A new collection of Wittgenstein essays
This new collection contains my piece on “Facts, Possibilities, and the World: Three Lessons from the Tractatus”
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Hans Sluga “Wittgenstein” in Persian translation
What a surprise!
The Private and the Public. What we can learn from Wittgenstein
On a Canadian website devoted to the translation of writings by contemporary Chinese intellectuals, its creator, David Ownby of the University of Montréal, writes: “China is, if not totalitarian, surely authoritarian, and I readily admit that I do not fully understand the relationship between the Chinese state and the intellectuals I study. It is obvious … Continue reading The Private and the Public. What we can learn from Wittgenstein
Wittgenstein’s Transitions
“In this work more than in any other it is worth looking at apparently solved questions again and again from new sides as unsolved,“ Ludwig Wittgenstein jotted in his philosophical notebook in November of 1914. “Don’t get stuck with what you once wrote. Think always of a fresh beginning, as if nothing … Continue reading Wittgenstein’s Transitions
The Darkness of this Time: Wittgenstein’s pessimism
Ludwig Wittgenstein, the philosopher, and Adolf Hitler, the dictator, were born just six days apart in the Spring of 1889 – Wittgenstein into golden luxury in the capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Hitler into a modest family and a provincial town at the Empire’s border to Germany. Different as those backgrounds were, Wittgenstein’s and Hitler’s life-paths came to parallel each other at certain points and occasionally even to intersect. I am concerned in this essay with Wittgenstein’s pessimism about his time but have found it useful to look also at Adolf Hitler as an antithetical figure propelled by another kind of pessimism. The contrast between the two men may help to illuminate questions about their and our age, about technology and technological thinking, and, possibly, about pessimism itself.
Why I read Wittgenstein
I have never been able to attach myself to a single philosopher as my guru. There are those who find all their philosophical enlightenment in Aristotle or Confucius, in Kant or Nietzsche or Marx, in Heidegger or Derrida. I have never been able to follow them. As soon as I read a philosopher, critical questions start swirling in my mind. That’s certainly also true when I read Wittgenstein.
Wittgenstein’s World
Here is the power point file of the lecture I just gave at the World Congress of Philosophy in Beijing. Wittgenstein’s World Beijing 2
Wittgenstein and von Humboldt on the description of the world
In his Tractatus Wittgenstein speaks both of the world and of descriptions of the world. I argue that his use of that second term derives from its occurrence in Alexander von Humboldt’s “Kosmos”.
The Wittgenstein Project
My project is simple but demanding. I am trying to reread Wittgenstein from the beginning without, however, relying on any established interpretations. My question is whether we can look at his work with fresh eyes. Ignoring the halo of secondary writing that now surrounds that work does not mean that I will always end up … Continue reading The Wittgenstein Project
Wittgenstein on the Puzzle of Privacy
“In what sense are my sensations private? – Well, only I know whether I am really in pain; another person can only surmise it. – In one way this is wrong, and in another nonsense. If we are using the word ‘to know’ as it is normally used (and how else are we to use it?), then other people often know when I am in pain. – Yes, but all the same not with the certainty with which I know it myself! – It can’t be said of me at all (except perhaps as a joke) that I know I am in pain. What is it supposed to mean – except perhaps that I am in pain.”
Reading Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein was one of the leading philosophical minds of the twentieth century and his thought remains of live interest. Twenty years ago, David Stern and I published the Cambridge Companion to Wittgenstein which was intended to help readers of Wittgenstein along. We have now brought out a second edition of this work with some great new contributions and a completely updated bibliography.
LIMITS OF INTELLIGIBILITY
With my own contribution “Wittgenstein on the Limits of Language” – part of my grappling with the Tractatus.