Nordic Wittgenstein Review (NWR)
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Sraffa, Hume, and Wittgenstein’s Lectures On Belief
Get PDFAs the recent edition of the Wittgenstein’s Whewell’s Court Lectures shows, Wittgenstein mentioned Hume several times in the series of lectures on belief. Towards the end of the Thirties, in fact, he came across Hume’s Abstract of the Treatise, a pamphlet that Piero Sraffa and John Maynard Keynes had ‘discovered’ at the end of 1933, re-edited in 1937 and finally published in March 1938 – Sraffa, with whom Wittgenstein had an intense intercourse in 1938-1941, donated him a copy. A lexical analysis of excerpts of Wittgenstein’s ET 1940 lectures strongly suggests that he read the Abstract in March-May 1940, and shows that some of the issues he discussed in his lectures at that time revolve around the peculiar definition that Hume gave in that text of the feeling of belief
Two Forms of Domination by Reason: A Reply to Oskari Kuusela
Get PDFIn his paper "The Problem of Domination by Reason and its Non-Relativist Solution" Oskari Kuusela describes a problem about our conception of rationality, which he labels the problem of “domination by reason”. This problem has contributed to generate, Kuusela notes, a widespread dissatisfaction with reason, which has resulted in a tendency to discard ideals of rationality altogether. Kuusela, in his paper, provides a response to this dissatisfaction. He argues that Wittgenstein, if we read him correctly, exemplifies a conception of reason that doesn’t incur the problem he indicates. In my response, I suggest a possible extension of Kuusela’s reflections. Domination by reason, as I argue, may also take another form, different from the one recognized by Kuusela. This alternative form is interesting for two reasons. First, those concerned about rationality’s dominance have quite often in mind this latter problem. Second, it is not obvious that the alternative version of the problem can be solved by appealing to the conception of rationality Kuusela locates in Wittgenstein: it could even be argued that such a conception, on a certain construal, may contribute to reinforcing it. I suggest that, if we focus solely on the aspects of Wittgenstein’s method highlighted in Kuusela’s paper, then such methods may be taken to promote domination by reason (in the alternative sense I introduce). There are, however, other aspects of Wittgenstein’s philosophy - most notably, his conception of ethical language - which may help us to dispel this version of the problem.
Keywords: Wittgenstein, rationality, modernity, clarification, James Baldwi
Introduction: ‘Post-Truth’?
Get PDFThis paper introduces the Special Issue on \u27post-truth\u27. The contributions to this special issue try between them to strike a right balance. To establish how new ‘post-truthism’ really is – or isn’t. To seek a point of reflection on whatever is new in our current socio-political straits. And to consider seriously how philosophy can help. Whether by wondering about the extent to which reason, or truth, may rightly, if one follows Wittgenstein, be viewed in certain respects as a constraint upon thought or opinion. Or indeed by wondering whether we still have a long way to go in approaching truth at all
What Is New in Our Time: The Truth in ‘Post-Truth’: A Response to Finlayson
Get PDFFinlayson argues that ‘post-truth’ is nothing new. In this response, I motivate a more modest position: that it is something new, to some extent, albeit neither radically new nor brand new.
I motivate this position by examining the case of climate-change-denial, called by some post-truth before \u27post-truth\u27.
I examine here the (over-determined) nature of climate-denial. What precisely are its attractions?; How do they manage to outweigh its glaring, potentially-catastrophic downsides? I argue that the most crucial of all attractions of climate-denial is that it involves the denier in a kind of fantasised power over reality itself: namely, over the nature of our planetary system, and thus of life itself. Climate-denial pretends to give the denier a power greater than that of nature, including in nature\u27s \u27rebellion\u27 against humanity, what James Lovelock calls Gaia\u27s incipient and coming \u27fever\u27.
Climate-denial seems to give the denier freedom from truth itself, in the case of the most consequential truth at present bearing down upon humanity. The most crucial of all the attractions of climate-denial is then that it provides would-be libertarians an ultimate freedom. They reject the reality of human-triggered climate-change, in the end, because they are unwilling to be ‘bound’ by anything, not even truth itself.
Climate-denial has been around for a while, but not for more than 30-35 years or so. I thus suggest that Finlayson is right to be sceptical of the claim that post-truth is radically new and extremely recent, but I suggest that it is relativelynew and has been with us for only about a generation or at most two.
Keywords: climate-change, climate-denial, libertarianism, Nietzsche, Wittgenstei
Intellectual Asceticism and Hatred of the Human, the Animal, and the Material
Get PDFFriedrich Nietzsche associated philosophical asceticism with “hatred of the human, and even more of the animal, and more still of the material”: with aversion to life. Given the prevalent view that philosophy is anthropocentric and idealizes the human, Nietzsche’s remark about philosophical hatred of the human is unexpected. In this paper, I investigate what Nietzsche’s remark implies for philosophical claims of human uniqueness. What is the meaning of the opposition between human and animal, if the opposition somehow expresses hatred also of the human? The investigation leads to an inquiry into metaphysics as an intellectual kind of magic, and into the notion of “power over life” as it connects to intellectual asceticism. Finally, I relate Nietzsche’s remarks on ascetic ideals to Donna Haraway’s questioning of the Anthropocene as a story to think with. I propose that the dualism of the story, the idea of a conflict between Humanity and Nature, can be seen as a feature of the metaphysical attitude that life is to be mastered through escaping from it into the purity of thinking
Three Metaphors Toward a Conception of Moral Change
Get PDFContemporary moral philosophy is split between an inherently a-historical moral philosophy/theory on the one hand and a growing interest in moral history and the historicity of morality on the other. In between these, the very moments of moral change (and their implications for the possibility of moral realism and moral objectivity) are often left insufficiently attended to and under-theorized. Yet moral change is, arguably, one of the defining features of present day moral frameworks, and thus one of the main things we need to make sense of in moral philosophy. In this paper, I present an account of moral change through the use of three metaphors: the tipping point, the bargaining table and the strong rope. I suggest these as coordinates for the development of a full-blown, historically sensitive conception of morality
A Tapestry: Susan Edwards-McKie Interviews Professor Dr B. F. McGuinness on the Occasion of His 90th Birthday
Get PDFSusan Edwards-McKie interviews Professor Dr B. F. McGuinness on the occasion of his 90th birthday
