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Title: The New Wittgenstein by Alice Marguerite Crary, Rupert Read, Alice Crary, Rupert J. Read ISBN: 0-415-17319-1 Publisher: Routledge Pub. Date: June, 2000 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $34.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4 (3 reviews)
Rating: 2
Summary: not new and not original
Comment: It should be said that Conant and Diamond did choose the right opponent, because Hacker's reading of the Tractatus is all wrong-It doesn't say meaning is mental acts linking facts and sentences, nor what is "shown" the sentences of the Tractatus themselves. But Conant and Diamond instead came up with a reading that makes Wittgenstein indistinguishable from a logical positivist. They say EVERYTHING in principle can be expressed, and NOTHING in principle cannot be expressed, which is as confused as saying there are things that intrinsically cannot be expressed.
Conant and Diamond are fond of saying that one CANNOT violate the bounds of sense PROVIDED that there could be a context of meaning for a given sentence. But what give sentences meaning are appropriate ESTABLISHED practices, not whether there are imaginary ways of taking a sentence AGAINST how people normally take it.
And their claim of the "nonsensicality" of the sentences of the Tractatus shows a lack of understanding of the distinction between saying and showing. What is shown is not the sentences of the Tractatus themselves but what is shown in the INTELLIGIBLE USE of the signs to say something.
Their writings do have some historical interest, since they say something interesting about how much of Wittgenstein's antipsychologism regarding meaning is found in Frege, but they're of very little philosophical value since antipsychologism regarding meaning is found in the Tractatus text itself.
And on top of that their writings are not as original as they or their acolytes make them sound, because many of their theses on Wittgenstein's philosophy (such as its continuity, antispsychologism, nonsensical nature of the Tractatus, the Tractatus' notion of Ethics, etc.) have been already expressed with much greater clarity and depth by philosophers such as (particularly) Rush Rhees, Peter Winch, H. O. Mounce, D. Z. Phillips, and Ilham Dilman. And none of these people are acknowledged by Conant and Diamond except for Winch.
Instead they have allied themselves with Stanley Cavell, who doesn't even distinguish Wittgenstein from Austin, and John McDowell, whose dominant influence is Davidson, and these two are very, very shaky exegetes of Wittgenstein, to say the least, and Austin and Davidson's writings are very remote from the spirit of Wittgenstein's philosophy.
Personally speaking, I'm more and more convinced that the people who get Wittgenstein right are the "Swansea Wittgensteinians" such as aforementioned Rhees, Winch, Mounce, Phillips, and Dilman, and NOT the Cavell-Putnam-McDowell school nor the Hacker Oxford school.
Rating: 5
Summary: Exciting Philosophy
Comment: This is one of the more important recent books on Wittgenstein. I daresay that it is one of the most exciting and interesting texts since McDowell's Mind and World.
The most interesting and pertinent articles are by Cavell (who is often unclear but is otherwise here), McDowell (Non-Cognitivism and Rule-Following, which is also in his Mind, Value...anthology), Conant, Putnam (on mathematical necessity--so good--he's soon to have a new book released [UW lectures] by Columbia UP), J. Floyd (on math), and C. Diamond (esp. the article on the PL Arg. in the Tractatus).
This is a very exciting anthology. I highly recommend it.
I also recommend: Wittgenstein in America (Oxford UP) and Smith, Reading McDowell.
Rating: 5
Summary: Proof that Wittgenstein's work has not yet been exhausted
Comment: Ms. Crary and Mr. Read have compiled texts from unorthodox philosophers young and old, who take Wittgenstein's statement '...Our investigation gains its importance from what it destroys' seriously, without giving way to uncompromising (& incomprehensible) forms of skepticism and relativism. However, that is not to say they do not take skepticism seriously or even believe that it must inevitably appear as an inherent part of philosophical discourse. Skepticism appears, rather, in almost all of these texts as both an impetus and impediment, in need of philosophical treatment. They see the need of destruction in light of the need of discourse, of creation, & if not in light of 'theory' (per se) in light of (textual) investigation. To this end, many of the essays re-examine the Tractatus in terms of W.'s later work, e.g. in the Investigations; they attempt to draw out certain similarities that have been covered up by the forthright assumption that the later work is only a critique of the earlier stuff.
Crary herself was a student of John McDowell at Pittsburgh, who is represented here with his beautiful treatment of non-cognitivism ('Non-cognitivism and rule-following'); followed by Cavell with a text on language learning; followed by Crary with a text on Political Philosophy, by Conant & Diamond with texts on the Tractatus and the Private-Language Argument respectively, etc. Finally, in the role of defendant is a text by P.M.S Hacker representing a more orthodox Wittgenstein - a Wittgenstein in an outright battle against the threat of Skepticism. -dg
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Title: The Cambridge Companion to Wittgenstein by Hans D. Sluga, David G. Stern, Hans Sluga ISBN: 0521465915 Publisher: Cambridge University Press Pub. Date: 01 September, 1996 List Price(USD): $29.00 |
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Title: The Claim of Reason: Wittgenstein, Skepticism, Morality, and Tragedy by Stanley Cavell ISBN: 019513107X Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: 01 February, 1999 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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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: 01 January, 2002 List Price(USD): $31.95 |
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Title: Philosophical Passages: Wittgenstein, Emerson, Austin, Derrida by Stanley Cavell ISBN: 0631192719 Publisher: Blackwell Publishers Pub. Date: 01 December, 1994 List Price(USD): $36.95 |
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Title: Must We Mean What We Say?: A Book of Essays by Stanley Cavell ISBN: 0521529190 Publisher: Cambridge University Press Pub. Date: 01 December, 2002 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
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