The paper examines the ethical standpoint of the Tractatus as it has been reconstructed by Cora Diamond (“the austere view”) and gives an account of some of the criticism this reconstruction has received in the work of P. M. S. Hacker and Meredith Williams (“the standard view”). The second half of the paper tries to argue that the austere and the standard views rather complement each other if we recognize “two I ’-s” in the Tractatus and if it is supposed (...) that there is a “3rd person” and “1st person” perspective which are both voiced on its pages. (shrink)

The aim of my paper is to describe and evaluate different conceptions of holism in Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. I distinguish three readings of holistic elements in this work: i) Minimal Holism (E. Anscombe, M. Black, D. Pears); ii) Moderate Holism (J. Conant, C. Diamond, G. Ryle); and iii) Radical Holism (G. Bar-Elli, M. Kremer, P. Livingston). The conclusion is that the most viable option is Moderate Holism since it embraces the logico-syntactical notion of use, rejects an anachronistic interpretation of (...) Tractatarian ontology and allows us to see that the holistic elements are complementary to the initial atomism of the work. Moreover, I point to the consequences of the topic for the overall reading of Wittgenstein’s early and late work. (shrink)

This thesis undertakes a systematic, tripartite analysis of the interactions between the fiction and essays of Thomas Pynchon and the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein, Michel Foucault and Theodor W. Adorno, resulting in a solid set of original reference-material for those undertaking work on Pynchon and philosophy, or more generally on philosophico-literary intersections. Premised upon the notion that Pynchon's literature harbours a fundamental hostility to much systematizing philosophical thought, this work avoids a dominating imposition of philosophy, or an application of philosophical (...) thought as a validating Other, by examining those aspects of Pynchon's work that seem ill at ease with, or aggressive towards, aspects of each philosopher's thought. This is explored through the concept of an intra-textual polyvocality and relational situation of philosophical intersection; when Wittgenstein is cited, for instance, who is speaking and what are the connotations of that placement? I do not propose, therefore, a Wittgensteinian / Foucauldian / Adornian Pynchon, but rather explicitly highlight excluded aspects of thought to instead develop a complementary reading; a form of intersubjective triangulation. This polyvocality is examined from a univocal perspective. The specific conclusions of this work re-situate Pynchon, in many cases against forty years of critical consensus, as a quasi-materialist or at least anti-idealist, a regulative utopist and a practitioner of an anti-synthetic style akin to Adorno's model of negative dialectics. In a broader sense, it answers the questions regarding hostility towards philosophical thought in Pynchon's work by demonstrating that no single philosophical standpoint has yet to totally resonate with even one of his novels. Simultaneously, it also shows that a profitable approach can be found in the spaces of philosophical overlap and divergence. (shrink)

This article analyses Wittgenstein’s conception of nonsense and, against resolute interpretations, defends that, perhaps influenced by Mauthner and Weininger, the Tractatus author conceived corrects ontological and ethical nonsenses like nearly to tautological senseless.

This paper takes distances from two influential images of Wittgenstein's philosophy: the image of a primarily ethical philosopher defended by the so-called «resolute» interpreters and that of an ascetically "analytical" philosopher transmitted by the standard interpretation. Instead of contrasting images (that of Wittgenstein as an "aesthetic" philosopher and that of the "ethical" Wittgenstein), this paper focuses on the analysis of the fractures and tensions characterizing not only the relationship between Wittgenstein's philosophy and aesthetics, but also the very style of Wittgenstein's (...) thought. Addressing a specific issue from a conceptual and textual standpoint (the unity of Ethics and Aesthetics in the Tractatus) seems to the author to be a fruitful strategy that allows us not only to understand whether and how determinant and central the aesthetic problem is for Wittgenstein, but also to see how aesthetics itself can be radically reshaped through the filter offered by his thought. In the first place, then, it is clarified what the Tractatus claim that ethics and aesthetics «sind eins» might entail. Secondly, it is checked if and how the conceptual consistency of the «being one» of ethics and aesthetics is transformed during the 1930s, to the point that it requires a different configuration: the metamor¬phosis of the logical unity between the two conceptual fields into an analogical affinity. Analyzing this conceptual metamorphosis the paper considers also the idea of an asymmetry of the aesthetic over the ethical as already evident, despite appearances, in the 1929 Lecture on Ethics. This asymmetry is then developed focusing the image of grammatical mechanism with its degrees of freedom of which Wittgensteins writes from 1930. In connection with this image the author outlines finally the idea of an aesthetic mechanism arising from primitive reactions and strictly related with the genesis of language games. (shrink)

In the penultimate remark of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus Wittgenstein declares that anyone who understands him judges the book to be nonsense. The immediate reaction to this paradoxical statement is to reject the insights of the book that this assessment is based on; that is, to reject the book’s theories of logic and language. Commentators have tried to save the book’s fundamental philosophical ideas by blocking this immediate response. In this thesis I characterise and explore different attempts to do so. I (...) discuss attempts of Russell, Carnap, Max Black, Malcolm, Hacker’s Ineffability interpretation and Conant’s Therapeutic interpretation. I argue that the Therapeutic reading is the most promising attempt in its main ideas. Nonetheless, current versions of the Therapeutic readings do not seem successful. I borrow ideas from Grice’s pragmatic theory of conversation and Davidson’s account of metaphor to explain how the book is to be read therapeutically. I argue that the book is a long conversation between Wittgenstein and his audience which eventually turns out to be a pointless series of remarks. The book, however, works metaphorically in such a way that it affects its readers and helps them to divest themselves of the inclination to do philosophy. (shrink)

This thesis focuses on 'New' or 'Resolute' readings of Wittgenstein's work, early and later, as presented in the work of, for instance, Cora Diamond and James Conant. One of the principal claims of such readings is that, throughout his life, Wittgenstein held an 'austere' view of nonsense. That view has both a trivial and a non-trivial aspect. The trivial aspect is that any string of signs could, by appropriate assignment, be given a meaning, and hence that, if such a string (...) is nonsense, that will be because we have failed to make just such an assignment. The non-trivial aspect is this: that there is no further, non-trivial story to be told, and so nonsense is only ever a matter of our failure to give signs a meaning. Hence, too, logically speaking, all nonsense is on a par. That view, both of nonsense and of Wittgenstein, has attracted a great deal of controversy. It is particularly controversial in relation to Wittgenstein's 'Tractatus', where Wittgenstein famously declares, in the penultimate remark, that the reader is to recognise Wittgenstein's own elucidatory propositions there as nonsensical, and must eventually throw them away in coming to understand Wittgenstein himself. I defend the austere view and its attribution to Wittgenstein, early and later, against a number of exegetical and substantial criticisms put forward by, for instance, Peter Hacker, Hans-Johann Glock and Adrian Moore. (shrink)

There are historically three main trends in understanding Wittgenstein's Tractatus. The first is the interpretation offered by the Vienna Circle. They read Wittgenstein as arguing that neither metaphysical nor normative propositions have any cognitive meaning, and thus are to be considered nonsense. This interpretation understands Wittgenstein as setting the limits of sense, and prescribing that nothing of substantive philosophical importance lies beyond that line. The second way of reading the Tractatus, which has became popular since the 1950s, is the interpretation (...) which most currently accept as the early Wittgenstein's view; for this reason I refer to it as the 'standard reading.' According to this interpretation, Wittgenstein did not consider metaphysical and ethical discourse as nonsense. Rather, relying upon the distinction between saying [sagen] and showing [zeigen], he meant that these truths cannot be uttered, but instead are only shown. The standard reading can perhaps be best understood in contrast with the third interpretation, dubbed the "resolute reading." The resolute reading takes seriously Wittgenstein's remark at 6.54 that "[m]y propositions are elucidatory in this way: he who understands me finally recognizes them as nonsense [unsinnig]." According to the resolute interpretation, Wittgenstein is not advancing a series of philosophical theses in the Tractatus. Rejecting the distinction characteristic of standard readings, between propositions without sense [sinnlos] and just plain nonsense [unsinnig], these interpreters read Wittgenstein as treating ethical and metaphysical inquiry, as well as a bulk of the doctrines in the text, as nonsense. To them, Wittgenstein did not intend to put forth any theses in the the text. Instead his methodology is therapeutic, similar to the later philosophy. It In this essay I explain each interpretation, and evaluate them in terms of textual and philosophical viability. I conclude by arguing that the biases which exist in the tradition of analytic philosophy substantively temper the interpretation of historical texts, which ultimately leads to the fundamental distinction between these three interpretations. (shrink)

This thesis sketches an interpretation of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus centering on his treatment of necessity and normativity. The purpose is to unite Wittgenstein’s account of logic and language with his brief remarks on ethics by stressing the transcendental nature of each. Wittgenstein believes that both logic and ethics give necessary preconditions for the existence of language and the world, and because these conditions are necessary, neither logic nor ethics can be normative. I conclude by erasing the standard line drawn between his (...) philosophy and his ethics, and redrawing it between the philosophical and artistic presentations of his thought, the latter being what remains after the nonsensical status of the work is recognized. (shrink)