This wide-ranging collection of essays contains eighteen original articles by authors representing some of the most important recent work on Wittgenstein. It deals with questions pertaining to both the interpretation and application of Wittgenstein's thought and the editing of his works. Regarding the latter, it also addresses issues concerning scholarly electronic publishing. The collection is accompanied by a comprehensive introduction which lays out the content and arguments of each contribution. Contributors: Knut Erik Tranøy, Lars Hertzberg, Georg Henrik von Wright, Marie McGinn, Cora Diamond, James Conant, David G. Stern, Eike von Savigny, P.M.S. Hacker, Hans-Johann Glock, Allan Janik, Kristóf Nyíri, Antonia Soulez, Brian McGuinness, Anthony Kenny, Joachim Schulte, Herbert Hrachovec, Cameron McEwen..
Wittgenstein and the relation between life and philosophy / Knut Erik Tranøy -- Trying to keep philosophy honest / Lars Hertzberg -- Remarks on Wittgenstein's use of the terms "sinn", "sinnlos", "unsinnig", "wahr", and "gedanke" in the Tractatus / Georg Henrik von Wright -- Wittgenstein's early philosophy of language and the idea of 'the single great problem' / Marie McGinn -- Peter Winch on the Tractatus and the unity of Wittgenstein's philosophy / Cora Diamond -- Wittgenstein's later criticism of the Tractatus / James Conant -- How many Wittgensteins? / David G. Stern -- Taking avowals seriously: the soul a public afffair / Eike von Savigny -- Of knowledge and of knowing that someone is in pain / P.M.S. Hacker -- Wittgenstein and history / Hans-Johann Glock -- Impure reason vindicated / Allan Janik -- Wittgenstein's philosophy of pictures / Kristóf Nyíri -- A case of early Wittgenstein dialogism: stances on the impossibility of "red and green in the same place" / Antonia Soulez -- Wittgenstein: philosophy and literature / Brian McGuinness -- A brief history of Wittgenstein editing / Anthony Kenny -- What is a work by Wittgenstein? / Joachim Schulte -- Evaluating the Bergen Electronic Edition / Herbert Hrachovec -- Wittgenstein in digital form: perspectives for the future / Cameron McEwen.
Ferdinand Ebner is next to Ludwig Wittgenstein the most important Austrian philosopher of language in the 20th century. In his main work Das Wort und die geistigen Realitäten. Pneumatologische Fragmente Ebner produces a new form of anthropology, which is based on a dialogic orientated understanding of human beings. Beside his philosophical works Ebner wrote many letters and diaries. One of the 14 existing diaries is the so-called "Mohlauer Tagebuch" from the 23rd of July to the 28 th of August 1920, which is kept on the "Brenner Archiv" in Innsbruck together with the philosophical texts and the letters. In this diary Ebner writes about his stay in Mühlau, a village near Innsbruck, where he was a guest of Ludwig von Ficker for one month and which was the beginning of a long friendship with the publisher of the Brenner. Ficker, who had already published some articles of Ebner in the Brenner, printed the Fragmente 1921, two years after Ebner wrote them. In this way Ficker became the publisher, promoter and friend of Ebner. According to some passages of the diary, Ebner experienced in Ficker a kind of acceptance and security, which he did not know before. This feeling of well-being is also a part of the deep impressions of nature, which Ebner got on many walks through the surrounding of Innsbruck. Although he was a thinker, who always emphasized the meaning of the word, these impressions showed him the limits of language. Ebner's basic opinions are presentated very clearly in his meetings with different members of the Brenner-circle and in the confrontation with the intellectual movements of the time. An example are his talks with Paul Bargehr about Buddhism, who was newly rediscovered in Europe in those days. Ebner understood the good will of Bargehr, but he cannot accept Buddhism as a solution for the big problems of the Europeans. In spite of Ebners turn to Christianity some years before the diary also shows the difficulties in the relation between Ebner and the Catholic church. Of special interest is Ebner's meeting with the painter Erich Lechleitner. In front of Lechleitner's pictures he has doubts about his radical pessimism concerning art and culture.
The text of the diary is followed by a commentary, which explains the biographical, literary, philosophical, historical, etc. connections of passages in the diary. The three essays following the commentary give an overview of Ebners biographical, philosophical and cultural background. Monika Seekircher's essay includes a short biography of Ebner and describes the most important personal relations in his life as well as his intellectual developement. Richard Hörmann tries to show the connections between the diary and the Fragmente, because many entries of the diary can only be understood on the basis of the main thoughts of the Fragmente. The topic of Walter Methlagl's essay is the local cultural context, in which the diary is embedded. Special attention is given to the intellectual movements within the Brenner-circle. The numerous photos depict persons, who are mentioned in the diary, places as they then looked and the pictures by painters named in the diary. - Ferdinand Ebner (1882-1931) ist neben Ludwig Wittgenstein der bedeutendste österreichische Sprachdenker des 20. Jahrhunderts. In seinem Hauptwerk Das Wort und die geistigen Realitäten. Pneumatologische Fragmente entwickelt Ebner eine neue Form von Anthropologie, die auf einem dialogisch geprägten Verständnis des Menschen basiert. Neben seinen philosophischen Schriften verfaßte Ebner aber auch unzählige Briefe und war zudem ein intensiver Tagebuchschreiber. Das sogenannte "Mühlauer Tagebuch" vom 23.7. bis 28.8.1920 ist eines von insgesamt 14 erhaltenen Tagebüchern Ebners, welche neben dem philosophischem Nachlaß und den Briefen am Brenner-Archiv aufbewahrt werden. In diesem Tagebuch schildert Ebner seinen einmonatigen Aufenthalt bei Ludwig von Ficker in Mühlau bei Innsbruck, der der Beginn einer jahrelangen Freundschaft ist. Ficker, der bereits einige Aufsätze Ebners in seiner Zeitschrift Der Brenner publiziert hat, läßt 1921 auch Ebners bereits 1919 fertiggestellte Fragmente im Brenner-Verlag erscheinen. So wird Ficker Ebners Verleger, Förderer und Freund. Aus mehreren Tagebucheintragungen geht hervor, daß Ebner bei Ficker eine Akzeptanz und Freundlichkeit erfährt, die ihm bisher fremd waren. Dieses für Ebner so seltene Gefühl des Wohlbefindens erfährt er auch bei seinen zahlreichen Spaziergängen mit Ficker, die zu intensiven Naturerlebnissen führen, sodaß Ebner, der die Bedeutung des Wortes immer wieder betont, auch Grenzen der sprachlichen Möglichkeiten wahrnimmt. Ebners geistige Einstellung tritt ganz klar und markant in der Begegnung mit verschiedenen Persönlichkeiten aus dem Brenner-Kreis und in der Auseinandersetzung mit den verschiedenen geistigen Strömungen zu dieser Zeit hervor. So wird er z.B. in der Person von Paul Bargehr mit dem Buddhismus konfrontiert, dem gegenüber er sich wenn auch nicht verständnislos so doch skeptisch äußert. Immer wieder zeigt sich auch seine Ablehnung der katholischen Amtskirche trotz seiner erst einige Jahre zuvor erfolgten Hinwendung zum Christenturn. Besonders interessant ist Ebners Begegnung mit dem Maler Erich Lechleitner. Angesichts seiner Bilder gerät er in einen Zwiespalt mit seinem eigenen rigorosen Kulturpessimismus.
Dem Tagebuchtext folgt ein Einzelstellenkommentar, in dem biographische, literarische, philosophische, historische u.a. Anspielungen geklärt werden. Die drei Aufsätze, die an den Einzelstellenkommentar anschließen, sind als Flächenkommentar zu verstehen, d.h. sie stellen eine breitere Form der Kommentierung dar, wobei der biographische, der philosophische und der kulturelle Hintergrund Ebners aufgezeigt wird. Monika Seekircher liefert eine etwas umfassendere Kurzbiographie Ebners, wobei neben Ebners Lebensdaten auch seine wichtigsten persönlichen Beziehungen und seine geistige Entwicklung kurz dargestellt werden. Richard Hörmann versucht in seinem Aufsatz, den Zusammenhang des Tagebuchs mit Ebners Fragmenten aufzuzeigen, da sehr viele Stellen des Tagebuchs nur vor dem Hintergrund der Fragmente richtig zu verstehen sind. Walter Methlagl bettet das Tagebuch in den lokalen kulturellen Kontext ein, wobei er insbesondere auf die geistigen Strömungen im Brenner-Kreis eingeht. Das umfangreiche Bildmaterial dient der Veranschaulichung und ermöglicht somit eine konkrete Vorstellung von den im Tagebuch erwähnten Personen, den Örtlichkeiten zu dieser Zeit und von den Bildern der im Tagebuch genannten Maler.
In this paper I highlight two opposing models of the notion of divine revelation: the propositional and the radical. The propositional understanding of revelation was central to theology and philosophy until the 19th century. Since then, a number of other models of revelation have emerged. I define as radical the understanding of revelation which emphasizes two features of revelation: 1) God's existence is *per se* revelatory; 2) God's revelation is *per se* self-revelation. I propose too an assessment of the notion of propositional revelation as presented by Richard Swinburne. And I offer detailed analyses of two representatives of the early understanding of divine revelation as self-revelation: the views of Bernard Bolzano and Anton Günther. Bolzano, the renowned mathematician, was also a philosopher of religion; and Günther, one of the most ingenious writers in Austrian philosophy, was not only a theologian but also a philosopher comparable to the important figures of 19th century German thought.
The article presents an attempt by one of the most interesting modern thinkers, the Austrian scientist Gerhard Oberhammer, to substantiate the possibility of a transcendental experience of meeting with God and the philosophical-hermeneutic objectification of this experience. Based on the traditions of Kant's transcendental philosophy and its hermeneutical interpretation by Karl-Otto Apel, Oberhammer also draws on the productive intentions of Karl Jaspers' concept of the "ciphers of the transcendent", experience as a person's being captured by Martin Heidegger and Emmanuel Levinas' hypostase. The article deals with a heuristic interpretation of these concepts for Oberhammer's explanation of the possibility of a transcendent experience as an experience of an absolute meeting of man with God. According to the Austrian philosopher and Indologist, the place of transcendent experience is the inner world of the subject, which is characterized by two main properties: depth and openness. The latter allows us to hope for the possibility of meeting with the other, but again, not outside the subject, but inside it, realizing the hidden structures of the inner world, as a world correlated with what is outside it. That is, according to Gerhard Oberhammer, the transcendent experience of the subject can be comprehended in its two interdependent moments related to the subject's situation, namely, the moment of its self-explanation and the moment of its correlation. The Austrian philosopher represents the religious subject as being in a constant self-overcoming of its limited isolation and finding its true essence, which implicitly contains both its depth and its correlation with the other, as its ability to accept this other into itself. The article substantiates the idea that the Austrian scientist builds his concept of religious and philosophical hermeneutics with a firm belief in its productivity and the possibility of using it for the analysis of any religion, since he focuses on universal transformations and events that occur in the life of a believer, regardless of the religious tradition to which he belongs.
Austrian philosopher Heinrich Gomperz attempted to reconcile the Vienna Circle's project of a unified science with the autonomy of historical knowledge. This article situates him in the context of the ongoing reassessment of the Vienna Circle in the history of philosophy. It argues that Gomperz's synthesis of positivism with historicity was a response to difficulties raised by Rudolf Carnap and Otto von Neurath. Gomperz achieved his reconciliation via a theory of language and action that had affinities with both neo-Kantian and pragmatist thought, combining Dilthey's hermeneutics with Carnap's requirements for scientific propositions.
Today, it is often forgotten that the socialist calculation debate of the 1920s and 1930s was not only about whether market societies were more economically efficient than planned ones; more crucially, Ludwig von Mises and his disciple Friedrich Hayek depicted economic planning as a threat to the moral and political order of "Western civilization." A planned economy, these early neoliberals argued, would override the "democracy of consumers" through which individuals registered their own preferences on the market and threaten individual freedom and social peace. This article argues that early neoliberal thinkers mobilized a racialized argument against economic planning, which they depicted as a threat from "the East" and a regression to a "primitive" pre-capitalist, egalitarian morality. Against this neoliberal argument, I retrieve the Austrian philosopher Otto Neurath's argument that a capitalist market economy is inherently violent and requires the suppression of non-market forms of life.
This article ponders, for the first time, the question of whether Austrian philosopher Franz Brentano (1838-1917) influenced the development of the school of Ukrainian philosophy. It employs Anna Brożek's methodology to identify philosophers' influence on one another (distinctions between direct and indirect influence, active and passive contact, etc.); concepts of institutional and ideological conditions of this influence are also considered. The article establishes, first, that many Ukrainian academics had institutional bonds with Brentano's students, especially Kazimierz Twardowski at the University of Lviv. Second, it identifies an ideological bond between Brentano and his hypothetical Ukrainian "academic grandsons." Particularly, a comparative analysis of works on the history of philosophy of Brentano and the Ukrainian Ilarion Svientsits'kyi (1876-1956) reveals that the latter took over Brentano'sa posteriori constructive method. These results allow to draw a conclusion about the existence of Ukrainian Brentanism, that not only brings new arguments into the discussion about the tradition of and prospects for the development of analytic (scientific) philosophy on Ukrainian ground, but also opens new aspects of the modernization of Ukrainian society in general (from the end of the nineteenth century to the present day).
Более 60 лет назад была опубликована работа австрийского философа Карла Поппера «Открытое общество и его враги», ставшая этапной для философско-политической мысли ХХ в. В статье рассматриваются ключевые положения данной концепции и их научная значимость. Цель статьи: исследовать значение теории Поппера для формирования современной парадигмы развития международных отношений. В заключении автор приходит к выводу о том, что К. Попперу удалось предвидеть, что итогом борьбы «открытого» и «закрытого» общества станет формирование современных модификаций авторитаризма и усиления их роли в политике. ; More than 60 years ago was published by the Austrian philosopher Karl Popper's the open society and its enemies», which became a turning point for the philosophical and political thought of XX century the article considers The key provisions of the concept and their scientific significance. The purpose of this article to explore the value of Popper's theory for formation of the modern paradigm of international relations. In conclusion, the author comes to the conclusion of K. Popper been anticipated: the result of the struggle of «open» and «closed» society is shaping the modern modifications of authoritarianism and the strengthening of their role in politics.
Celebrated today for his groundbreaking work in logic and the foundations of mathematics, Bernard Bolzano (1781-1848) was best known in his own time as a leader of the reform movement in his homeland (Bohemia, then part of the Austrian Empire). As professor of religious science at the Charles University in Prague from 1805 to 1819, Bolzano was a highly visible public intellectual, a courageous and determined critic of abuses in Church and State. Based in large part on a carefully argued utilitarian practical philosophy, he developed a non-violent program for the reform of the authoritarian institutions of the Empire, which he himself set in motion through his teaching and other activities. Rarely has a philosopher had such a great impact on the political culture of his homeland. This volume contains a substantial collection of Bolzano's writings on ethics and politics, translated into English for the first time. It includes a complete translation of the treatise On the Best State , his principal writings on ethics, an essay on the contemporary situation in Ireland, and a selection of his Exhortations, dealing with such topics as enlightenment, civil disobedience, the status of women, anti-Semitism and Czech-German relations in Bohemia. It will be of particular interest to students of central European philosophy and history, and more generally to philosophers and historians of ideas.
The aim of this paper is to review the possible influence of John Maynard Keynes, Frank Ramsey, Piero Sraffa and, through the latter, Antonio Gramsci, on the transition of the philosophical thought of Ludwig Wittgenstein. The work reconstructs, from specialized literature, the relationship of the Austrian philosopher with the economists he met at Cambridge and proposes that these may have permeated the philosophical work of Wittgenstein and, in particular, the way in which the anthropological perspective of the philosophical problems, possibly inspired by Gramsci and transmitted by Sraffa, was received and developed by Wittgenstein in his Philosophical Investigations, in the development of concepts such as form of life and language games. It is concluded that Gramsci's theories about hegemony and linguistic alienation bear a certain similarity to Wittgenstein's philosophy of everyday language. ; El artículo tiene por objeto revisar la posible influencia de John Maynard Keynes, Frank Ramsey, Piero Sraffa y, por intermedio de este último, Antonio Gramsci, sobre la transición del pensamiento filosófico de Ludwig Wittgenstein. El trabajo reconstruye, a partir de la literatura especializada, la relación del filósofo austriaco con los economistas que conoció en Cambridge y propone que estos pudieron haber permeado el quehacer filosófico de Wittgenstein y, en particular, la forma en que la perspectiva antropológica de los problemas filosóficos, posiblemente inspirada en Gramsci y transmitida por Sraffa, fue recibida y desarrollada por Wittgenstein en sus Investigaciones Filosóficas, en el desarrollo de conceptos como las formas de vida y los juegos del lenguaje. Se concluye que las teorías de Gramsci sobre la hegemonía y la alienación lingüística tienen cierta similitud con la propuesta de filosofía del lenguaje cotidiano de Wittgenstein.
"Written in code under constant threat of battle, Wittgenstein's searing and illuminating diaries finally emerge in this first-ever English translation. During the pandemic, Marjorie Perloff, one of our foremost scholars of global literature, found her mind ineluctably drawn to the profound commentary on life and death in the wartime diaries of eminent philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951). Upon learning that these notebooks, which richly contextualize the early stages of his magnum opus, the Tractatus-Logico-Philosophicus, had never before been published in English, the Viennese-born Perloff determinedly set about translating them. Beginning with the anxious summer of 1914, this historic, en-face edition presents the first-person recollections of a foot soldier in the Austrian Army, fresh from his days as a philosophy student at Cambridge, who must grapple with the hazing of his fellow soldiers, the stirrings of a forbidden sexuality, and the formation of an explosive analytical philosophy that seemed to draw meaning from his endless brushes with death. Much like Tolstoy's The Gospel in Brief, Private Notebooks takes us on a personal journey to discovery as it augments our knowledge of Wittgenstein himself"--
There is by now broad consensus in the critical literature that neoliberalism and social conservatism have frequently coexisted in practice. Yet the alt-right fits none of the previously identified alliances: this is not the neoliberal neoconservatism of the Reagan and Bush years, nor the neoliberal communitarianism of the Third Way, nor even a form of neoliberal authoritarianism. Instead, the alt-right claims intellectual descent from economic libertarianism, on the one hand, and paleo- (as opposed to neo-) conservatism on the other. This paper traces the contours of this 'paleolibertarian' alliance, first by following the volatile political trajectory of Murray Rothbard, the foremost philosopher of American libertarianism, and, second, by uncovering precedents in the longer history of the American far right. It will be argued that paleoconservatism makes for a uniquely powerful ally because it offers a workable response to libertarianism's intrinsic contradictions.