Normativity and Ethics in the Tractatus : Method, Self and Value

Chon Tejedor, ‘Normativity and Ethics in the Tractatus: Method, Self and Value’, in Mark Bevir, Andrius Galisanka, eds., Wittgenstein and Normative Inquiry, (Netherlands: Brill Publishing, 2016), ISBN 978-9004324091, eISBN 978-9004324107.In this paper, I examine Wittgenstein’s earlier treatment of the relation between normativity and ethics. I argue that Wittgenstein’s philosophical method shapes his approach to metaphysics and the self and this, in turn, shapes his approach to ethics. The paper is divided into three parts. In Part 1, I examine Wittgenstein’s philosophical method in the Tractatus. In Part 2, I argue that exposure to the views of Schopenhauer, Russell and Mach shapes the evolution of Wittgenstein’s thinking on the self, leading him to reject restrictive (metaphysical) solipsism and to endorse a non-restrictive (philosophical) notion of the subject. In Part 3, I bring out the intimate connection that exists between Wittgenstein’s approaches to philosophical method, the self and ethics in the Tractatus. I argue that, for Wittgenstein, dissolving restrictive solipsism is ethically transforming: this dissolution retunes our dispositions to think and speak in a manner that reflects a greater clarity in our understanding of our place in the world – a clarity of understanding that is, in and of itself, ethically valuable.Peer reviewe

From Plato to Socrates: Wittgenstein's Journey on Collingwood's Map

How can I learn and help others to learn to mean more precisely by saying, doing and making things? By attending to how Ludwig Wittgenstein and Robin Collingwood answered that question during the first half of the twentieth century. I show how the last of three answers given by Wittgenstein, and the journey that he undertook to arrive at it, exemplify the kind of answer that Collingwood had been advocating and exemplifying. I conclude by suggesting, however, that a fourth answer upon which they converged unwittingly points even further along the road to philosophical understanding than either of them was able to go, namely that if we are to answer such questions exactly, we must approach them not only historically but biographically

The World in Singing Made: David Markson\u27s Wittgenstein\u27s Mistress

In line with Wittgenstein\u27s axiom that what the solipsist means is quite correct; only it cannot be said, but makes itself manifest, this thesis aims to demonstrate how the gulf between analytic and continental philosophy can best be bridged through the mediation of art. The present thesis brings attention to Markson\u27s work, lauded in the tradition of Faulkner, Joyce, and Lowry, as exemplary of the shift from modernity to postmodernity, wherein the human heart is not only in conflict with itself, but with the language out of which it is necessarily constituted. Markson limns the paradoxical condition of the subject severed from intersubjectivity, and affected not only by the grief of bereavement, which can be defined in Heideggarian terms as anxiety for the ontic negation of a being (i.e., death), but by loss, which I assert is the ontological ground for how Dasein encounters the nothing in anxiety proper

A metaphilosophical defense of Wittgenstein's conception of polythetic methods of analysis

This thesis advances a metaphilosophical interpretation of Wittgenstein’s later conception of philosophy and specifically, its emphasis on a plurality of different philosophical methods. The thesis aims to achieve three things. The first task is to clarify the meaning of Wittgenstein’s emphasis on methods. This is attained by defending a metaphilosophical interpretation of methods as polythetic. I argue that Wittgenstein’s later emphasis on methods consists of a polythetic account of numerous different methods. The diversity of the methods is a necessary consequence that results from two distinct sources of conceptual confusions. These relate to grammatical confusions and confusions resulting from captivations that Wittgenstein identifies as numerous aspects of scientism. The second is to develop the potential application that the metaphilosophical analysis and defence of polythetic methods can offer to current exegetical controversies, relating to the meaning of methods (PI 133). The metaphilosophical interpretation of methods rejects both grammatical and therapeutic interpretations as having missed the metaphilosophical context of Wittgenstein’s emphasis on methods. It is argued that the complexity of the sources of confusions determine the form of methods to be polythetic and far more complex and diverse than either grammatical or therapeutic interpretations would permit. Thirdly, in concluding, the thesis claims that the metaphilosophical interpretation of methods and its defence of the polythetic conception of methods has several potential applications. This is evident in the need for new diverse methods of analysis that require dynamic forms of conceptual analysis, as well as diverse multiple conceptions of methods.N

Wittgenstein's "Weltanschauung"

Paper by Konstantin Kolend

Continuity and Discontinuity in Visual Experience

This paper investigates the role of visual experience in Wittgenstein's work. The specific thesis is that visual experience provides not only diverse illustrative examples of what could be an explanation of meaning, but that it also provides a recurrent metaphor for the whole process of meaning and understanding. Wittgenstein uses a great number of visual examples in his texts. Their diversity may be accounted for by the great diversity of ways in which he attempts to describe the relationship between a word and its meaning. The resultant variety of visual examples may be summarised by what I call the Visual Discontinuity Thesis. However, beneath this diversity there lies a thread of continuity. This is provided by the persistent use of visual experience in the description of the word-meaning relation. This use underlies the projection relationship of the Tractatus and the "seeing-as" relationship of the Investigations. This recurrent visual metaphor may be summarised by what I call the Visual Continuity Thesis. This paper presents the latter thesis in the context of a description of the former

The concept of a non-rational foundation of meaning with reference to the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein

The Notebooks 1914-1916 record Ludwig Wittgenstein's preliminary writings in preparation for the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921) and offer an excellent insight into the so-called 'early period' of his thought. The writing carefully documents the extraordinary way in which the philosopher grappled with the problems current at the time with Logicism and how he married the main questions and issues with all manner of extended philosophical enquiries which included aesthetic, ethical and spiritual matters. It showcases a philosopher in the midst of understanding and creating the essential main arguments of a first great work and drawing on all of his personal experience and understanding of his world to do so. A great starting point for understanding the basis for Wittgenstein's seminal work, it also contains the raw material for the ideas that were to come in his later writings