Re: Summarizing Wittgenstein
Posted: Thu Oct 10, 2013 11:06 am
Could someone summarise Wittgenstein because this is not summarizing.
Wittgenstein wrote a lot of individually standing (but loosely connected) sentences and is not easy to summarize in any way.Lakin wrote:Could someone summarise Wittgenstein because this is not summarizing.
His first work: The Tractatus, was talky in academic circles. A Finnish philosopher had this to say about it: one third of it was wrong, one third was agreeable and one third he just didn't understand.
The wiki-page contains an extensive summary of the work: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tractatus_ ... losophicus
His other more well-known work is the Philosophical Investigations, which is more readable, in fact I've had a taste of it and it is quite easy to understand (relatively and in general at least). On the wiki-page it is noted that "Within the Anglo-American tradition, the book is considered by many as being one of the most important philosophical works of the 20th century, and it continues to influence contemporary philosophers, especially those studying mind and language."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophi ... stigations
On his profile wiki-page there is a list of notable ideas he had or contributed to:
Notable ideas:
Picture theory of language
Truth functions
States of affairs
Logical necessity
Meaning is use
Language-games
Private language argument
Family resemblance
Rule following
Forms of life
Wittgensteinian fideism
Anti-realism
Wittgenstein's philosophy of mathematics
Ordinary language philosophy
Ideal language analysis
Meaning scepticism
Memory scepticism
Intuitionism
Semantic externalism
Quietism
I think it's hard to make any point certain though about his works, because as the title of his second work says, it is an "investigation", and investigations are not there to tell us what is the case like a preach of truth, but to get us closer to the truth.