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Title: Culture and Value by Ludwig Wittgenstein, George H. Von Wright ISBN: 0-226-90435-0 Publisher: University of Chicago Press (Trd) Pub. Date: January, 1984 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.4 (5 reviews)
Rating: 3
Summary: An invasion of a great thinker's privacy?
Comment: Not a "work of philosophy" but, rather, a compilation of his more personal and/or less philosophical personal jottings from 1914 to the end of his life in 1951, this little book is worth taking up if you are fascinated by Wittgenstein and his thought. However, it will disappoint anyone coming to it for a detailed analysis of many of those issues (religion, art, morality) that his major works do not delve into more extensively. All we are offered here is an uneven scattering of personal remarks and truncated observations over the course of one very significant philosopher's life. Sometimes the remarks are extremely enlightening. More often they are too cryptic or personal or vague to offer much insight into the man and his ideas. Moreover, there are some musings here that are decidedly personal, making me uncomfortable just to be reading them. Peter Winch, who did the compilation, notes he excluded anything of too personal a nature but, given what got through, I can only conclude that the other stuff must have been doozies. Here we see Wittgenstein castigating himself as a sinner, unworthy to be saved, as he struggles to understand and re-subscribe to the Catholicism of his youth. While such information is of great interest to those of us who have been deeply affected by his philosophical work, throwing light on the driving forces which affected his thought, I was left feeling profoundly uncomfortable, reading things I suspect he never would have wanted to see the light of day. In the end, this book offered me more of a view into the man, Wittgenstein, than into his ideas about cultural issues . . . the reason I'd come to the book in the first place. And Wittgenstein seems a smaller man, and his ideas somewhat less substantial to me, for having read this book. Still, I'm not sorry I did. Better to understand a man than be awed by a giant. -- SWM
Rating: 4
Summary: Wittgenstein's Pensees
Comment: Both the fragmentary presentation of these remarks as well as their deeply personal nature remind one very much of Pascal, to whom, along with Plato, Augustine, and Kierkegaard, Wittgenstein deserves to be compared, moreso than Russell or any of the analytic philosophers (and this includes Wittgenstein's *Tractatus* period!).
The great virtue of this book is that one can open the book to just about anywhere are find a dazzling thought, whether about Goethe, mathematics, God, etc. However, that same virtue proves to be the book's main vice: one cannot read the book expecting a 'flow' that one might find reading novels or more composed philosophical texts -- although, of course, one must keep in mind that pretty much all of Wittgenstein's later writings are like this. Indeed, there is probably no satisfying way to arrange these or any of his other writings: as the editors say, the chronological arrangement they chose is the only way to avoid distorting what Wittgenstein wrote. I suppose, then, my complaint is more against Wittgenstein's reclusiveness than against the editors of this volume.
As for the book itself: whether you agree or disagree with him, Wittgenstein's profundity cannot be doubted, even on non-analytic subjects such as are treated in the book. In fact, there are several places, e.g. his discussions of Christianity, that bear a great resemblance to his discussions of language, namely: his attempts to explain something that he admits cannot be explained. Wittgenstein, despite all his efforts, could not become a believing Christian; nevertheless he demonstrates a deep understanding of Christianity's meaning, how it defies all rational explanation. As he puts it: "If Christianity is the truth then all the philosophy that has been written about it is false." This resembles very much Wittgenstein's insistance in the *Investigations* that we give up trying to give a uniform definition of language and instead describe (and describe, and describe) the various language-games.
Finally, I would recommend to anybody interested in this book that he also look up Wittgenstein's analytic writings (Blue and Brown Books, Investigations, On Certainty, etc.): as I have said, his thoughts on language and his thoughts on other matters inform each other. Even a summary of his analytic philosophy, I think, would be sufficient.
Rating: 5
Summary: The Dreams of a Spirit Seer
Comment: This volume of the written mutterings of Ludwig Wittgenstein is a gold mine. Here there is everything. Incredibly astute commentaries on art and representation, on culture and its decline and the relevance of that decline. Here one can learn what it is to be human and also what it was to be Wittgenstein, the prophet, poet, philosopher and mystic. There is a lot to be disagreed with, a lot that is contentious (his views of Judaism for example or the atom bomb), but since its publication quotations from it have enterred to literary and academic consciousness. It is rapidly becoming as ubiquitous as his other works. It is a book to be kept beside the bed in order that one can from time to time be startled from the slumbers that are modern life.
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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: Wittgenstein Lectures and Conversations on Aesthetics, Psychology, and Religious Belief by Ludwig Wittgenstein, Cyril Barrett ISBN: 0520013549 Publisher: University of California Press Pub. Date: June, 1967 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title: Zettel by Ludwig Wittgenstein, G. E. Anscombe, George H. Von Wright ISBN: 0520016351 Publisher: University of California Press Pub. Date: March, 1976 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
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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: 0631231277 Publisher: Blackwell Publishers Pub. Date: January, 2002 List Price(USD): $31.95 |
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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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