Between Wittgenstein And Weil

This volume explores the relationship between the philosophical thought of Simone Weil and Ludwig Wittgenstein. The contributions shed light on how reading Weil can inform our understanding of Wittgenstein, and vice versa. The chapters cover different aspects of Weil’s and Wittgenstein’s philosophy, including their religious thought and their views on ethics and metaphilosophy. They address the following questions: How does Wittgenstein’s struggle with religious belief match up with Simone Weil’s own struggle with organised belief? What is the role of the mystical and supernatural in their works? How much impact has various posthumous editorial decisions had on the shaping of Weil’s and Wittgenstein’s thought? Is there any significance to similarities in Weil’s and Wittgenstein’s written and philosophical styles? How do Weil and Wittgenstein conceive of the ‘self’ and its role in philosophical thinking? What role does belief play in Weil’s and Wittgenstein’s respective philosophical works? Between Wittgenstein and Weil will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working in twentieth-century philosophy, philosophy of religion, philosophy of language, and the history of moral philosophy.

"This volume explores the relationship between the philosophical thought of Simone Weil and Ludwig Wittgenstein. The contributions shed light on how reading Weil can inform our understanding of Wittgenstein, and vice versa. The chapters cover different aspects of Weil's and Wittgenstein's philosophy including their religious thought and their views on ethics and meta-philosophy. They address the following questions: How does Wittgenstein's struggle with religious belief match up with Simone Weil's own struggle with organised belief? What is the role of the mystical and supernatural in their works? How much impact has various posthumous editorial decisions had on the shaping of Weil's and Wittgenstein's thought? Is there any significance to similarities in Weil and Wittgenstein's written and philosophical styles? How do Weil and Wittgenstein conceive of the 'self' and its role in philosophical thinking? What role does belief play in Weil and Wittgenstein's respective philosophical works? Between Wittgenstein and Weil will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working in 20th-century philosophy, philosophy of religion, philosophy of language, and the history of moral philosophy"--

Derived from Weil's lectures, the collection presents a general introduction to philosophy, ranging widely over problems about perception, mind, language, and reasoning, as well as problems in moral and political philosophy.

This book examines the religious, social, and political thought of Simone Weil in the context of the rigorous philosophical thinking out of which it grew. It also explores illuminating parallels between these ideas and ideas that were simultaneously being developed by Ludwig Wittgenstein. Simone Weil developed a conception of the relation between human beings and nature which made it difficult for her to explain mutual understanding and justice. Her wrestling with this difficulty coincided with a considerable sharpening of her religious sensibility, and led to a new concept of the natural and social orders involving a supernatural dimension, within which the concepts of beauty and justice are paramount. Professor Winch provides a fresh perspective on the complete span of Simone Weil's work, and discusses the fundamental difficulties of tracing the dividing line between philosophy and religion.

This volume brings together essays that explore the intersections between Nietzsche and Wittgenstein from various perspectives. While some chapters focus on the philological and biographical connections of Wittgenstein’s reading of Nietzsche, others reflect on the ideas that are implicitly shared by the two thinkers. For Nietzsche and Wittgenstein, philosophy is inextricably connected to ethics and the arts and therefore takes a peculiar method that differs from the sciences. Nevertheless, their thinking strives for knowledge and truth by means of discursive text forms, however unconventional they may be. The first group of chapters contextualize explicit references to Nietzsche in Wittgenstein’s writings and clarify their philosophical function. In Part II, the contributors take a philosophical problem as their starting point and show how it can be illuminated by comparing or contrasting Wittgensteinian and Nietzschean arguments and methods. Together the chapters trace Nietzsche’s influence on Wittgenstein’s thought concerning the critique of language, ethics, aesthetics, religion, and philosophical method. Wittgenstein and Nietzsche will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working in the history of philosophy and intellectual history.

On Being in the World, first published in 1990, illumines a neglected but important area of Wittgenstein’s philosophy, revealing its pertinence to the central concerns of contemporary analytic philosophy. The starting point is the idea of ‘continuous aspect perception’, which connects Wittgenstein’s treatment of certain issues relating to aesthetics with fundamental questions in the philosophy of psychology. Professor Mulhall indicates parallels between Wittgenstein’s interests and Heidegger’s Being and Time, demonstrating that Wittgenstein’s investigation of aspect perception is designed to cast light on much more than a bizarre type of visual experience: in reality, it highlights what is distinctively human about our behaviour in relation to things in the world, what it is that distinguishes our practical activity from that of automata. On Being in the World remains an invaluable resource for students of Wittgenstein’s philosophy, as well as anyone interested in negotiating the division between analytic and continental philosophy.

This book explores the hitherto neglected affinities between Ludwig Wittgenstein and Emmannuel Levinas, two of the most important and challenging thinkers of the 20th century

Writing clearly and avoiding jargon, Dilman investigates Wittgenstein's understanding of the relation between language and reality - i.e. between "the realities" we refer to, speak about and try to understand. Dilman discusses this topic in depth and at the same time covers a broad ground. He appreciates the following different aspects: philosophical skepticism about the existence of the various categories of things and our knowledge of them, about the reality of the logic of the language we speak and of the forms of our reasoning, philosophy's contribution to our understanding of the world and of ourselves, and the contributions of the arts to such an understanding.

Every student of the twentieth century has heard both of the great Viennese economist Friedrich von Hayek and of the equally great philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. But what isn't well known is that the two were distant cousins and that, shortly after Wittgenstein's death in 1951, Hayek set out to write a biography of his cousin. The project was derailed by Wittgenstein family members, who felt it was to soon to publish such a work. But Hayek's draft acquired an underground readership, and Wittgenstein's biographers have used it extensively. Here finally, is the text of that work itself. Hayek's account has the great merit of being close to its subject; the draft, moreover sheds light, not only on Wittgenstein but on Hayek as well. Allan Janik's elegant afterword makes these links clear. Anyone interested in Wittgenstein or, for that matter, in the thought and culture of the earlier twentieth century, will want to read Christian Erbacher's excellent edition of Hayek's draft biography. - Marjorie Perloff.

This volume initiates an inquiry into the relationship between Ludwig Wittgenstein’s “analytic stance” towards philosophy and the inherently apophatic nature of his epistemology, a subject that has been repeatedly hinted at, but hitherto never thoroughly researched through this particular hermeneutical lens. In using the term “apophaticism,” the book is not merely referring to the theological “via negativa” or to tendencies towards mysticism, but rather to a comprehensive epistemological stance that “refuses to identify truth with its formulation and to identify the understanding of the signifier with the knowledge of its signified reality,” to use Christos Yannaras’ definition. The question of whether Ludwig Wittgenstein’s work can be approached as a particularly efflorescent case of the implementation of an implicitly (and at times explicitly) apophatic epistemology is herewith addressed. As such, this volume contends that such an approach would not merely provide elucidations on apophatic epistemologies, but rather shed potentially valuable hermeneutical light on Wittgenstein’s work, functioning as an epistemological thread running through it. Consequently, the focal points here consist of questions concerning knowledge and its disclosure, ineffability, non-discursivity, the function of language, the limits of one’s language as the limits of one’s world, and the language of religion, among others. In addition, the volume’s contribution to shedding more light on the apophatic aspects of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s philosophy is enhanced by its inclusion of a broad spectrum of different approaches, with contributors ranging from Wittgenstein scholars to Patristics scholars—and beyond.