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The Realistic Spirit: Wittgenstein, Philosophy, and the Mind
The realistic spirit, a nonmetaphysical approach to philosophical thought concerned with the character of philosophy itself, informs all of the discussions in these essays by philosopher Cora Diamond. Diamond explains Wittgenstein's notoriously elusive later writings, explores the background to his thought in the work of Frege, and discusses ethics in a way that reflects his influence. Diamond's new reading of Wittgenstein challenges currently accepted interpretations and shows what it means to look without mythology at the coherence, commitments, and connections that are distinctive of the mind. Representation and Mind series
- GenresPhilosophyNonfiction
408 pages, Paperback
First published November 4, 1991
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About the author
Cora Diamond
13 books7 followersCora Diamond (born 1937) is an American philosopher who works on Ludwig Wittgenstein, Gottlob Frege, moral philosophy, political philosophy, philosophy of language, and philosophy and literature. She is currently the Kenan Professor of Philosophy Emerita at the University of Virginia.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
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November 18, 2018Once I wrote a dissertation proposal about the papers on ethics and literature collected here, namely "Anything but Argument?" and "Having a Rough Story about What Moral Philosophy Is." A couple years earlier I had read "Eating Meat and Eating People," also collected here, which indirectly inspired me to give up eating animals. It's been fun to read and write about Diamond's reading of the Tractatus and, more generally, to consider how her whole philosophical view comes together. She's one of my favorite philosophers.
April 11, 2019
Throwing away the Ladder is a really nice work of philosophy. She is not the world’s best writer, unfortunately. Which makes a tough subject even harder to digest. What nonsense might be also interesting.
October 22, 2024
A SERIES OF ESSAYS ABOUT WITTGENSTEIN, FREGE, AND OTHERS
Cora Diamond is professor of Philosophy at the University of Virginia. She wrote in the Preface of this 1991 book, “I have been reading Wittgenstein since 1965, and the papers published in this collection have come out of that reading. There is an obvious way to divide them: seven are explicitly about Wittgenstein, and three about the philosopher [Frege] who most strongly influenced him; the other five, in which Wittgenstein is hardly mentioned, are about ethics and are done in a way which reflects what I have learned from him. But in fact the papers are connected more closely than that suggests. I found, in trying to show how the unity of Wittgenstein’s thought had been refracted through my own discussions now of this, now of that.”
She begins the first chapter with the statement, “There is a sense in which the entirety of this book lies within philosophy of mind… The theme of this book, viewed as a book within the philosophy of mind, is that we misunderstand our relation to that fundamental idea, that distinction, of Frege’s.”
She observes, “This understanding of Wittgenstein goes a certain distance then with Ramsey: in philosophy we analyze OUR thought. But in such an analysis we look not inwards but towards what the community does. In reaching such a view of what Wittgenstein holds, philosophers go against the remark about the best answer I can give myself. I want to show (a) that that misreading of Wittgenstein involves unrealism… (b) what is meant by saying that realism is ‘the hardest thing’ and---very briefly then---(c) when it is not akin to verificationism.” (Pg. 67)
She explains, “I am not at all concerned to discuss whether Wittgenstein was right about private language (and the related cases). I simply want to include it as an example of how Wittgenstein’s view of nonsense applies, because I think we often interpret Wittgenstein as saying things about private language which he could say only if he held the natural view of nonsense, which he did not.” (Pg. 107)
She argues, “No mathematical proof containing a partially defined function term can be rigorous. It will contain assertions of what are merely fuzzy truths, truths that can stand in no genuine logical relations with other truths… We shall have in mathematics the IMITATION of rigor and shall always be dependent on our good angel to avoid logical disaster. The fuzz principle creates logical havoc for what is essentially a simple reason. It lets us treat sentences containing a partially introduced proper name as having a truth-value when it does not matter to the truth-value of the whole sentence WHICH object, of those falling under the introducing concept, we speak of.” (Pg. 173)
She states, “The whole of Wittgenstein’s philosophy, from before the Tractatus to his later, work, contains different workings out of the kind of view of philosophy itself that I have just sketched. I do not want to play down the differences between early and later work. It obviously marks a great change in Wittgenstein’s views that he got rid of the idea that you can replace philosophical thinking by carrying out a kind of complete analysis of sentences in which the essential features of sentence sense as such are totally visible. But what does remain intact after that idea goes is the conviction that philosophy involves illusion of a particular kind.” (Pg. 184)
As an analysis/explication of Wittgenstein’s thought, this book often falls short. But as a discussion of the sort of ideas that Wittgenstein, Frege, and others tackle, it will find some satisfied readers.
Cora Diamond is professor of Philosophy at the University of Virginia. She wrote in the Preface of this 1991 book, “I have been reading Wittgenstein since 1965, and the papers published in this collection have come out of that reading. There is an obvious way to divide them: seven are explicitly about Wittgenstein, and three about the philosopher [Frege] who most strongly influenced him; the other five, in which Wittgenstein is hardly mentioned, are about ethics and are done in a way which reflects what I have learned from him. But in fact the papers are connected more closely than that suggests. I found, in trying to show how the unity of Wittgenstein’s thought had been refracted through my own discussions now of this, now of that.”
She begins the first chapter with the statement, “There is a sense in which the entirety of this book lies within philosophy of mind… The theme of this book, viewed as a book within the philosophy of mind, is that we misunderstand our relation to that fundamental idea, that distinction, of Frege’s.”
She observes, “This understanding of Wittgenstein goes a certain distance then with Ramsey: in philosophy we analyze OUR thought. But in such an analysis we look not inwards but towards what the community does. In reaching such a view of what Wittgenstein holds, philosophers go against the remark about the best answer I can give myself. I want to show (a) that that misreading of Wittgenstein involves unrealism… (b) what is meant by saying that realism is ‘the hardest thing’ and---very briefly then---(c) when it is not akin to verificationism.” (Pg. 67)
She explains, “I am not at all concerned to discuss whether Wittgenstein was right about private language (and the related cases). I simply want to include it as an example of how Wittgenstein’s view of nonsense applies, because I think we often interpret Wittgenstein as saying things about private language which he could say only if he held the natural view of nonsense, which he did not.” (Pg. 107)
She argues, “No mathematical proof containing a partially defined function term can be rigorous. It will contain assertions of what are merely fuzzy truths, truths that can stand in no genuine logical relations with other truths… We shall have in mathematics the IMITATION of rigor and shall always be dependent on our good angel to avoid logical disaster. The fuzz principle creates logical havoc for what is essentially a simple reason. It lets us treat sentences containing a partially introduced proper name as having a truth-value when it does not matter to the truth-value of the whole sentence WHICH object, of those falling under the introducing concept, we speak of.” (Pg. 173)
She states, “The whole of Wittgenstein’s philosophy, from before the Tractatus to his later, work, contains different workings out of the kind of view of philosophy itself that I have just sketched. I do not want to play down the differences between early and later work. It obviously marks a great change in Wittgenstein’s views that he got rid of the idea that you can replace philosophical thinking by carrying out a kind of complete analysis of sentences in which the essential features of sentence sense as such are totally visible. But what does remain intact after that idea goes is the conviction that philosophy involves illusion of a particular kind.” (Pg. 184)
As an analysis/explication of Wittgenstein’s thought, this book often falls short. But as a discussion of the sort of ideas that Wittgenstein, Frege, and others tackle, it will find some satisfied readers.
December 6, 2022
Insightful, masterfully articulated, and very, very difficult.
February 22, 2016
it's my BA
May 6, 2012
absolutely uplifting
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews