Post Analytic Tractatus

Post-Analytic Tractatus establishes Wittgenstein's early work in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus as an invaluable source for exploring current debate on analytic philosophy in its origins, history, limits and relations with European philosophy. Drawing together new work from the leading figures in interpretation of the Tractatus - Conant and Diamond - with work by respected Wittgenstein commentators such as Kremer and Hutto, together with a reprint of a relevant and striking text by Brouwer, this timely collection offers a valuable resource for exploring the Tractatus' connections to approaches other than logical positivism, mathematical logic and formal semantics. Examining links with the work of Leibniz, Kant, Kierkegaard, Schopenhauer, Frege, Russell, James, Heidegger and others, the contributors consider key themes in twentieth-century philosophy including symbols and expression, language and metaphysics, objects and signs, logical form, structure and syntax, limits of philosophical discourse, Idealism and transcendental arguments, distinguishing sense and nonsense, showing and saying in communication, mysticism and transcendence in experience, ethical and aesthetic value, the worlds of solipsism and religion, philosophy as an activity and as a system. Particularly timely in establishing the Tractatus as a source for comparable debates across Continental and Analytic philosophy, this collection will prove of value to scholars of twentieth-century philosophy, Wittgenstein, and Post-Analytic philosophy.

"Post-Analytic Tractatus establishes Wittgenstein's early work in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus as an invaluable source for exploring current debate on analytic philosophy in its origins, history, limits and relations with European philosophy. Drawing together new work from the leading figures in interpretation of the Tractatus - Conant and Diamond - with work by respected Wittgenstein commentators such as Kremer and Hutto, together with a reprint of a relevant and striking text by Brouwer, this timely collection offers a valuable resource for exploring the Tractatus' connections to approaches other than logical positivism, mathematical logic and formal semantics. Examining links with the work of Leibniz, Kant, Kierkegaard, Schopenhauer, Frege, Russell, James, Heidegger and others, the contributors consider key themes in twentieth-century philosophy including symbols and expression, language and metaphysics, objects and signs, logical form, structure and syntax, limits of philosophical discourse, Idealism and transcendental arguments, distinguishing sense and nonsense, showing and saying in communication, mysticism and transcendence in experience, ethical and aesthetic value, the worlds of solipsism and religion, philosophy as an activity and as a system. Particularly timely in establishing the Tractatus as a source for comparable debates across Continental and Analytic philosophy, this collection will prove of value to scholars of twentieth-century philosophy, Wittgenstein, and Post-Analytic philosophy."--Provided by publisher.

This is the first comparative study of the pioneering work on language of Ludwig Wittgenstein and Hans-Georg Gadamer.

Marie McGinn provides a clear and original interpretation of Wittgenstein's Tractatus and of its relation to Wittgenstein's later work. It is one of the most famous works of early analytic philosophy, the interpretation of which has always been a matter for controversy and is currently the focus of considerable philosophical debate.

The book focuses on how Wittgenstein and Gadamer treat language in their accounts of language as game and their major writings on the subject - Philosophical Investigations and Truth and Method, respectively. Chris Lawn goes on to offer a critique of Wittgenstein's account of linguistic rules, drawing upon Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics, particularly his emphasis upon tradition, temporality, historicality and novelty. The text demonstrates how paying attention to such elements - excluded by Wittgenstein's conception of rules - in fact strengthens Wittgenstein's position from a hermeneutical perspective. Finally, Wittgenstein and Gadamer investigates the possibility of connection between Wittgenstein's focus upon lexical particularity and Gadamer's greater concern for the universal and the general. A groundbreaking work of post-analytic philosophy, Wittgenstein and Gadamer brings the work of two major modern philosophers in to dialogue. It is required reading for anyone studying or researching the work of either philosopher, or the philosophy of language more generally.

Kevin M. Cahill reclaims one of Ludwig Wittgenstein's most passionately pursued endeavors: to reawaken a sense of wonder around human life and language and its mysterious place in the world. Following the philosopher's spiritual and cultural criticism and tying it more tightly to the overall evolution of his thought, Cahill frames an original interpretation of Wittgenstein's engagement with Western metaphysics and modernity, better contextualizing the force of his work. Cahill synthesizes several approaches to Wittgenstein's life and thought. He stresses the nontheoretical aspirations of the philosopher's early and later writings, combining key elements from the so-called resolute readings of the Tractatus with the "therapeutic" readings of Philosophical Investigations. Cahill shows how continuity in Wittgenstein's cultural and spiritual concerns informed if not guided his work between these texts, and in his reading of the Tractatus, Cahill identifies surprising affinities with Martin Heidegger's Being and Time—a text rarely associated with Wittgenstein's early formulations. In his effort to recapture wonder, Wittgenstein both avoided and undermined traditional philosophy's reliance on theory. As Cahill relates the steps of this bold endeavor, he forms his own innovative, analytical methods, joining historicist and contextualist approaches to text-based, immanent readings. The result is an original, sustained examination of Wittgenstein's thought.

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) has exerted a more powerful influence on current philosophy than any other twentieth-century thinker. Twelve contemporary philosophers explore the nature of this influence and why it has proved so enduring.

Analytic and Continental philosophy have become increasingly specialised and differentiated fields of endeavour. This important collection of essays details some of the more significant methodological and philosophical differences that have separated the two traditions, as well as examining the manner in which received understandings of the divide are being challenged by certain thinkers whose work might best be described as post-analytic and meta-continental. Together these essays offer a well-defined sense of the field, of its once dominant distinctions and of some of the most productive new areas generating influential ideas and controversy. In an attempt to get to the bottom of precisely what it is that separates the analytic and continental traditions, the essays in this volume compare and contrast them on certain issues, including truth, time and subjectivity. The book engages with a range of key thinkers from phenomenology, post-structuralism, analytic philosophy and post-analytic philosophy, examines the strengths and weaknesses of each tradition, and ultimately encourages enhanced understanding, dialogue and even rapprochement between these sometimes antagonistic adversaries.