Nordic Wittgenstein Review (NWR)
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Making Sense of the Moral ‘Must’
Full text linkI offer a critique of the dominant representationalist understanding of the moral ‘must’ and argue for an alternative understanding that is second-personal and performative. The representationalist understanding faces serious theoretical difficulties, having to do with the nature of the necessity that is supposedly referred to by the moral ‘must’; and it is also morally problematic, in that it encourages us to suppose that utterances of the form ‘N (morally) must φ’ may be understood, and their truth assessed, altogether apart from such morally significant matters as the nature and history of the relationship between the speaker and her addressee(s) or the illocutionary force of the utterance. The alternative understanding dissolves the theoretical difficulties faced by those who have tried to vindicate a representational understanding of the moral ‘must’. It is also morally superior, in that it underscores the dependence of the sense of sentences of the form ‘N must φ’ – as uttered in moral contexts, and first and foremost in the second person – on morally significant contextual features such as who addresses whom, and with what illocutionary force, and what puts the first person in a position to address the other with these words and in that way
Philosophical Investigations §123: Waismann, Baker, Read and the Freedom View: Open Review until 2026-01-04
No full textIn this paper, I order the thinking of Friedrich Waismann, Gordon Baker, and Rupert Read into what I call the Freedom View (FV). I justify this labelling by demonstrating their inter-influence and evolving articulation of a shared framework that conceives the problems, aims, and method of (Wittgenstein’s) philosophy to be defined by freedom. The Freedom View is one of the most consequential, yet frequently misunderstood, explications of the therapeutic aspects of Wittgenstein’s later work. This interpretative labour enables an informed assessment of the merit of such a view. While the FV offers a coherent and provocative reading of Wittgenstein’s philosophy, I argue, drawing on Heidegger’s criticisms of Kant’s conception of orientation, that it ultimately fails to capture the sense of ordinary orientation invoked by Wittgenstein in §123: “A philosophical problem has the form: ‘I don’t know my way about’”. As such, the FV is partial and incomplete, unable to recognise a significant dimension to Wittgenstein’s thought
Responding to the ‘Satz’-challenge: A reply to Martin Stokhof and Jaap van der Does :
Full text linkI here reply to Martin Stokhof and Jaap van der Does’ criticism of my translation of ‘Satz’ as ‘proposition’ in Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, arguing that they fail to appreciate the difference between translation and interpretation
Wittgenstein in Alethea Graham’s Diary (1929-1930), and New Data on the Audience of his Lecture on Ethics and LT 1930 Class
Full text linkAmongst the attendees at Wittgenstein’s lecture to the Heretics Society in November 1929, there was also Alethea Graham, a student in her fourth year at Girton College who attended also his lectures in Lent Term 1930. Excerpts from her diary mentioning the philosopher are here transcribed and commented upon. A sharper focus on the audience of Wittgenstein’s Lecture on Ethics and his first academic class is then added
Fiction, Philosophy and the Ideal of Conversation, by Erin Greer: Book review
No full textReview of Greer, Erin (2024), Fiction, Philosophy and the Ideal of Conversation
On Philosophical Method and Analogical Fallacies: Open Review until 2026-01-04
No full textThis article investigates the role played by the analysis of nonliteral language in Wittgenstein’s later philosophical method. In the first section, I briefly present his motivations for abandoning the Tractarian method and developing a new one, which is centered on the ideas of family resemblances and the overview or synoptic presentation of grammar. In the second section, I offer an account that attempts to unify the apparent variety of what Glock called “roots of […] philosophical confusion” by treating one of the items in his list, “analogies in the surface grammar of logically distinct expressions”, as the most central target of methodological synopsis. I conclude that the figurative use of ordinary-language terms in philosophical discourse generates the majority of our philosophical problems and that its investigation should therefore be seen as one of the defining features of Wittgenstein’s later philosophical method
Sobre Wittgenstein, filosofía, religión y psiquiatría, by M. O’C. Drury, translation and introduction by María Aránzazu Novales Alquézar: Book review
Full text linkThe Satz-Challenge: A Note on Michael Beaney’s Translation of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus
Full text linkThis short note discusses a particular aspect of Michael Beaney’s translation of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus, viz., the translation of the German term “Satz”, and argues that Beaney’s choice to uniformly translate “Satz” as “proposition” obscures key elements of the Tractarian concept of meaning
Real Gender – A Cis Defence of Trans Realities, by Danièle Moyal-Sharrock and Constantine Sandis: Book Review
No full textTransphobia as language on holiday? In Real Gender – A Cis Defence of Trans Realities (2024), Danièle Moyal-Sharrock and Constantine Sandis want to defend the credibility and social rights of transgender people. The book is largely structured around undermining myths and hostile images spread by “gender critics” or TERFs (Trans-exclusive radical feminists) and thus aims to make itself relevant to an ongoing societal discussion while also making philosophical remarks on language and gender by using Ludwig Wittgenstein’s later work. The authors have set themselves in a complicated position: While carrying the noble ambition to bring philosophical light to a polarizing topic they also to some extent end up submitting to the terms set by a polarized political climate. The question is if both tasks can be succeeded with precision and consistence and if the message of the book will get across to its intended audience
Ludwig Wittgenstein - Private Notebooks 1914-1916, edited and translated by Marjorie Perloff: Book Review
No full textReview of Ludwig Wittgenstein - Private Notebooks 1914-1916, edited and translated by Marjorie Perloff