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Title: Philosophical Investigations: The German Text, With a Revised English Translation by Ludwig Wittgenstein, G. E. M. Anscombe, Elizabeth Anscombe ISBN: 0-631-23127-7 Publisher: Blackwell Publishers Pub. Date: January, 2002 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $31.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.83 (6 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Change the very way you think about philosophy starting now
Comment: I must respectfully disagree with the person who gave this book one star and called it one of the greatest intellectual frauds of the 20th century.
This book is beyond doubt one of the greatest works of philosophy not only of the 20th century but ever.
Without going deeply into the details here, it should be apparent that difficult and persistent problems require radical solutions. While Wittgenstein's solutions to age old philosophical problems may infuriate those with a vested interested in continuing to discuss them endlessly, anyone with an open mind will immediately see the value in his work. If you think that a good deal of philosophizing thoroughout its history has been the utterly misguided search for so-called real essences, then Wittgenstein's later philosophy provides an interesting and insightful response to that history of philosophy.
After reading this book you will never think the same way again.
Rating: 3
Summary: Shew the fly out of the fly-bottle *yourself*!
Comment: A fantastic book, a more or less self-confessed mind snare, now available in an affordable *en face* format the way it always could have been (the Macmillan blue-book value was a shocker for booksellers). Was Wittgenstein the greatest philosopher of the 20th century? He was the most irresponsible, and this is not nothing, especially considering the twin dedications of this book to mathematical wizard Frank Ramsey but also Marxist economist and amateur bookseller Piero Sraffa (said here to be the preponderance of influence). Perhaps it is time to dispense with fear of a *European* Wittgenstein, although he himself doesn't make it easy: this book is the culmination of a style of intellectual inquiry more frequently identified with the somewhat camped-up version provided by John Austin.
But as we say in the US only Nixon can go to China, and this book is also very much in the philosophical tradition of "dialectics of nature" initated by Friedrich Engels, the nondestructive assimilation of mentalistic vocabulary to a thoroughly scientific world-view: and much as the *Tractatus* is modelled upon a treatise of physical science, this book owes something to a genre of "naturalist's reflections" which was quite outdated in *Wittgenstein's* day. Is this anything you will hear in a class on Wittgenstein? No, that class will be dedicated to puzzling out Wittgenstein's instructions for the ordering of the mind: but although this may have its "therapeutic" uses for wild-eyed youth, it may also be premature: this book is really designed to have no heirs without eliminating the insititution of intellectual primogeniture, although in all fairness you will find yourself able to say you have read it.
Rating: 4
Summary: The Total Package
Comment: My graduate class on Wittgenstein just concluded and we read this book cover-to-cover. Because professional philosophers can easily spend a career attempting to explain what exactly is contained in the Philosophical Investigations, it would be a bit silly of me to attempt to do so here (and even sillier of anyone placed any stock in it!). As such, my comments will be more to the technical side of this edition, but with a little personal opinion at the end.
This edition, according to my Wittgenstein teacher, Professor David G. Stern, is wonderful due to the English and German being side-by-side, allowing German speaking philosophers (which Stern is) the opportunity to conveniently compare the translation with the original text. Many of my colleges found this quite useful, and a few classes were spent elucidating certain translation issues that were quite illuminating. For example, in the 660s-670s the German term "meinen" is very often translated as "meaning" (which obviously "looks" right) where "intend" (or one of it's cognates) is probably the better choice.
Since I do not speak any German, such instances have led me to believe that this particular translation has left room for improvement. The best thing, of course, would be to learn German and read it over again. At the least, I'd recommend that one learn Wittgenstein from one who knows German. At any rate, this edition of the Philosophical Investigations was the one we were assigned from someone who knows a bit about him (see David G. Stern, "Wittgenstein on Mind and Language" (1995) and "Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations: An Introduction" (forthcoming 2004)), so I have to recommend it by default.
For those who are not acquainted with Wittgenstein, reading his is more painstaking than anything else. I want to avoid the term "difficult," as I believe that it just takes a good deal of time, in that all one really has to do to understand Wittgenstein is to carefully read a little snippet of the Investigations, then read any and all secondary literature on the portion read, then read who it is Wittgenstein's target of criticism is, and then read whomever Wittgenstein is attacking. What stinks, of course, is that this takes a simply HUGE amount of time, which is why one can literally make a career of it.
The reasons why so many people (myself included) find Wittgenstein difficult is likely a combination of a few things. First, I think people try to read him too quickly. Second, Wittgenstein very rarely tells the reader what he's doing, literally and intentionally leaving the door wide open for misinterpretation (one will notice further that there are many "voices" speaking in the Investigations, and sorting out which one is "Wittgenstein" can often be challenging). Third, the translation. I think these three factors (which is by no means an exhaustive list) combine to form fairly widespread misunderstanding and overestimation of Wittgenstein (just take a look at the breadth of secondary scholarship out there - it's amazing!). My own personal view about Wittgenstein (and I stress that this is just my opinion) is that he is a little bit over-rated, and I would not by any stretch call myself a "Wittgensteinian." Wittgenstein does, however, deserve a good deal of praise for the way in which he engages the reader to stop and really think about things.
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Title: Tractatus Logico Philosophicus (Routledge Classics) by Ludwig Wittgenstein, David Francis Pears, Brian McGuinness, Bertrand Russell ISBN: 0415254086 Publisher: Routledge Pub. Date: 01 September, 2001 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: On Certainty by Ludwig Wittgenstein ISBN: 0061316865 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 06 October, 1972 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Blue & Brown Books by Ludwig Wittgenstein ISBN: 0061312118 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 07 July, 1942 List Price(USD): $14.50 |
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Title: Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Wittgenstein and the Philosophical Investigations (Routledge Philosophy Guidebooks) by Marie McGinn, Ludwig Philosophische Untersuchungen Wittgenstein ISBN: 0415111919 Publisher: Routledge Pub. Date: May, 1997 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
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Title: Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius by Ray Monk ISBN: 0140159959 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: November, 1991 List Price(USD): $21.00 |
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