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"Philosophy should be done as a form of poetry"
Near as I can figure out, what Perloff is attempting to accomplish in this book has to do with an examination of the "ordinary language" poetics of the twentieth century. Professor Perloff sees Wittgenstein as the "natural ally" of poets and artists via "the curious collision of the mystical with actual language practices". An attempt at a Wittgensteinian overlay (language games, ordinary language) on such diverse writers as Gertrude Stein, Beckett, on through to the so-called language poets, seems to be the basis for this vague and misty book.

Elaborating upon the dimensions of Wittgenstein's language games as they are seemingly manifest in the writings of Stein, Beckett, two obscure Austrian writers (Bachmann and Bernhard), among others, Perloff gives us her take on Wittgenstein's assertion that "Philosophy ought really be written only as a form of poetry".

Unfortunately, the vague and tenuous linkages of his influence upon the above named writers is just not plausible. The turgid writing style, along with a thesis that does not hang together, make this book a good example of the sterility of the academic mind-set. A very disappointing read, indeed.

A much better and enlightening read is Ray Monk's biography of Wittgenstein - his influence as it has been disseminated in the second half of the twentienth century is cogently presented there.

Perloff's book breaks down as follows:
Chapter 1: About the Tractatus; Chapter 2: About The Philosophical Investigations; Chapter 3: About Gertrude Stein; Chapter 4: About Samuel Beckett; Chapter 5: About Bernhard & Bachmann; Chapter 6: About Language Poetics.

The Cloud Reckoner

Extracts: A Field Guide for Iconoclasts

the ordinariness of perloff's thinking
i've been consistently disappoint with perloff: her writing merely confirms the opinion one might hold after a first reading. these are not extraodinary thoughts if you please. in term of ladder drill's deleuzian musings (poor fellow, procrastinating grad student) perhaps uni and bivalence should be replaced by wittgenstein's own contextual emphasis: a polyvalence which exists fully in pragmatic usage but is institutionalized (territorialized) as stagnant grammatical catergories, which 'poetic' usage then transgresses (master-slave, deterritorialization whatever). in terms of repetition and institutionalization, i think any serious thinking through poetic site needs a more thorough model of meaning/signification that acknowledges speech, where reiteration is polyvalent simultaneously with its capacity for univalent recognition within official discourses.whether we'd like to think this through with simple shifters, wittgenstein's pattern of substitution, or a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose is your choice... the simplification of communication/language/speech/whatever into ordinary/poetic doesn't even start to do the question justice.(as some people's idiolectical adoption testifies to quite nicely) cheers.

Ladder Drills
While I found myself largely indifferent to Marjorie Perloff's Wittgenstein's Ladder, it did prompt me to ask a particular question: Can one plausibly conclude that there is a certain reflexive property to language as it is used in both ordinary and poetic modes?That is, if it is the case, as Perloff argues, that the poetic use of ordinary language estranges one from its mundanity, is the reverse also true?Does the poetic use of language estrange one from ordinary use?Is it possible that a singular attention to the practical/utilitarian value of language effectively render one purblind to its inherent strangeness, which poetic use brings to the fore?I found this to be the fundamental concern of her work, although it appears that, in the absence of any definitive conclusion concerning the preeminence of ordinary language and the parasitism of poetical language upon it (or vice versa), Perloff maintains that the distinction is ultimately a matter of preference.
To see the above uncertainty regarding the relative primacy of ordinary language over poetic language (or vice versa), as Perloff does, is to accept this uncertainty as constitutive of the inherently aporetic nature of language, particularly semantics.In other words, prior to, during, and long after its instantiation within a given utterance, every word possesses a bivalent potentiality: a certain equal "suitability" toward either ordinary or poetic usage.Thus a word's semantic value within a particular utterance is ultimately a matter of divining the strategy of the speaker in employing that word.This problem, becomes a problem of other minds, then, and not a problem of language.However, I wonder if it is possible return the problem to one of language itself.In the interest of so doing, I offer the following hypothesis: Instead of ascribing to a word a particular semiological bivalency, one should regard a word as essentially univalent, and that singular valence is its ordinary signification.Poetic use thus becomes not a particular mode of employment but a method of destruction, specifically the destruction of ordinary, singular semantic value.Thus what one sees in poetry is not the quantum movement of semantic value from one valence to another, but the ordinary semantic value of a word at its point of obliteration.
I realize of course that this hypothesis is completely debatable, yet I believe that it might be useful, if treated provisionally.I do not claim that the univalent nature of a word is a transcendental, a-historical cohesion of sign, signifier and signified; rather, the univalent nature of a word emerges from a statistical aggregate of repeated usage, which later becomes conventionally and institutionally recognized.This evolution transpires over time, and thus the univalent semantic value is also bound up in time; the value resolves and dissolves, and in the interim achieves a relative fixity for a particular duration, which emerges from a complex interaction of "bottom-up" decentralized self-organization and "top-down" strategic intervention.Absolutely essential to the hypothesis above is a certain epistemological adjustment: i.e., instead of seeing the semantic value as "fixed," one must regard it as in a state of deceleration asymptotically approaching zero velocity, which thus gives the impression of fixity.Statistical aggregation around a mean usage invites a normative assessment, which later becomes conventional-cum-institutional usage, at the level of analysis of the latter, the sign becomes fixed-it reaches it velocity asymptotically closest to zero-and thus becomes "fixed" for a time.Therefore, if the speaker's use of the word is contemporaneous with the institutional semantic univalence of the word, and if the speaker employs this word with no pretense to poetic expression, then the word's significance is univalent.For instance, my ordinary use of the word "software" in a conversation with a member of technical support at Apple Computers is quite unambiguous, because I exist at a time when the word "software'-a word that has only recently "shed" its neologistic "skin"-is an institutional signifier denoting a particular signified: the body of code that enables my computer to perform certain functions.
A word's poetic usage, then, does not exist a priori as an alternative semantic potentiality; rather, poetic use indicates a point of intervention where a countersignifying force is applied to the word, which accelerates it so violently and abruptly that the instantaneous increase of momentum gained by the word obliterates the assemblages appended to it by the abstract machine.Therefore, the aporia instantiated by poetic usage is none other than that word's deterritorialization as a result of the countersignifying violence done to it.However, every deterritorialization of a sign is followed by its reterritorialization.Analysis of a sign's poetic usage thus becomes a matter of locating/discovering "the site" of its reterritorialization.

An Easy Climb
This is an engaging, down-to-earth book about the connections between Wittgenstein's aphoristic philosophy and some of the 20th-century writers who've followed his lead up the 'ladder of the ordinary.'Perloff's at her best with the close readings of difficult writers like Stein, Beckett and Creeley, who magically flower into comprehensibility under her sharp attention and good sense.

The authors she chooses to illustrate Wittgenstein's influence seemed a little arbitrary to me though.She admits that Beckett and Stein didn't read Wittgenstein, and that Wittgenstein would probably have disliked their art.So why put them 'under his sign'?It makes more sense to me to see Wittgenstein as part of a wider generation who felt dissatisfied with the pre-war language they'd inherited.With later poets like Silliman and Waldrop, who explicitly cite Wittgenstein's writings as an inspiration, I think Perloff misses what separates them from Wittgenstein:he had no earlier model to cite.Wittgenstein's faith in ordinary language led to a manner of writing and thinking that was largely self-sufficient--an interested reader can dive right in and think through the problems for herself.His more allusive postmodern heirs rely to a large extent on your prior knowledge of texts like Wittgenstein's for their effects.Where Wittgenstein himself struggled to keep his religious and hierarchical values in check through the discipline of ordinary language--concepts like beauty, God and the self seemed to have some meaning for him, you just couldn't talk about those meanings with language--later writers' easy acceptance of notions like a language game, the 'constructed self' and the fundamental indeterminacy of language seems to drain some of the drama from their writing.You don't feel the same struggle (or modesty) that you sense in Wittgenstein's open, user-friendly illustrations.Describing one of his poems, Ron Silliman writes:"Every sentence is supposed to remind the reader of his or her inability to respond."I can't imagine Wittgenstein saying something like that.

Still, the book is an interesting take on Wittgenstein and the poetic he unwittingly inspired.Well worth reading.

Perloff captures Wittgenstein's poetic insights.
Anyone interested in either Wittgenstein or poetry should read this book.It does a remarkably good job of both philosophical and literary analysis,making the case that poetry, like philosophy as conceived by Wittgenstein,embodies the curious collision of the mystical with the mundane which bestdemonstrates the limits of language.Tightly reasoned and methodical, thebook explains why Wittgenstein has had so much influence on aesthetic andethical projects of the Twentieth Century, and suggests why that willcontinue."The pursuit of the ordinary may well be the mostinteresting game in town." ... Read more

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The Routledge Philosophy GuideBooks painlessly introduce students to the classic works of philosophy. Each GuideBook considers a major philosopher and a key area of their philosophy by focusing on an important text - situating the philosopher and the work in an historical context, considering the text in question and assessing the philosopher's contribution to contemporary thought. Wittgenstein is the most influential twentieth century philosopher in the English-speaking world. In the Philosophical Investigations, his most important work, he introduces the famous "private language argument" which changed the whole philosophical view of language. Wittgenstein and the Philosophical Investigations introduces and assesses: * Wittgenstein's life, and its connection with his thought * the text of the Philosophical Investigations * the importance of Wittgenstein's work to contemporary philosophy. ... Read more

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Completely revised throughout, Culture and Value is a selection from Wittgenstein's notebooks -- on the nature of art, religion, culture, and the nature of philosophical activity. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

An essential volume
I really had no desire to write a "review" here -- until I read the other one on this page. Unless you are interested solely in the Wittgenstein who wrote on mathematics and logic, and if you are a reader who is primarily attracted to philosophy as it was practiced until the 20th century -- this is a book for you. Wittgenstein always has something interesting to say about religion, about being Jewish, about music -- well, the list could be lengthened almost indefinitely. I would recommend this book to anyone who desires a deeper knowledge of the past century's most acute philosophic mind. "Culture and Value" is one of my bedside books. (Heidegger resides in my basement.)

Minor work by our greatest psychologist
This is Wittgenstein's leastinteresting book, being onlyrandom notesdealing with art, music, religion and other areasof culture,taken from hisnotebooks over the course of hislife.But W is never dull and it's a measure ofthe awe in whichhe is held that this book was even published. I can't imagine publishing such a book by anyone else,--certainly no philosopher.
Those interested in W should go to nearly any of the other 20,000 odd pages of his works (butNOTthe Tractatus!)- but those with little acquaintance be forewarned, though W may seem a shallow tepid pool, if you jump in you may never stop swimming.You might wish to consult my other reviews such as that of Hofstadter's "I am a strange loop" for detailed comments on W and his revelations on language, thought and reality.Nearly all of W's writings are contained on a searchable CD issued by Blackwell and available for about $100 from Intelex while his vast and largely untranslated nachlass costs about $1000 on CD and another $1000 for the CD's with images of the 20,000 odd pages of the original manuscripts.However, like hundreds of other psychology books, they are also available via interlibrary loan or on p2p.
AlthoughI've never seen anyone say so, W was a history making pioneer in cognitive and evolutionary psychology--the first person (and arguably one of the few to this day!) to see the structure of our innate intentional psychology.As a philosopher (armchair psychologist), all of his research was thought experiments and introspection.It is an easily defensible view that he is the greatest natural psychologist to date and nobody has ever matched his talent for describing the mind at work.
Nearly all the meatiest items from his papers have been culled for other works, and mostly the dregs remain for this book, butI have selected a few comments that seemedto me of generalphilosophical interest.
``There is no religious denomination in which the misuse of metaphysicalexpressions has been responsible for so much sin as it has in mathematics.``
``People say againandagain that philosophy doesn't really progress, that we are still occupied with the same philosophical problems as were the Greeks.But the people who say this don't understand why is has to be so. It is because our language has remainedthe sameand keeps seducing us into asking the same questions.As longas there continues to be a verb 'to be'that looksas if itfunctionsin the same way as 'to eat' and 'to drink',as long as we stillhavethe adjectives 'identical', 'true','false','possible',as long as we continueto talk ofa river of time, of an expanse of space, etc., etc., peoplewill keepstumbling over the samepuzzlingdifficulties andfind themselves staring atsomethingwhich no explanationseemscapable of clearing up. And what's more,this satisfies a longing for the transcendent, because, insofar as people think they can see `the limits ofhuman understanding',they believe of course thatthey can see beyondthese.``

``Philosophersoften behave like little children who scribble some marks onapiece of paper at random and then ask the grown-up'whatsthat?`It happenedlike this: the grown-up had drawn picturesfor the childseveral times and said`this is a man', 'thisis a house',etc.And then thechild makes some marks too and asks `whatsthis then?'

'' A curiousanalogycould be based on the fact that even the hugesttelescopehasto have an eyepiece no bigger than the human eye.''

''The power of language has to make everything look the same, whichis mostglaringly evident in the dictionary and which makes thepersonification of timepossible: something no less remarkable than wouldhave been making divinities ofthe logical constants.``

``Philosophers say 'after death a timeless state will begin', or:'at deatha timeless state begins', and do not notice that they haveusedthewords'after', and 'it'and 'begins' in a temporalsense and thattemporality isembedded in theirgrammar.``

''Thequeer resemblance betweena philosphical investigation and(perhapsespecially in mathematics) an aesthetic one. (E.g., what isbadabout thisgarment,how should it be, etc.).

''Unshakeablefaith (E.g.,in a promise). Is it any less certain thanbeingconvinced of a mathematical truth? -But does that make the languagegames anymore alike?''

``Nothing ismore importantfor teaching us to understand theconcepts wehavethan toconstruct fictitious ones.``

``It'sonly bythinking even more crazily than philosophers do thatyoucan solve their problems.``

``Ambitionis the deathof thought.``
... Read more

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Ludwig Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations presents his own distillation of two decades of intense work on the philosophies of mind, language and meaning. When first published in 1953, it immediately entered the center of philosophical debate, and achieved a classic status it has retained ever since. This revised German-English edition is published on the fiftieth anniversary of Wittgenstein's death. It incorporates final revisions by G. E. M. Anscombe (1919 - 2001) to her original English translation. No distribution rights for this book is available outside the USA and North America. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (12)

Stop Carping
While this edition does not solve all problems, no edition could. It is a beautiful piece of work. This is one of the great philosophical books of all time having changed philosophy and culture as well. The book was intended to put an end to academic philosophy which is one reason that it has divided academicians into two camps - religious followers and those who despise the book. But you have to read it for yourself to be even within the domain of literate. It is a well written collection of sometimes aphoristic remarks, many of which have crept into literature and even scientific thought. Brilliantly original, highly readable and certain to change the way you think.Philosophical Investigations: The German Text, with a Revised English Translation 50th Anniversary Commemorative Edition

A sea change in philosophy
Wittgenstein's importance to philosophy has, paradoxically, been overstated and understated at the same time.
It is overstated when individuals attach themselves to particular arguments and use them to justify dubious claims - and, I might add, this is what happens more often than not.Half understood, some of these arguments seem to carry a weight that they do not have, and muddy things up more than they help.
But understood in its entirety, W.'s philosophy is the most powerful and innovative (and I would say, correct) philosophy in recent times.

The key text.
Thisd just is the key text of 20th century philosophy. Written in aphoristic style and heavily reactive to the conversation between Frege Russell and the early Wittgenstein that gave birth to contemporary analytic philosophy it is a must read (in company with some of the texts from those three authors). Nobody should remain unchanged in their thinking by reading and striving to understand this work.

3 stars only for 50th Anniversary edition
Just a few comments on this 50th anniversary--supposedly FINAL--edition of the translation:
1) After 50 years Anscombe STILL did not fix the snafu in section 412 where she forgot to translate a parenthetical.She was informed of this in the 1950's!
2) To change the translation of "Lebensform" from "form of life" to "life-form" after all these years is unnecessary and stupid.It rings too much of biology and Star Trek.
3) To change the pagination, by which all references to Part II and inserts to Part I have been made for 50 years, is an unnecessary bother.
4) The translation has NEWLY-INTRODUCED typos in sections 38, 41, 47, and then I stopped counting.How is this an improvement?
Please bring the older editions back in print!

Nice Version of a Contemporary Classic
Originally published in 1953 the `Philosophical Investigations' was the latter of Wittgenstein's two influential philosophical texts (the Tractatus being the offer).This Fiftieth Anniversary edition provides the original German text and Anscombe's English translation on opposing pages.

The Investigations is widely considered to be one of the most influential philosophical texts of the last century.Although it touches on a range of issues including logic and philosophy of the mind it is largely focused on issues pertaining to the philosophy of language.That said, I share the view that Wittgenstein is difficult to categorize - in many ways he stands outside the mainstream of philosophy.

I have occasionally heard it said that Wittgenstein is appealing and accessible to non-philosophers.Undoubtedly this will vary from reader to reader, however, I think a good understanding of the philosophical questions of the time is essential to getting the most out of Wittgenstein - he spends little time framing the issues under discussion and without this background many of his musings may seem meaningless.

From a historic perspective this is one of the most important works in twentieth century philosophy, on a more basic level it is a choppy and poorly constructed work.I struggle with Wittgenstein, sometimes viewing him as trivial other times as profound.Clearly, many great thinkers are in the latter camp, as are ironically many neophytes who want to appear as if they understand Wittgenstein.

Overall, this is an excellent edition of a modern day classic - an essential addition to any serous student's library.I would not, however, recommend this as an entry point to the world of philosophy.

... Read more

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This third volume of the monumental commentary on Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations covers sections 243-427, which constitute the heart of the book.Like the previous volumes, it consists of philosophical essays and exegesis. The thirteen essays cover all the major themes of this part of Wittgenstein's masterpiece: the private language arguments, privacy, avowals and descriptions, private ostensive definition, criteria, minds and machines, behavior and behaviorism, the self, the inner and the outer, thinking, consciousness, and the imagination. The exegesis clarifies and evaluates Wittgenstein's arguments, drawing extensively on all the unpublished papers, examining the evolution of his ideas in manuscript sources and definitively settling many controversies about the interpretation of the published text.This commentary, like its predecessors, is indispensable for the study of Wittgenstein and is essential reading for students of the philosophy of mind.A fourth and final volume, entitled Wittgenstein: Mind and Will will complete the commentary. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

insight and no illusion!
Denise la Sala, Dr Hacker will have your guts for a necktie! This is an important work which exposes the many underlying confusions of contemporary philosophy of mind. Our willingness to cleave to a picture of language which wrongly sees all sentences as descriptions leads to profound misunderstandings, which are uncovered here with devastating clarity. A must for anyone who wishes to be shown the way out of the fly bottle!

A work that will no doubt please the self-important...
... Wittgenstein intelligentsia. The author is so arrogant and pretentious that in one section he proposes to overthrow the empirical discipline of cognitive science by examining the English grammar of the word "mind". If the brain is truly not the organ of thinking, as you claim, Mr. Hacker; then I suppose it shall come as no insult to you that I believe *your* mental processes would suffer no loss even if said organ were removed from your skull. This book is trash and should not be read by anyone. ... Read more

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This electronic version of Wittgenstein's Nachlass includes a complete facsimile and transcription (without translations) of the philosopher's writings as catalogued by von Wright in his 1982 publication The Wittgenstein Papers. This is the most accurate collection of the Nachlass transcriptions and the CD-ROM allows you to search for subjects of interest with speed and ease. ... Read more

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This book explores Wittgenstein's long engagement with the work of the pragmatist William James.In contrast to previous discussions, Russell Goodman argues that James exerted a distinctive and pervasive positive influence on Wittgenstein's thought. He shows that both share commitments to anti-foundationalism, to the description of the concrete details of human experience, and to the priority of practice over intellect. Considering in detail what Wittgenstein learnt from his reading of William James, Goodman provides considerable evidence for Wittgenstein's claim that he is saying "something that sounds like pragmatism." ... Read more

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In 1933 Ludwig Wittgenstein revised a manuscript he had compiled from his 1930-1932 notebooks, but the work as a whole was not published until 1969, as Philosophische Grammatik. This first English translation clearly reveals the central place Philosophical Grammar occupies in Wittgenstein's thought and provides a link from his earlier philosophy to his later views. ... Read more

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the limits of language
certain other reviewers of this book may have missed the point. Not that it isn't okay to miss the point from time to time, Sometimes it's a good thing to miss the point, but its not very useful in a book review. The short reason as to why this book is worth reading is because it was edited by Rush Rhees who has a different point of view on Wittgenstein than many of his other literary executors which is worth being exposed to. The mid-sized reason is that this is "Middle Period" Wittgenstein, and it is interesting to watch a great mind question itself in the way that Wittgenstein is beginning to do here. The long reason is that there are ideas here that are referenced in the Late Wittgenstein and which shed light on the ideas Wittgenstein comes to in On Certainty, Philosophical Investigations, and Zettel.

So in short, pay no attention to reviewers who lack the background to understand what this book is for, or who don't know how to read a book like this. If you've not yet been exposed to Wittgenstein, don't start here. Read Philosophical Investigations and On Certainty first. Read the Blue and Brown Books. Browse through Zettel and Philosophical Remarks. Those all contain a more cohesive picture of the man's thought. For people with some background on Wittgenstein looking for more to ponder, well, that's what I got from this book. And it's valuable.

Typical philosophy
Once feature of this book that is always fascinating is that one can take any paragraph in it and generate a plethora of ideas and commentary, that might even fill volumes. This book is not unique in that regard, but in fact most books of philosophy have this characteristic. They allow the mind to go forth untamed and engage in speculations that are unconstrained by experience or laboratory experiments. Philosophical reasoning is to be distinguished therefore by its freedom to say and write what it pleases, unlike the case for scientific reasoning, which is highly constrained by observation and experiment. There are some interesting points made in this book, some of them having intersection with what is now going on in artificial intelligence, computational grammar, and linguistics. Readers can also gain insight into the school of logical atomism, which the author was of course very much a part of.

The book is organized as a collection of disjointed paragraphs, which little or no correlation between them. Many of them are quite interesting and thought-provoking, especially if read in the context of the field of artificial intelligence. It is doubtful though that any of these ideas could be refined in such a way as to make them useful in the goal of building thinking machines. They are just too loosely structured to be codified in a language that would run on a machine. Speculative ideas unfortunately are like that. The ideas in the book might perhaps though put one in a certain frame of mind that would permit more acceptance of various claims made in artificial intelligence. Conversely, it might very well increase the doubt on those claims. Such is the nature of philosophical grammar: its expressive power and rich information content permits a wide range of interpretations.

philosophical grammar
like all his workslogic is the most remarkable issue ... Read more

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This first volume of Wittgenstein's "Last Writings on the Philosophy of Psychology" was written between October 1948 and March 1949, when the philosopher had moved to Dublin and was having one of his most fruitful working periods. He then finished work which he had begun in 1946 and which in its entirety constitutes the source material for Part II of the "Philosophical Investigations". When, later in 1949, Wittgenstein composed the manuscript for Part II he selected more than half the remarks for it from the Dublin manuscript. This material is a direct continuation of the writings which make up the two volumes of the "Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology". ... Read more

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Wittgenstein and Fin-de-Siecle Vienna
This book is a follow-up to Janik and Toulmin's earlier study, "Wittgenstein's Vienna".Unlike the earlier book, this book consists of a series of essays which are loosely connected by some transitional passages and melded into a book.In spite of its somewhat patchwork character, this book is a good study of Vienna and the influence of its writers, psychologists, and composers on Wittgenstein.A major goal of the book is to place Wittgenstein's thought in the context of European culture and thought rather than seeimg him solely within the context of the English (and American) analytical philosophy which he influenced profoundly.

Of the twelve chapters in the book, the first six have little to do with an analysis of Wittgenstein's thought.Rather they consist of expositions of certain turn-of-the century Viennese thinkers.Chief of these, and probably the most fascinating figure in the book is Otto Weininger who wrote a book called "Sex and Character" at the age of 23 just before his suicide.Weininger is known as an influence on Wittgenstein.He is also remembered, when he is thought of at all, for his anti-feminism and anti-semitism.Janik attempts to capture something of the complexity of Weininger's thought by placing him in the Kantian tradition and as a practitioner of what Janik terms "critical modernism."

There are also good discussions in the first half of the book of Arnold Schoenberg and, surprisingly to me Jacques Offenbach.These composers are juxtaposed with Weininger for their critical, deflatonary tendency in art and thought.They are presented as challenging the tendencies of turn-of-century Vienna towards an entertainment, theatrical culture -- shades of the present.

The second half of the book deals more directly with Wittgenstein.It discusses the thought of the logical positivists, of the philosopher of science Hertz, the satirist Karl Kraus (the focus of the earlier "Wittgenstein's Vienna), Freud, and the Viennese poet Trakl.Here again, Janik does not analyze Wittgenstein's thought in detail.Instead, he takes certain broad themes suggested by Wittgenstein such as the distinction between saying and showing, "the mystical", the nature of religous experience, and the living of the everyday and shows possible sources of these themes in the thinkers he examines.The material is interesting and valuable, probably more for the light it casts on the thinkers Janik discusses than for the light it casts on Wittgenstein.

This is a good, difficult book about an important creative period in the early 20th Century and about an important and difficult 20th Century philosopher. ... Read more

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Ludwig Wittgenstein is one of the most important and influential philosophers of the twentieth century, but he is also one of the least accessible. This volume provides a comprehensible guide to his work by a wide range of experts who are actively engaged in new work on Wittgenstein. The essays, which are both expository and original, address central themes in his philosophy of mind, language, logic, and mathematics and clarify the connections among the different stages in the development of his work.Amazon.com Review
Visiting his student Ludwig Wittgenstein one night only tofind him in the throes of despair, Bertrand Russell facetiously askedwhether it was logic or his sins that was troubling him. "Both,"Wittgenstein gravely replied. Is it any wonder that Wittgenstein theman, as well as his elusive but profound philosophical work, continueto fascinate? "Any attempt at a definitive exposition of his ideaswould be doomed to failure," according to editor Hans Sluga;therefore, the Cambridge Companion to Wittgenstein is intendedmainly "to alert readers to some of the most important and mostinteresting issues raised in Wittgenstein's philosophical writings."For the most part, the 14 essays succeed.

With the exception of Thomas Ricketts's discussion of the TractatusLogico-Philosophicus, the focus of the essays is on Wittgenstein'slater work, particularly the Philosophical Investigations. Hisconception of philosophy is approached from various angles by RobertJ. Fogelin, Newton Garver, and Stanley Cavell. The format of Cavell'sessay--which consists of his lecture notes from the 1960s and 1970sinterspersed with afterthoughts from the 1990s--is somewhatirritating, but the depth of his insight makes up for it. Other essaysdeal with Wittgenstein's ideas about the philosophy of mathematics,ethics, necessity and normativity, the self, andepistemology. Especially worthy of attention is Donna M. Summerfield's"Fitting and Tracking: Wittgenstein on Representation." In explainingthe development of Wittgenstein's thought about representation,Summerfield also manages to sketch the philosophical problem ofrepresentation in careful and perspicacious detail. All in all, TheCambridge Companion to Wittgenstein is recommended to anyonegrappling with its enigmatic subject. --Glenn Branch ... Read more

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Essential Wittgenstein
As an introduction to making sense of Wittgenstein's work (and his contribution to 20th C. Philosophy), or as a scholarly apparatus, this is a superb collection of articles.It places the reader square in the middle of current discussion in Wittgenstein studies, and this anthology is a good entry into the threshold of that research.With this, you enter into a world of pain [I just had to say that.Somehow it is appropriate to juxtapose W. with quotes from the The Big Lebowski (a film)].

Wittgenstein is a difficult and at times obscure philosopher.However, this anthology and Crary's New W. (Routledge) makes the best case for W's relevance to the philosophy of math and the philosophy of mind.

Some of the more important articles included here are: Stern, "Availability of W's Philosophy," Cavell, "Notes and Afterthoughts," Stroud, "Mind, Meaning and Practice" (excellent), Sluga (on W's subjectivism), Fogelin, Ricketts on W's Tractatus, and the following figures on math and math necessity: Diamond, Gerrard, and Glock.

I highly recommend this anthology.I also recommend: Crary's New W; W. in America; McDowell's articles on rule-following; Stroud, Mind Meaning and Practice (Oxford UP); Dummett, Putnam, and Diamond's Realistic Spirit.Also see David Stern's book on W, as well as Diamond's Realistic Spirit.

A Window on Wittgenstein
Wittgenstein is considered among the most important philosophers of the 20th century, he is certainly among the most difficult.But he is also among the most worthwhile.He was concerned, among other matter, with the relationship of language to the world, of the ontological status of mind and consciousness, and of showing how language itself helped create false philosophical problems."When language takes a holiday," as Wittgenstein puts it, we can create all sorts of philosophical problems - the mind-body problem may be one of these if Wittgenstein is correct.

There are a number of good essays in this collection, but Hans Sulga's "Whose House is That?: Wittgenstein on the Self" may be the best.Sulga explores how Wittgenstein's analysis of language led him to a rejection of Cartesian substantialism - or the idea that consciousness, the soul, or the mind, was an immaterial substance - a "soul atamon" as Nietzsche would put it - tethered to a physical body and capable of existing independently of that body.But Wittgenstein also rejected opposing views such as materialism, behaviorism, and reductionism as well.Indeed, he shows how such opposing camps actually share some of the same underlying assumptions.All this leads Wittgenstein to a radical and important new way of understanding subjectivity.For those interested in an accessible introduction to Wittgenstein's thinking on these matters this volume is a good place to start - particularly Sulga's essay. ... Read more