Suggested Reading
In this book, I have focused almost exclusively on Wittgenstein’s two great works, the Tractatus and the Investigations. Many of his other writings have also been published since his death. All of his 20,000 pages of notebooks and drafts are available on CD-ROM, and much of that is freely available on-line at Wittgenstein Source (http://www.wittgensteinsource.org). Some 25 volumes of Wittgenstein’s work have been published in (paper) book form as well. But these two books should be the starting place for anyone wanting to study Wittgenstein. Near the end of his life, he wrote extensive notes about knowledge and certainty. These were collected and published together as On Certainty (OC). These notes are mostly compatible with the ideas of the Investigations, but also develop some ideas in new directions. The last remark collected in On Certainty was written two days before his death. If you want to read more by Wittgenstein, it would make sense to read this compilation next.
Wittgenstein led a fascinating life. I have mentioned some aspects of it, but only when they impacted his philosophy in an interesting way. Anyone wanting to know more about his life should read Ray Monk’s biography, Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius (DG). This book also gives helpful explanations of Wittgenstein’s philosophical views along the way. In general, I think that Wittgenstein’s work is best understood in the context of his life. But since his work was such an integral part of his life, it is futile to try to understand his life without reading his work.
Over the years, Wittgenstein had many friends and acquaintances, and several of them wrote about their relationship with him. They give important insights into his motivations and views on a wide range of topics. I have quoted from two of these memoirs: Paul Engelmann (PE) knew Wittgenstein especially around the time of the Tractatus, and Norman Malcolm (MM) knew Wittgenstein later in his life, around the time he was working on the Investigations. They both also include the letters that Wittgenstein wrote to those authors, which make for good reading. They constitute good starting places for a personal perspective on Wittgenstein.
Literally hundreds, perhaps thousands of books have been written by scholars offering to explain and interpret Wittgenstein’s philosophy. This book adds one to that number. Something that strikes me, however, is how emphatic Wittgenstein was that people would not understand his philosophy! What should we make of this? My attempt to figure this out led to Wittgenstein in Exile, a book that I wrote and published a few years ago (WE). I use information about Wittgenstein’s life and his views about himself to help make sense of why his philosophy might be so hard to understand. A reader who has enjoyed reading this book might read that one as well to find where I go from here.
Readers who are interested in following Wittgenstein’s approach to philosophy into the present might consider the approach that Daniel Dennett has taken toward research on the mind. Dennett, like Wittgenstein, sees our concepts as instruments, and he distinguishes between the intentional stance and the mechanistic stance toward entities (IS). Dennett has argued against some of Wittgenstein’s views as they are traditionally presented, but I think my understanding of Wittgenstein’s views makes them more amenable to Dennett’s work in philosophy and cognitive science.
As I mentioned in the Preface to this book, Wittgenstein has influenced contemporary Western culture in many ways outside of philosophy. The influences are so diverse that I can’t list examples of each, but for just one example the reader might like to listen to compositions by Steve Reich. Music for 18 Musicians, for instance, can be thought of as a meditation on musical language games. His composition, “Explanations Come to an End Somewhere,” on the disc, You Are (Variations), is a musical setting for Wittgenstein’s oft-used line: “Explanations come to an end somewhere” (PI §1). In his “Composer’s Notes” for the composition “Proverb” Reich concludes:
The short text, “How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life!” comes from a collection of Wittgenstein’s writing entitled Culture and Value. Much of Wittgenstein’s work is ‘proverbial’ in tone and in its brevity. This particular text was written in 1946. In the same paragraph from which it was taken Wittgenstein continues, “If you want to go down deep you do not need to travel far. [CV, p. 50]
The reader, and now listener, might wish to reflect on how Wittgenstein came back to the same few issues over and over, and on whether he did “travel far” or not.
Sources
AL – Stanley Cavell, “The Availability of Wittgenstein’s Later Philosophy,” in Must We Mean What We Say? Cambridge, 1976.
AW – Anthony Kenny, “Aquinas and Wittgenstein,” Downside Review, v. 77, 1959.
BW – Ludwig Hänsel, Begegnungen mit Wittgenstein: Ludwig Hänsels Tagebücher 1918/1919 und 1921/1922, edited by Ilse Somavilla, Haymond, 2012.
CMI – Alan Turing, “Computing Machinery and Intelligence,” in The Essential Turing, edited by B. Jack Copeland, Oxford, 2004.
CV – Ludwig Wittgenstein, Culture and Value, translated by Peter Winch, Blackwell, 1980.
CW – M. O’C. Drury, “Conversations with Wittgenstein,” in Recollections of Wittgenstein, edited by Rush Rhees, Oxford, 1984.
DG – Ray Monk, Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius, Free Press, 1990.
EU – Plato, “Euthyphro,” in Five Dialogues, 2nd Edition, Hackett, 2002.
GJ – D.A.T. Gasking and A.C. Jackson, “Ludwig Wittgenstein,” in Portraits of Wittgenstein, Volume 4, edited by F.A. Flowers III, Thoemmes, 1999.
GT – Ludwig Wittgenstein, Geheime Tagebücher, edited by Wilhelm Baum, Turia & Kant, 1991.
IS – Daniel Dennett, The Intentional Stance, MIT, 1987.
LF – Ludwig Wittgenstein, “Letters to Ludwig von Ficker,” in Wittgenstein: Sources and Perspectives, edited by C.G. Luckhardt, Cornell, 1979.
LM – J. E. Littlewood, Littlewood’s Miscellany, edited by Bela Bellobas, Cambridge, Revised edition, 1986.
LO – Ludwig Wittgenstein, Letters to C.K. Ogden, edited by G.H. von Wright, Blackwell, 1973.
LP1 – Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog, “So who is the most important philosopher of the past 200 years?” Poll results posted March 11, 2009: http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2009/03/so-who-is-the-most-important-philosopher-of-the-past-200-years.html
LP2 – Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog, “The 20 ‘Most Important’ Philosophers of the Modern Era,” Poll results posted May 4, 2009: http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2009/05/the-20-most-important-philosophers-of-the-modern-era.html
LP3 – Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog, “The 20 ‘Most Important’ Philosophers of All Time,” Poll results posted May 18, 2009: http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2009/05/the-20-most-important-philosophers-of-all-time.html
MB – Hermine Wittgenstein, “My Brother Ludwig,” in Recollections of Wittgenstein, edited by Rush Rhees, Oxford, 1984.
MM – Norman Malcolm, Ludwig Wittgenstein: A Memoir, Oxford, 2nd Edition, 1984.
MPD – Bertrand Russell, My Philosophical Development, Routledge, 1995.
NB – Ludwig Wittgenstein, Notebooks: 1914-1916, translated by G.E.M. Anscombe, Blackwell, 1979.
PE – Paul Engelmann, Letters from Ludwig Wittgenstein with a Memoir, edited by B.F. McGuinness, Blackwell, 1967.
PI – Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, Revised 4th edition, translated by G.E.M. Anscombe, P.M.S. Hacker and Joachim Schulte, Wiley-Blackwell, 2009.
PLA – Bertrand Russell, The Philosophy of Logical Atomism, edited by David Pears, Open Court, 1985.
PO – Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Occasions: 1912-1951, edited by James C. Klagge and Alfred Nordmann, Hackett, 1993.
PPO – Ludwig Wittgenstein, Public and Private Occasions, edited by James C. Klagge and Alfred Nordmann, Rowman & Littlefield, 2003.
PU – J.L. Austin, “Performative Utterances,” in Philosophical Papers, Third Edition, Oxford, 1979.
SG – Bernard Suits, The Grasshopper: Games, Life and Utopia, Broadview, 2005.
TLP –
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, translated by David Pears and B.F. McGuinness, Routledge Kegan Paul, 1963.
VC – Friedrich Waismann, Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle: Conversations Recorded by Friedrich Waismann, edited by Brian McGuinness, Blackwell, 1979.
VW – Ludwig Wittgenstein and Friedrich Waismann, The Voices of Wittgenstein: The Vienna Circle, edited by Gordon Baker, Routledge, 2003.
WA – Ludwig Wittgenstein, Wiener Ausgabe, Band. 2, edited by Michael Nedo, Springer, 1994.
WE – James C. Klagge, Wittgenstein in Exile, MIT, 2011.
WL – Brian McGuinness, Wittgenstein: A Life, Young Ludwig (1889-1921), Blackwell, 1988.
WN – Knut Amas and Rolf Larsen, “Ludwig Wittgenstein in Norway: 1913-1950,” in Wittgenstein in Norway, edited by K. Johannessen and K. Amas, Solum Forlag, 1994.
WP – David Stern, Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations, Cambridge, 2004.
WT – G.E.M. Anscombe, “Wittgenstein’s ‘Two Cuts’ in the History of Philosophy,” in From Plato to Wittgenstein: Essays by G.E.M. Anscombe, eds., M. Geach and L. Gormally, Imprint Academic, 2011.
WW – Peter John, “Wittgenstein’s Wonderful Life,” Journal of the History of Ideas, v. 49, 1988.
About the Author
James C. Klagge is Professor of Philosophy at Virginia Tech, where he has taught for over 30 years. He has written, edited or co-edited four books on Wittgenstein, including Wittgenstein in Exile (2011), Ludwig Wittgenstein: Public and Private Occasions(2003), and Wittgenstein: Biography and Philosophy (2001). Klagge has a special interest in Wittgenstein’s experiences as a teacher, and how they influenced his thought and writing.
Afterword
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A Note on the Type
This book was set on Pressbooks on LUTHER, a traditional book theme named after Martin Luther, the great German Protestant reformer. An earlier version of this type was commissioned by Fortress Press / Augsburg Fortress.
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