How to Read Wittgenstein PA

by Monk,Ray

• ISBN13: 9780393328202
• ISBN10: 0393328201
• Edition: 00
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2005-09-17
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Summary

Approaching the writing of major intellectuals, artists, and philosophers need no longer be daunting. How to Read is a new sort of introduction--a personal master class in reading--that brings you face to face with the work of some of the most influential and challenging writers in history. In lucid, accessible language, these books explain essential topics such as Wittgenstein's determination to insist on the integrity and the autonomy of nonscientific forms of understanding. 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, 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, of a poem.

Table of Contents

Series Editor's Foreword	vii
Introduction	1	(2)
Logic, Science and Business	3	(12)
Clearing up Philosophy in Three Words	15	(19)
Picturing the World	34	(10)
What is a Proposition?	44	(8)
What is Philosophy?	52	(2)
The Disintegration of Logical Form	54	(7)
The New Philosophy: Giving up the Crystalline Purity of Logic	61	(8)
Language Games	69	(14)
Can There be a Private Language?	83	(11)
Reading Wittgenstein in the Right Spirit	94	(5)
Understanding Others, Understanding Ourselves: Imponderable Evidence	99	(8)
Chronology	107	(2)
Suggestions for Further Reading	109	(2)
Index	111