Language and Solitude : Wittgenstein, Malinowski and the Habsburg Dilemma

by Ernest Gellner , Edited by David Gellner , Foreword by Steven Lukes

• ISBN13: 9780521639972
• ISBN10: 0521639972
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1998-10-28
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

Ernest Gellner (19251995) has been described as 'one of the last great central European polymath intellectuals'. His last book throws new light on two leading thinkers of their time. Wittgenstein, arguably the most influential and the most cited philosopher of the twentieth century, is famous for having propounded two radically different philosophical positions. Malinowski, the founder of modern British social anthropology, is usually credited with being the inventor of ethnographic fieldwork, a fundamental research method throughout the social sciences. In a highly original way, Gellner shows how the thought of both men grew from a common background of assumptions - widely shared in the Habsburg Empire of their youth - about human nature, society, and language. Tying together themes which preoccupied him throughout his working life, Gellner epitomizes his belief that philosophy - far from 'leaving everything as it is' - is about important historical, social and personal issues.

Table of Contents

Preface David Gellner

Foreword Steven Lukes

Part I. The Habsburg Predicament: 1. Swing alone or swing together

2. The rivals

3. Genesis of the individualist vision

4. The metaphysics of romanticism

5. Romanticism and the basis of nationalism

6. Individualism and holism in society

7. Crisis in Kakania

8. Pariah liberalism

9. Recapitulation

Part II. Wittgenstein: 10. The loneliness of the long-distance empiricist

11. The poem to solitude, or: confessions of a rranscendental ego who is also a Viennese Jew

12. The ego and language

13. The world as solitary vice

14. The mystical

15. The central proposition of the Tractatus: world without culture

16. Wittgenstein mark 2

17. Tertium non datur

18. Joint escape

19. Janik and Toulmin: a critique

20. The case of the disappearing self

21. Pariah communalism

22. Iron cage Kafka style

Part III. Malinowski: 23. The birth of modern social anthropology

24. The Malinowskian revolution

25. How did Malinowski get there?

26. Whither anthropology? or: wither Bronislaw Malinowski?

27. The difference between Krakow and Vienna

28. Malinowski's achievement and politics

29. Malinowski's theory of language

30. Malinowski's later mistake

31. The (un)originality of Malinowski and Wittgenstein

Part IV. Influences: 32. The impact and diffusion of Wittgenstein's ideas

33. The first wave of Wittgenstein's influence

34. A belated convergence of philosophy and anthropology

Part V. Conclusions: 35. The truth of the matter

36. Our present condition

General bibliography

I. Jarvie, Bibliography of Ernest Gellner's writings on Wittgenstein, Malinowski, and nationalism.