by line in Holland in 1919.
Some of LW's favorite films were Westerns, just as some of his favorite books were detective novels. He thought the philosophical journal Mind was filled "with all its impotence and bankruptcy."
His notes from classes from 1933-34 circulated in copies and became known as The Blue Book. Another, more carefully prepared manuscript dictated the following year was known as The Brown Book. These notes were composed in English, unlike his other works. They were published posthumously and are the easiest to read.
LW almost lived in the Soviet Union. The growing tyranny of Stalin probably prevented that.
He believed university life led to "hysterical artificiality." He described a professor's life as "a living death." He told a PhD graduate he would be expected to "cheat" himself and his students. He resigned as a professor after only two years.
LW said we are tempted to explain a word like "pain" as being acquired by our own private, incommunicable sensation. This temptation must be resisted. No word can acquire meaning in this way.
A proposition is like a sentence. But not a command or a question. Some sentences are made up of two propositions. A proposition is an indicative sentence capable of standing on its own. A different language is a different proposition. So we must add that a proposition is a sentence considered with respect to its meaning and not (say) with respect to its sound when spoken or appearance on the page. Propositions express thoughts.
LW on the Tractatus: 'The aim of this book is to set a limit to thought--or rather, not to thought, but to the expression of thoughts' (TLP Preface). LW aimed to show what is thinkable by by showing what is sayable, to mark the limits by setting the limits of language.
Frege spoke of the Morning Star and the Evening Star. Both refer to Venus, but there are differences. So Frege suggested a distinction between two sorts of meaning: sense and reference. The two expressions have a different sense, but they both refer to Venus. Frege seemed to have believed that all expressions had both a sense and reference. Wittgenstein disagreed by saying the name 'Socrates' had both a sense and a reference. Russell agreed and was admired by LW for this. Russell said a phrase like the 'teacher of Plato' was not a name at all. Russell called it the theory of definite descriptions.
LW's theme was that logic must take care of itself. He rejected a philosophy of logic as Russell and Frege conceived of it. 'Everything which is possible in logic is also permitted' (TLP 5.473).
LW counts as pictures paintings, drawings, photographs, maps, sculptures, musical scores, gramaphone records, and other representations. Any representation can be an accurate or inaccurate representation: it can give a true or false picture of what it represents. Two things need to be considered: 1. what it is a representation of; 2. whether it represents what it represents accurately or inaccurately.
Spacial representation is important to accuracy. That is itself a fact. This led LW to say that a picture is itself a fact.
There is no a priori truth. As LW said, 'In order for a proposition to be capable of being true it must also be capable of being false' (NB 55). In other words, all genuine propositions are contingent propositions.
To each pair of contradictory propositions, there corresponds one and only one fact: the fact which makes one of them true and the other false. The totality of such facts is the world (TLP 1.1). Facts may be positive or negative: a positive fact is the existence of a state of affairs; a negative fact is the non-existene of a state of affairs (TLP 2.06). A state of affairs is a combination of objects or things. An object is essentially a possible constituent of a state of affairs (TLP 2.011), and its possibility of occurring in combination with other objects in states of affairs is its nature (TLP 2.0123), its internal properties (TLP 2.1231), and its form (TLP 2.0141). Since every object contains within its nature all the possibilities for its combination with other objects, if any object is given, then all objects are given (TLP 5.524), and if all objects are given then all possible states of affairs are given (TLP 2.0124).
Objects combine into states of affairs, in which they stand in a determinate relation to one another 'like the links of a chain' (TLP 2.023). States of affairs, we are told, are independent of one another (TLP 2.061); from the existence or non-existence of another. Since facts are the existence and non-existence of states of affairs, it follows that facts too are independent of each other (TLP 1.21). The totality of facts, of reality, is the world.
'My propositions serve as elucidations in the following way: anyone who understands me eventually recognzies them as nonsensical, when he has used them--as steps--to climb up beyond them. (He must, so to speak, throw away the ladder after he has climbed up it.) He must transcend these propositions and then he will see the world aright' (TLP 6.54).
'The Real, though it is an in itself, must also be able to become a for myself'--and uses single terms with a variety of different meanings. We must replace it by a symbolism which gives a clear picture of the logical structure, excludes pseudopropositions and uses its terms unambiguously.
Redness and blueness represent an impossible combination--an attempt, as it were, to put both redness and blueness where there is only room for one of them. Can anyone see both red and blue at the same time? Once again, though, the answer must come from science.
'. . . it is possible to invent words; but I cannot think any thoughts to go with them.' (WWK 68)
Wittgenstein believes that the definitive verification of a hypothesis is neither possible nor necessary.
On verificationism:
1. 'I am in pain' is a proposition which I verify by inner observation of myself.
2. 'He is in pain' says the same thing about him as 'I am in pain' says about me.
3. Therefore 'He is in pain' is a proposition which is verified by inner observation of him. (1 and 2)
4. I cannot inwardly observe him: I cannot stand to his pain in the relation that he stands to it, or that I stand to mine.
5. Therefore 'He is in pain' cannot be verified. (3 and 4)
6. Therefore 'I am in pain' cannot be verified. (2 and 5)
7. Therefore 'I am in pain' is meaningless. (6 and the principle of verification)
LW was fond of telling a joke about a French politician who said that it was a characteristic of the French language that in it words occur in the order in which one thinks of them. Calling this a joke means he thought there was something wrong in treating thought as an articulate process like saying.
Thoughts go through our heads like lightning. The sentence 'Think before you speak' is nonsense. No one thinks before they speak. Do they? Try it. Don't speak unless you consider the words carefully in your mind along with other possibilities. What then is the relation between thought and language? Can one think without speaking?
It has been said that animals cannot think because they cannot speak. But my kitty understands me when I say to her 'Do you want to eat?' She gets all mushy and pushes her paws against me and I get all mushy because I love her to freaking pieces. Yes I do. Yes I do. . . . ahem . . . Sometimes she answers me with a meow of 'Yes'.
So is thought possible without language? I think so. Is language possible without thought? I think so. But my responses negate my responses. I go in circles.
Is a 'rod' a 'lever' only when it is in use? (BM 140)
'What ties the ship to the wharf is a rope, and the rope consists of fibers, but it does not get its strength from any fiber which runs through it from one end to the other, but from the fact that there is a vast number of fibers overlapping' (PI I, 65-7; BB 87)
The comparison between language and a game was not meant to suggest language was something trivial; on the contrary, it is a part of a communal activity, a way of living in society which LW calls a 'form of life' (PI I, 23).
In On Certainty LW enunciates a number of conclusions about doubt:
1. Doubt needs grounds.
2. Doubt must amount to something more than the verbal utterance of doubt.
3. Doubt presupposes the mastery of a language-game. 'If you are not certain of any fact, you cannot be certain of the meaning of your words either' (OC 114).
4. Doubt outside a language-game, or about a whole language game, is impossible. In other words, universal doubt is impossible. It would be like a student doubting every word that came out of a teacher's mouth. His doubt is hollow: he has not learned how to ask questions; he has not learned the game that he is being taught (OC 310-315). Not calling things in doubt is often a precondition of learning certain games (OC 329). The child learns by believing the adult, and the doubt comes after belief (OC 160). 'A doubt that doubted everything would not be a doubt' (OC 450).
5. Doubt presupposes certainty. Doubt is possible only where testing is possible (OC 125), and tests presuppose something that is not doubted and not tested ((OC 163, 337). 'Our doubts depend on the fact that some propositions are exempt from doubt, are as if it were like the hinges on which those turn' (OC 341). Hence 'The game of doubting itself presupposes certainty' (OC 115).
We can make list of things, as did Wittgenstein and Moore, that cannot be doubted. Try it. It's a good start to logical thinking. Providing, of course, your list doesn't disagree with mine. And saying something cannot be doubted is not the same thing as saying that it can be known. Again, saying one has a pain means nothing. It follows from this that 'I know' makes no sense either (OC 58).
A few weeks before he died, LW said: 'Am I not getting closer and closer to saying that in the end logic cannot be described? You must look at the practice of language, then you will see it.' (OC 501)
He also said: 'Logic must take care of itself.' (NB 2)
No proposition is a priori true. LW continued to insist that if a sentence makes sense, its negation must make sense, consequently an real synthetic a priori proposition is impossible.
His feelings about philosophy: 'In philosophy there are no deductions; it is purely descriptive. The word "philosophy" ought always to designate something over or under, but not beside, the natural sciences. Philosophy gives no picture of reality, and can neither confirm nor confute scientific investigations. It consists of logic and metaphysics, the former its basis. Epistemology is the philosophy of psychology. Distrust of grammar is the first requisite of philosophizing. Philosophy is the doctrine of the logical form of scientific propositions (not primitive propositions only). A correct explanation of the logical propositions must give them a unique position as against all other propositions.'
"Philosophy gives no pictures of reality and can neither confirm nor confute scientific investigations."--LW.
"Philosophy teaches us the logical form of propositions: that is its fundamental task."--LW.
During his military service, LW wrote his philosophical thoughts into notebooks which he carried in his rucksack. Most of them were destroyed at his orders in 1950, but three survived and have been published posthumously. Out of those notes grew the only philosophical book he published in his lifetime, the Tractatus. He composed it by selecting the best thoughts out of his notebooks and reordering and numbering them until he was satisfied with their sequence. One of his preliminary orderings has been discovered and published under the title Prototractatus.
He sent the Tractatus from prison camp to Russell through the good offices of Keynes. Those two men discussed the manuscript line by line in Holland in 1919.
Some of LW's favorite films were Westerns, just as some of his favorite books were detective novels. He thought the philosophical journal Mind was filled "with all its impotence and bankruptcy."
His notes from classes from 1933-34 circulated in copies and became known as The Blue Book. Another, more carefully prepared manuscript dictated the following year was known as The Brown Book. These notes were composed in English, unlike his other works. They were published posthumously and are the easiest to read.
LW almost lived in the Soviet Union. The growing tyranny of Stalin probably prevented that.
He believed university life led to "hysterical artificiality." He described a professor's life as "a living death." He told a PhD graduate he would be expected to "cheat" himself and his students. He resigned as a professor after only two years.
LW said we are tempted to explain a word like "pain" as being acquired by our own private, incommunicable sensation. This temptation must be resisted. No word can acquire meaning in this way.
A proposition is like a sentence. But not a command or a question. Some sentences are made up of two propositions. A proposition is an indicative sentence capable of standing on its own. A different language is a different proposition. So we must add that a proposition is a sentence considered with respect to its meaning and not (say) with respect to its sound when spoken or appearance on the page. Propositions express thoughts.
LW on the Tractatus: 'The aim of this book is to set a limit to thought--or rather, not to thought, but to the expression of thoughts' (TLP Preface). LW aimed to show what is thinkable by by showing what is sayable, to mark the limits by setting the limits of language.
Frege spoke of the Morning Star and the Evening Star. Both refer to Venus, but there are differences. So Frege suggested a distinction between two sorts of meaning: sense and reference. The two expressions have a different sense, but they both refer to Venus. Frege seemed to have believed that all expressions had both a sense and reference. Wittgenstein disagreed by saying the name 'Socrates' had both a sense and a reference. Russell agreed and was admired by LW for this. Russell said a phrase like the 'teacher of Plato' was not a name at all. Russell called it the theory of definite descriptions.
LW's theme was that logic must take care of itself. He rejected a philosophy of logic as Russell and Frege conceived of it. 'Everything which is possible in logic is also permitted' (TLP 5.473).
LW counts as pictures paintings, drawings, photographs, maps, sculptures, musical scores, gramaphone records, and other representations. Any representation can be an accurate or inaccurate representation: it can give a true or false picture of what it represents. Two things need to be considered: 1. what it is a representation of; 2. whether it represents what it represents accurately or inaccurately.
Spacial representation is important to accuracy. That is itself a fact. This led LW to say that a picture is itself a fact.
There is no a priori truth. As LW said, 'In order for a proposition to be capable of being true it must also be capable of being false' (NB 55). In other words, all genuine propositions are contingent propositions.
To each pair of contradictory propositions, there corresponds one and only one fact: the fact which makes one of them true and the other false. The totality of such facts is the world (TLP 1.1). Facts may be positive or negative: a positive fact is the existence of a state of affairs; a negative fact is the non-existene of a state of affairs (TLP 2.06). A state of affairs is a combination of objects or things. An object is essentially a possible constituent of a state of affairs (TLP 2.011), and its possibility of occurring in combination with other objects in states of affairs is its nature (TLP 2.0123), its internal properties (TLP 2.1231), and its form (TLP 2.0141). Since every object contains within its nature all the possibilities for its combination with other objects, if any object is given, then all objects are given (TLP 5.524), and if all objects are given then all possible states of affairs are given (TLP 2.0124).
Objects combine into states of affairs, in which they stand in a determinate relation to one another 'like the links of a chain' (TLP 2.023). States of affairs, we are told, are independent of one another (TLP 2.061); from the existence or non-existence of another. Since facts are the existence and non-existence of states of affairs, it follows that facts too are independent of each other (TLP 1.21). The totality of facts, of reality, is the world.
'My propositions serve as elucidations in the following way: anyone who understands me eventually recognzies them as nonsensical, when he has used them--as steps--to climb up beyond them. (He must, so to speak, throw away the ladder after he has climbed up it.) He must transcend these propositions and then he will see the world aright' (TLP 6.54).
'The Real, though it is an in itself, must also be able to become a for myself'--and uses single terms with a variety of different meanings. We must replace it by a symbolism which gives a clear picture of the logical structure, excludes pseudopropositions and uses its terms unambiguously.
Redness and blueness represent an impossible combination--an attempt, as it were, to put both redness and blueness where there is only room for one of them. Can anyone see both red and blue at the same time? Once again, though, the answer must come from science.
'. . . it is possible to invent words; but I cannot think any thoughts to go with them.' (WWK 68)
Wittgenstein believes that the definitive verification of a hypothesis is neither possible nor necessary.
On verificationism:
1. 'I am in pain' is a proposition which I verify by inner observation of myself.
2. 'He is in pain' says the same thing about him as 'I am in pain' says about me.
3. Therefore 'He is in pain' is a proposition which is verified by inner observation of him. (1 and 2)
4. I cannot inwardly observe him: I cannot stand to his pain in the relation that he stands to it, or that I stand to mine.
5. Therefore 'He is in pain' cannot be verified. (3 and 4)
6. Therefore 'I am in pain' cannot be verified. (2 and 5)
7. Therefore 'I am in pain' is meaningless. (6 and the principle of verification)
LW was fond of telling a joke about a French politician who said that it was a characteristic of the French language that in it words occur in the order in which one thinks of them. Calling this a joke means he thought there was something wrong in treating thought as an articulate process like saying.
Thoughts go through our heads like lightning. The sentence 'Think before you speak' is nonsense. No one thinks before they speak. Do they? Try it. Don't speak unless you consider the words carefully in your mind along with other possibilities. What then is the relation between thought and language? Can one think without speaking?
It has been said that animals cannot think because they cannot speak. But my kitty understands me when I say to her 'Do you want to eat?' She gets all mushy and pushes her paws against me and I get all mushy because I love her to freaking pieces. Yes I do. Yes I do. . . . ahem . . . Sometimes she answers me with a meow of 'Yes'.
So is thought possible without language? I think so. Is language possible without thought? I think so. But my responses negate my responses. I go in circles.
Is a 'rod' a 'lever' only when it is in use? (BM 140)
'What ties the ship to the wharf is a rope, and the rope consists of fibers, but it does not get its strength from any fiber which runs through it from one end to the other, but from the fact that there is a vast number of fibers overlapping' (PI I, 65-7; BB 87)
The comparison between language and a game was not meant to suggest language was something trivial; on the contrary, it is a part of a communal activity, a way of living in society which LW calls a 'form of life' (PI I, 23).
In On Certainty LW enunciates a number of conclusions about doubt:
1. Doubt needs grounds.
2. Doubt must amount to something more than the verbal utterance of doubt.
3. Doubt presupposes the mastery of a language-game. 'If you are not certain of any fact, you cannot be certain of the meaning of your words either' (OC 114).
4. Doubt outside a language-game, or about a whole language game, is impossible. In other words, universal doubt is impossible. It would be like a student doubting every word that came out of a teacher's mouth. His doubt is hollow: he has not learned how to ask questions; he has not learned the game that he is being taught (OC 310-315). Not calling things in doubt is often a precondition of learning certain games (OC 329). The child learns by believing the adult, and the doubt comes after belief (OC 160). 'A doubt that doubted everything would not be a doubt' (OC 450).
5. Doubt presupposes certainty. Doubt is possible only where testing is possible (OC 125), and tests presuppose something that is not doubted and not tested ((OC 163, 337). 'Our doubts depend on the fact that some propositions are exempt from doubt, are as if it were like the hinges on which those turn' (OC 341). Hence 'The game of doubting itself presupposes certainty' (OC 115).
We can make list of things, as did Wittgenstein and Moore, that cannot be doubted. Try it. It's a good start to logical thinking. Providing, of course, your list doesn't disagree with mine. And saying something cannot be doubted is not the same thing as saying that it can be known. Again, saying one has a pain means nothing. It follows from this that 'I know' makes no sense either (OC 58).
A few weeks before he died, LW said: 'Am I not getting closer and closer to saying that in the end logic cannot be described? You must look at the practice of language, then you will see it.' (OC 501)
He also said: 'Logic must take care of itself.' (NB 2)
No proposition is a priori true. LW continued to insist that if a sentence makes sense, its negation must make sense, consequently an real synthetic a priori proposition is impossible.
His feelings about philosophy: 'In philosophy there are no deductions; it is purely descriptive. The word "philosophy" ought always to designate something over or under, but not beside, the natural sciences. Philosophy gives no picture of reality, and can neither confirm nor confute scientific investigations. It consists of logic and metaphysics, the former its basis. Epistemology is the philosophy of psychology. Distrust of grammar is the first requisite of philosophizing. Philosophy is the doctrine of the logical form of scientific propositions (not primitive propositions only). A correct explanation of the logical propositions must give them a unique position as against all other propositions.'
November 2, 2013
This is a superb introduction to and overview of the thinking of Ludwig Wittgenstein, one of the best philosophical survey books I've ever read. Indeed, so good is it that I read it a second time in preparation for giving a paper on Wittgenstein at a conference held at the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana back while still in graduate school.
December 13, 2018
An excellent overview of the major themes and concepts in Wittgenstein's Philosophy, from the notebooks he wrote while fighting for Germany in the trenches of WWI to the diary entry containing a beautiful metaphor about rain he wrote days before his death in England in 1951. On the whole Kenny describes Wittgenstein's ideas with remarkable simplicity and clarity, I was even following the bits of his early thought that consisted pretty much entirely of logic notation, which is a blaady miracle. There were occasionally points where Kenny's explanation of a point was less than clear however, and despite re-reading a couple of passages several times I just had to accept that I wasn't going to grasp the point he was making. On the other hand he points out holes in Wittgenstein's logic and point where Wittgenstein contradicts himself, which being a bit of a Wittgenstein fanboy I hadn't noticed before.
The most impressive and some would say radical argument Kenny makes is his assertion of the continuity between the 'Early Wittgenstein' and the 'Late Wittgenstein', the latter often thought to be an entire refutation of the former. I admit to being guilty of this assumption myself, so seeing it be debunked with such logic and clarity was nice.
The most impressive and some would say radical argument Kenny makes is his assertion of the continuity between the 'Early Wittgenstein' and the 'Late Wittgenstein', the latter often thought to be an entire refutation of the former. I admit to being guilty of this assumption myself, so seeing it be debunked with such logic and clarity was nice.
April 27, 2012
An interesting work. I wouldn't recommend it to those who are new to Wittgenstein, however. It seems to assume that you know a lot of things such as ostensive definition. It is interesting, then, that it assumes the reader is not familiar with Frege.
It has an interesting essay at the end contending that the Wittgenstein of the Tractatus and the Investigations is more or less the same than those who wish to say that Wittgenstein is making a break. I'm not sure how true that really is, since the idea of matching up sentences to the world is quite different from a language game that has its meaning in use, but it is interesting.
I wish that it had discussed more with regards to On Certainty, however. In particular, there is the "stream" analogy that Wittgenstein uses, where new things come into the stream and things leave, much as some principles come into our thinking about the world, and then leave, as if there are no truly stable principles that must remain with us.
It has an interesting essay at the end contending that the Wittgenstein of the Tractatus and the Investigations is more or less the same than those who wish to say that Wittgenstein is making a break. I'm not sure how true that really is, since the idea of matching up sentences to the world is quite different from a language game that has its meaning in use, but it is interesting.
I wish that it had discussed more with regards to On Certainty, however. In particular, there is the "stream" analogy that Wittgenstein uses, where new things come into the stream and things leave, much as some principles come into our thinking about the world, and then leave, as if there are no truly stable principles that must remain with us.
May 17, 2021
جامع ترین کتابیست که در مورد فلسفه ی ویتگنشتاین ترجمه شده
علی رغم تفاوتهایی که در فهم فلسفه ی او با آثار ماونس، پیرس و آنسکوم دارد اما دقت و ریزبینی زیادی در جملات ویتگنشتاین در هر دو دوره ی فکری او به کار بسته است.
تصویر کلی و مقایسه ای که مابین انگاره های فلسفی او در رساله و پژوهش ها انجام داده، جامع و کم نظیر است
علی رغم تفاوتهایی که در فهم فلسفه ی او با آثار ماونس، پیرس و آنسکوم دارد اما دقت و ریزبینی زیادی در جملات ویتگنشتاین در هر دو دوره ی فکری او به کار بسته است.
تصویر کلی و مقایسه ای که مابین انگاره های فلسفی او در رساله و پژوهش ها انجام داده، جامع و کم نظیر است
August 14, 2017
This is one of the more detailed introductions to Wittgenstein, especially because it does not focus solely on the Tractatus and Investigations like a lot of secondary literature usually tends to do, but provides chapters on the in-between works published after Wittgenstein's death. However, I would not recommend this book to new readers who are not yet familiar with the basic concepts of analytic philosophy. Kenny's writing style does not really help to make things accesible at first glance either (which, on the other hand, means of course that he does not oversimplify Wittgenstein's concepts): basically what you get is a wall of text, barely any figures, tables or even bullet points. I would suggest reading Kenny's book in conjunction with some of the easier introductory volumes. For example, Wittgenstein: A Very Short Introduction by A.C. Grayling would do a better job for the unprepared but interested reader.
However, if you are what would be considered an 'advanced reader', for example if you're taking a university class on Wittgenstein and/or plan on really studying Wittgenstein and delve deeper into the matter, this is a good place to start from.
However, if you are what would be considered an 'advanced reader', for example if you're taking a university class on Wittgenstein and/or plan on really studying Wittgenstein and delve deeper into the matter, this is a good place to start from.
November 19, 2022
This is a somewhat old book and probably has been superseded by further thought on Wittgenstein, but I found it an extremely valuable presentation of what concerned Wittgenstein and mainly how his thought evolved. Kenny is a very clear and honest writer and doesn't gloss over the difficulties of his subject.
Is it important for a person who is not a professional philosopher or student of philosophy to be introduced to Wittgenstein's thinking? The answer to that rhetorical question is individual, like the answer to the question of whether a person who loves classical music should also listen to operas, even if he or she doesn't particularly enjoy them.
I don't expect to retain very much of Wittgenstein's philosophy, as presented by Kenny (an extremely prolific and eminent professor of philosophy at Oxford), but at least I have been stimulated to think a bit more carefully about the connection between logic and language, and between those two and reality.
Is it important for a person who is not a professional philosopher or student of philosophy to be introduced to Wittgenstein's thinking? The answer to that rhetorical question is individual, like the answer to the question of whether a person who loves classical music should also listen to operas, even if he or she doesn't particularly enjoy them.
I don't expect to retain very much of Wittgenstein's philosophy, as presented by Kenny (an extremely prolific and eminent professor of philosophy at Oxford), but at least I have been stimulated to think a bit more carefully about the connection between logic and language, and between those two and reality.
September 7, 2024
A very good overview of Wittgenstein's thought from the Tractatus to On Certainty. Although I'm not sure if it would work best as an introductory volume, it did a great job of filling in the gaps I had in my understanding from reading the Tractatus and the Investigations. It provides a good background on Wittgenstein's thought in the Tractatus, and shows the development of his thought in the years leading up to the Investigations and On Certainty with the help of his unpublished works from that period.
July 6, 2023
Difficile "stellare" questo testo (e scusate il neologismo). Non è un testo di divulgazione filosofica, piuttosto uno di storia della filosofia con elementi di analisi teoretica, cosa che lo rende a tratti ostico. Ostico è il pensiero di Wittgenstein e inevitabilmente la parafrasi del suo pensiero. Si sarebbe tentati di cassare il testo come qualcosa di troppo pretenzioso, ma da "profano" non posso non rilevare il grande lavoro dell'autore di compendiare il pensiero di Wittgenstein tracciandone le fasi, attingendo di volta in volta direttamente ai testi, con citazioni frequenti ed eventuali confutazioni.
Non un testo per tutti i livelli insomma, ma sicuramente valido.
Non un testo per tutti i livelli insomma, ma sicuramente valido.
March 30, 2021
کتاب بسیار خوبی هست واسه شناخت ویتگنشتاین
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October 16, 2023Không ngờ lết xong được cuốn này. Và đương nhiên, không hiểu được hết :))
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July 10, 2025Buen libro para ver la continuidad y discontinuidad del Tractatus y las Investigaciones. Muy claro.
July 24, 2008
hard but not too hard - definitely a good way into the investigations. fairly accessible on the history-of-logic-before-W background, Frege/Russell, etc.
January 8, 2013
At times astonishingly difficult for someone w/ little background in this sort of thing, yet coherent, entrancing, well-presented.
October 25, 2017
excellent overview
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