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14 - The availability of Wittgenstein's philosophy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 May 2006

Hans D. Sluga
Affiliation:
University of California, Berkeley
David G. Stern
Affiliation:
University of Iowa
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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forty years after his death, despite the publication of over a dozen books from his Nachlass (the usual term for his unpublished papers), hundreds of books on his work, and thousands of scholarly articles, his philosophy remains unavailable to many of his readers.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.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1996

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