Thinking with Tolstoy and Wittgenstein

Thinking with Tolstoy and Wittgenstein
Author: Henry W. Pickford
Publisher: Northwestern University Press
Total Pages: 377
Release: 2015-11-30
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0810131714

In this highly original interdisciplinary study incorporating close readings of literary texts and philosophical argumentation, Henry W. Pickford develops a theory of meaning and expression in art intended to counter the meaning skepticism most commonly associated with the theories of Jacques Derrida. Pickford arrives at his theory by drawing on the writings of Wittgenstein to develop and modify the insights of Tolstoy’s philosophy of art. Pickford shows how Tolstoy’s encounter with Schopenhauer’s thought on the one hand provided support for his ethical views but on the other hand presented a problem, exemplified in the case of music, for his aesthetic theory, a problem that Tolstoy did not successfully resolve. Wittgenstein’s critical appreciation of Tolstoy’s thinking, however, not only recovers its viability but also constructs a formidable position within contemporary debates concerning theories of emotion, ethics, and aesthetic expression.

Doubt, Ethics and Religion

Doubt, Ethics and Religion
Author: Luigi Perissinotto
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
Total Pages: 179
Release: 2013-05-02
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 3110321882

This book explores Wittgenstein's conception of ethics, religion and philosophy. It aims at providing us with the tools necessary for assessing to what extent the Austrian philosopher can be considered an anti-Enlightenment thinker. The articles collected in this volume explore the relationship between Wittgenstein's thought and that of several authors who were, in various ways, key to the counter-enlightenement, authors such as Hume, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Tolstoy, James and Pierce. One of the central issues examined here is Wittgenstein's opposition to the Cartesian method of doubt – a cornerstone of the enlightened movement against prejudice and superstition.

The Gospel in Brief

The Gospel in Brief
Author: Leo Tolstoy
Publisher: Harper Collins
Total Pages: 226
Release: 2011-02-15
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0062064169

The greatest novelist of all time retells the greatest story ever told, the life of Jesus Christ, in The Gospel in Brief—Leo Tolstoy’s riveting, novelistic integration of the four Gospels into a single, twelve-chapter narrative. Virtually unknown to English readers until now, Dustin Condren’s groundbreaking translation from the Russian opens a precious new world of Tolstoy’s masterful literary talent to fans of War and Peace and Anna Karenina.

How To Read Wittgenstein

How To Read Wittgenstein
Author: Ray Monk
Publisher: Granta Books
Total Pages: 132
Release: 2019-03-07
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1783785713

Though Wittgenstein wrote on the same subjects that dominate the work of other analytic philosophers - the nature of logic, the limits of language, the analysis of meaning - he did so in a peculiarly poetic style that separates his work sharply from that of his peers and makes the question of how to read him particularly pertinent. At the root of Wittgenstein's thought, Ray Monk argues, is a determination to resist the scientism characteristic of our age, a determination to insist on the integrity and the autonomy of non-scientific forms of understanding. The kind of understanding we seek in philosophy, Wittgenstein tried to make clear, is similar to the kind we might seek of a person, a piece of music, or, indeed, a poem. Extracts are taken from Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and from a range of writings, including Philosophical Investigations, The Blue and Brown Books and Last Writings on the Philosophy of Psychology.

Kant, Wittgenstein, and the Performativity of Thought

Kant, Wittgenstein, and the Performativity of Thought
Author: Aloisia Moser
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 165
Release: 2021-08-18
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 303077550X

This book explores the idea that there is a certain performativity of thought connecting Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason and Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. On this view, we make judgments and use propositions because we presuppose that our thinking is about something, and that our propositions have sense. Kant’s requirement of an a priori connection between intuitions and concepts is akin to Wittgenstein’s idea of the general propositional form as sharing a form with the world. Aloisia Moser argues that Kant speaks about acts of the mind, not about static categories. Furthermore, she elucidates the Tractatus’ logical form as a projection method that turns into a so-called ‘zero method’, whereby propositions are merely the scaffolding of the world. In so doing, Moser connects Kantian reflective judgment to Wittgensteinian rule-following. She thereby presents an account of performativity centering neither on theories nor methods, but on the application enacting them in the first place.

Mysticism and Architecture

Mysticism and Architecture
Author: Roger Paden
Publisher: Lexington Books
Total Pages: 236
Release: 2007
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 9780739115626

Mysticism and Architecture: Wittgenstein and the Palais Stonborough is a multi-disciplinary study of the Viennese palais that the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein helped design and build for his sister shortly after he abandoned philosophy for more practical activities and during the period that supposedly separates his 'early' from his 'late' philosophy. Weaving together discussions of a number of social, political, and cultural developments that helped to give fin-de-si_cle Vienna its character -- including the late modernization of Austrian society, industry, and economy; the construction of Vienna's Ringstrasse; the slow decay of the Hapsburg monarchy; and the failure of Austrian liberalism; as well as Tolstoy's religiously-based ethical views; Adolf Loos's critique of architectural ornament; Karl Kraus's analysis of Vienna's decadence; Kierkegaard's and Nestroy's views on the importance of indirect communication; Otto Weininger's theory of the nature and duty of genius; Camillo Sitte and Otto Wagner's dispute over good urban form; Schopenhauer's aesthetic theories and his 'Eastern' philosophy of life; and Russell and Frege's philosophical and logical theories -- the book presents a philosophical biography of Wittgenstein reminiscent of, but substantially different from, Janik and Toulmin's Wittgenstein's Vienna. This philosophical biography underpins a new interpretation of the house which argues that the house belongs to neither architectural Modernism, nor Postmodernism, but is instead caught between those two movements. This analysis of the house, in turn, grounds a new interpretation of Wittgenstein's philosophical works that emphasizes their mystical nature and practical purpose. Finally, this interpretation shows the unity of these works while simultaneously suggesting an underlying flaw; namely, that they arise from two fundamentally-opposed worldviews present in Vienna during Wittgenstein's youth, 'aesthetic modernism' and 'critical modernism.'

Dialectic of the Ladder

Dialectic of the Ladder
Author: Ben Ware
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 229
Release: 2017-04-20
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 135005092X

Ludwig Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1922) remains one of the most enigmatic works of twentieth century thought. In this bold and original new study, Ben Ware argues that Wittgenstein's early masterpiece is neither an analytic treatise on language and logic, nor a quasi-mystical work seeking to communicate 'ineffable' truths. Instead, we come to understand the Tractatus by grasping it in a twofold sense: first, as a dialectical work which invites the reader to overcome certain 'illusions of thought'; and second as a modernist work whose anti-philosophical ambition is intimately tied to its radical aesthetic character. By placing the Tractatus in the force field of modernism, Dialectic of the Ladder clears the ground for a new and challenging exploration of the work's ethical dimension. It also casts new light upon the cultural, aesthetic and political significances of Wittgenstein's writing, revealing hitherto unacknowledged affinities with a host of philosophical and literary authors, including Hegel, Kierkegaard, Marx, Nietzsche, Adorno, Benjamin, and Kafka.

Wittgenstein's Artillery

Wittgenstein's Artillery
Author: James C. Klagge
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 271
Release: 2021-08-03
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0262045834

How Wittgenstein sought a more effective way of reaching his audience by a poetic style of doing philosophy. Ludwig Wittgenstein once said, "Really one should write philosophy only as one writes poetry." In Wittgenstein's Artillery, James Klagge shows how, in search of ways to reach his audience, Wittgenstein tried a more poetic style of doing philosophy. Klagge argues that, deploying this new philosophical "artillery"--Klagge's term for Wittgenstein's methods of influencing his readers and students--Wittgenstein moved from an esoteric mode to an evangelical mode, aiming for an effect on his audience that was noncognitive, appealing to the temperament in addition to the intellect. Wittgenstein was an artillery spotter--directing artillery fire to targets--in the Austrian army during World War I, and Klagge argues that, years later, he became a philosophical spotter, struggling to find the right artillery to accomplish his philosophical purpose. Klagge shows how Wittgenstein's work with his students influenced his style of writing philosophy and motivated him to care about the effect of his ideas on his audience. To illustrate Wittgenstein's evolving approach, Klagge draws on not only Wittgenstein's best-known works but also such lesser-known material as notebooks, dictations, lectures, and recollections of students. Klagge then goes beyond Wittgenstein to present a range of literature--biblical parables and children's stories, Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche--as other examples of the poetic approach. He concludes by offering his own attempts at a poetic approach to addressing philosophical issues.

The Sense of Semblance

The Sense of Semblance
Author: Henry W. Pickford
Publisher: Fordham Univ Press
Total Pages: 365
Release: 2012-12-31
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 082324542X

The Sense of Semblance is the first book to incorporate contemporary analytic philosophy in interpretations of art and architecture, literature, and film about the Holocaust. The book’s principal aim is to move beyond the familiar debates surrounding postmodernism by demonstrating the usefulness of alternative theories of meaning and understanding from the Anglophone analytic tradition. The book takes as its starting point the claim that Holocaust artworks must fulfill at least two specific yet potentially reciprocally countervailing desiderata: they must meet aesthetic criteria (lest they be, say, merely historical documents) and they must meet historical criteria (they must accurately represent the Holocaust, lest they be merely artworks). I locate this problematic within the tradition of philosophical aesthetics, as a version of the conflict between aesthetic autonomy and aesthetic heteronomy, and claim that Theodor W. Adorno’s “dialectic of aesthetic semblance” describes the normative demand that a successful artwork maintain a dynamic tension between these dual desiderata. While working within a framework inspired by Adorno, the book further claims that certain concepts and lines of reasoning from contemporary philosophy best explicate how individual artworks fulfill these dual desiderata, including the causal theory of names, the philosophy of tacit knowledge, analytic philosophy of quotation, Sartre’s theory of the imaginary, work in the epistemology of testimony, and Walter Benjamin’s theory of dialectical images. Individual chapters provide close readings of lyric poetry by Paul Celan (including a critique of Derridean deconstruction), Holocaust memorials in Berlin, texts by the Austrian quotational artist Heimrad Bäcker, Claude Lanzmann’s film Shoah and Art Spiegelman’s graphic novel Maus. The result is a set of interpretations of Holocaust artworks that, in their precision, specificity and clarity, inaugurate a dialogue between contemporary analytic philosophy and contemporary art.

Work on Oneself

Work on Oneself
Author: Fergus Kerr
Publisher: CUA Press
Total Pages: 140
Release: 2008
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9780977310319

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) was by any reckoning one of the major modern philosophers. Raised as a Catholic in late-19th century Vienna, he later gave up practicing his religion; yet, as journal notes and many anecdotes attest, he remained deeply if ambivalently interested in religion throughout his life. Students of the philosophy of religion are familiar with his lectures on religious belief. For the rest, however, in the vast collection of commentary and criticism that has accumulated over the years, little attention has been paid to his religious interests. In consideration of how far Wittgenstein's Catholic background may have influenced his philosophical reflections on the soul, preeminent author Fergus Kerr explores aspects of Wittgenstein's personal and professional life. Kerr examines many of Wittgenstein's writings and lectures, including his last set of lectures in the mid-1940s at the University of Cambridge on philosophical psychology. Beginning with a largely biographical study of Wittgenstein, Kerr argues that Wittgenstein's philosophy was partly prompted by his strong reaction against what he regarded as an excessively rationalistic type of Catholic apologetics that he was taught in his early school years. His serious interest as a student at Cambridge in experimental psychology and in the works of Freud is documented. In the second half of the book, Kerr expounds Wittgenstein's famous "Private Language Argument"--his mockery of the idea that one could have thoughts that are in principle incommunicable. He then discusses three philosophers, John Wisdom, Stanley Cavell, and Richard Eldrige, who have developed Wittgenstein's ideas on self-understanding in ways that should interest students with a desire to rethink psychology in the context of an integrally humanist anthropology of the human person. ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Fergus Kerr, O.P., is an honorary senior lecturer in theology and religious studies at the University of Edinburgh and past head of Blackfriars Hall, University of Oxford. He is the editor of New Blackfriars and the renowned author of numerous works, including Theology after Wittgenstein, After Aquinas: Versions of Thomism, and most recently Twentieth-Century Catholic Theologians: From Neoscholasticism to Nuptial Mysticism. PRAISE FOR THE BOOK: " A] fresh and fascinating, impressively lucid study of Wittgenstein's later philosophy, and of his attitude to religion." -- Nicholas Lash, Modern Theology