Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Ludwig Wittgenstein
- 1 Wittgenstein's critique of philosophy
- 2 Pictures, logic, and the limits of sense in Wittgenstein's Tractatus
- 3 Fitting versus tracking
- 4 Philosophy as grammar
- 5 A philosophy of mathematics between two camps
- 6 Necessity and normativity
- 7 Wittgenstein, mathematics, and ethics
- 8 Notes and afterthoughts on the opening of Wittgenstein's Investigations
- 9 Mind, meaning, and practice
- 10 “Whose house is that?” Wittgenstein on the self
- 11 The question of linguistic idealism revisited
- 12 Forms of life
- 13 Certainties of a world-picture
- 14 The availability of Wittgenstein's philosophy
- Bibliography
- Index
14 - The availability of Wittgenstein's philosophy
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 May 2006
- Frontmatter
- Ludwig Wittgenstein
- 1 Wittgenstein's critique of philosophy
- 2 Pictures, logic, and the limits of sense in Wittgenstein's Tractatus
- 3 Fitting versus tracking
- 4 Philosophy as grammar
- 5 A philosophy of mathematics between two camps
- 6 Necessity and normativity
- 7 Wittgenstein, mathematics, and ethics
- 8 Notes and afterthoughts on the opening of Wittgenstein's Investigations
- 9 Mind, meaning, and practice
- 10 “Whose house is that?” Wittgenstein on the self
- 11 The question of linguistic idealism revisited
- 12 Forms of life
- 13 Certainties of a world-picture
- 14 The availability of Wittgenstein's philosophy
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
I ought to be no more than a mirror, in which my reader can see his own thinking with all its deformities so that, helped in this way, he can put it right.
(CV, pp. 17-18. Source: MS 112, p. 225. 1931)Nearly all of my writings are private conversations with myself. Things that I say to myself tête-à-tête.
(CV, p. 77. Source: MS 137, p. 134. 26 December, 1948)Whatever the reader can do too, leave to the reader.
(CV, p. 77. Source: MS 137, p. 134. 27 December, 1948)Although Wittgenstein is widely regarded as one of the most important and influential philosophers of this century, there is very little agreement about the nature of his contribution. In fact, one of the most striking characteristics of the secondary literature on Wittgenstein is the overwhelming lack of agreement about what he believed and why. Over forty years after his death, despite the publication of over a dozen books from his Nachlass (the usual term for his unpublished papers), hundreds of books on his work, and thousands of scholarly articles, his philosophy remains unavailable to many of his readers. In part, that is because Wittgenstein's writing asks for a change in sensibility that many of his readers are unwilling or unable to accept. The continuing unavailability of Wittgenstein's philosophy is also due, in large part, to the expectations of those interpreters who disregard his way of writing, looking for an underlying theory they can attribute to him.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Cambridge Companion to Wittgenstein , pp. 442 - 476Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1996
- 19
- Cited by