Wittgenstein On Realism And Idealism

This Element concerns Wittgenstein's evolving attitude toward the opposition between realism and idealism in philosophy. Despite the marked – and sometimes radical – changes Wittgenstein's thinking undergoes from the early to the middle to the later period, there is an underlying continuity in terms of his unwillingness at any point to endorse either position in a straightforward manner. Instead, Wittgenstein can be understood as rejecting both positions, while nonetheless seeing insights in each position worth retaining. The author traces these “neither-nor” and “both-and” strands of Wittgenstein's attitude toward realism and idealism to his – again, evolving – insistence on seeing language and thought as worldly phenomena. That thought and language are about the world and happen amidst the world they are about undermines the attempt to formulate any kind of general thesis concerning their interrelation.

'The author conceives of the early and later Wittgenstein's attitude towards the realism-idealism controversy as the key for solving many crucial interpretive problems at one stroke. The book provides a very interesting and original contribution to Wittgenstein scholarship. All those who wish to deepen their understanding of Wittgenstein's philosophy as a whole should read Bartmann's book.' - Pasquale Frascolla, Professor in Philosophy of Language, University of Naples Federico II, Italy 'We are seeing right now the emergence of a new generation of Wittgenstein scholarship which seeks to get beyond the positions and controversies of recent years. Marius Bartmann's clearly and compellingly argued book makes a valuable contribution to this changing debate by focusing on Wittgenstein's effort to overcome the dichotomy between realism and idealism. That perspective allows him to look in a new and illuminating fashion at Wittgenstein's early concern with the unity of the proposition and his later concern with the topic of rule-following.' - Hans Sluga, William and Trudy Ausfahl Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, UC Berkeley, USA This book develops a new Wittgenstein interpretation called Wittgenstein's Metametaphysics. The basic idea is that one major strand in Wittgenstein's early and later philosophy can be described as undermining the dichotomy between realism and idealism. The aim of this book is to contribute to a better understanding of the relation between language and reality and to open up avenues of dialogue to overcome deep divides in the research literature. In the course of developing a comprehensive and in-depth interpretation, the author provides fresh and original analyses of the latest issues in Wittgenstein scholarship and gives new answers to both major exegetical and philosophical problems. This makes the book an illuminating study for scholars and advanced students alike.

This book develops a new Wittgenstein interpretation called Wittgenstein’s Metametaphysics. The basic idea is that one major strand in Wittgenstein’s early and later philosophy can be described as undermining the dichotomy between realism and idealism. The aim of this book is to contribute to a better understanding of the relation between language and reality and to open up avenues of dialogue to overcome deep divides in the research literature. In the course of developing a comprehensive and in-depth interpretation, the author provides fresh and original analyses of the latest issues in Wittgenstein scholarship and gives new answers to both major exegetical and philosophical problems. This makes the book an illuminating study for scholars and advanced students alike.

Wittgenstein's Copernican Revolution is concerned with how one is to conceive of the relation between language and reality without embracing Linguistic Realism and without courting any form of Linguistic Idealism either. It argues that this is precisely what Wittgenstein does and also examines some well known contemporary philosophers who have been concerned with this same question.

Hochberg's masterful essays present studies in ontology and analysis that focus on the "revolt against idealism" strongly identified with the brilliant trio of Bertrand Russell, G. E. Moore, and Ludwig Wittgenstein in the early part of the twentieth century. The chapters focus upon the development of analytic philosophy and revival of realism. The volume is at once a history of a special period, time, and place in the evolution of the analytic tradition, an examination of influences upon and differences among these three major figures, and a close reading of their primary works. The author takes up the problems posed by reference and predication, truth, facts, causality, dispositions, intentionality, propositions, particulars and universals, the analytic-synthetic distinction, logicism. abstract entities, and materialism. The essays present a systematic analysis of such issues in the context of classical works of these three Cambridge philosophers, who were all critical to the development of modern philosophy. For those who wish to understand the essential contours of the work of these exemplars of the analytic tradition, there can be no more impressive work. Hochberg is more than a commentator; he is a participant in major debates within philosophy. Indeed, his critique of materialism and defense of realism rests on a sophisticated examination of the status of mental states or phenomenal objects in the world, and the inability of all varieties of reductionism to explain the universe. The materialist is in the same situation as the extreme idealists: denial either of mental states or physical states. For Hochberg, the old argument that only physical or mental states are real has littleto do with the phenomena about us. The great strength of Cambridge philosophy is in mov

Philosophers will be richly rewarded by reading John O’Callaghan’s new book, Thomistic Realism and the Linguistic Turn. Based on his broad knowledge of Aristotle and Aquinas, O’Callaghan provides not only an excellent treatment of Aquinas’s epistemology but also a superb demonstration of just how Aquinas might contribute to contemporary debates. Traditionally, the camps of realism and idealism fiercely engaged one another in the field of epistemology. Thomists participated in confronting idealism from their unique realist position. Post-Wittgenstein, the conflict has been dominated by a form of epistemology that grounds all knowledge in linguistic practice. Since Thomists work in a textual and historical mode, their response to the technical approach of the analytic philosophy in which most of the linguistic epistemologists write has been slow in coming. O’Callaghan expertly closes that gap by successfully bringing together these fields.

The book contains studies in ontology and analysis that focus on the 'revolt against idealism' of Russell, Moore, and Wittgenstein in the early part of the 20th century and the resulting development of analytic philosophy and revival of realism.

When social scientists and social theorists turn to the work of philosophers for intellectual and practical authority, they typically assume that truth, reality, and meaning are to be found outside rather than within our conventional discursive practices. John G. Gunnell argues for conventional realism as a theory of social phenomena and an approach to the study of politics. Drawing on Wittgenstein’s critique of “mentalism” and traditional realism, Gunnell argues that everything we designate as “real” is rendered conventionally, which entails a rejection of the widely accepted distinction between what is natural and what is conventional. The terms “reality” and “world” have no meaning outside the contexts of specific claims and assumptions about what exists and how it behaves. And rather than a mysterious source and repository of prelinguistic meaning, the “mind” is simply our linguistic capacities. Taking readers through contemporary forms of mentalism and realism in both philosophy and American political science and theory, Gunnell also analyzes the philosophical challenges to these positions mounted by Wittgenstein and those who can be construed as his successors.