Nordic Wittgenstein Review (NWR)
Not a member yet
238 research outputs found
Sort by
Wittgenstein on British Anti-Nazi Propaganda: A Fragment
Get PDFThis paper contains a historical introduction and an edition of a hitherto unpublished manuscript of Wittgenstein\u27s that was found among G. H. von Wright\u27s materials kept in Helsinki. The document concentrates on British anti-Nazi propaganda and was written in 1945. Wittgenstein\u27s criticism of this kind of propaganda, such as that promoted by Robert Vansittart, is also present in other sources of this period belonging to both the Nachlass and the correspondence
Review of Revolution of the Ordinary by Toril Moi
No full textBook review of Moi, Toril, Revolution of the Ordinary: Literary studies after Wittgenstein, Austin, and Cavell, Chicago : Chicago University Press, 2017. 290 pages
‘Wittgenstein’s Moral Thought’, Edited by Reshef Adam-Segal and Edmund Dain
No full textA review of Wittgenstein’s Moral Thought, edited by Reshef Adam-Segal and Edmund Dain
Wittgenstein Goes to Frankfurt (and Finds Something Useful to Say)
Get PDFThis article aims to shed light on some core challenges of liberating social criticism. Its centerpiece is an intuitively attractive account of the nature and difficulty of critical social thought that nevertheless goes missing in many philosophical conversations about critique. This omission at bottom reflects the fact that the account presupposes a philosophically contentious conception of rationality. Yet the relevant conception of rationality does in fact inform influential philosophical treatments of social criticism, including, very prominently, a left Hegelian strand of thinking within contemporary Critical Theory. Moreover, it is possible to mount a defense of the conception by reconstructing, if with various qualifications and additions, an argument from classic—i.e., mid twentieth-century—Anglo-American philosophy of the social sciences, in particular, the argument that forms the backbone of Peter Winch’s The Idea of a Social Science. Winch draws his guiding insights from the later philosophy of Wittgenstein, and one of the payoffs of considering Winch’s Wittgenstein-inspired work against the backdrop of Hegel-inspired work in Critical Theory is to contest the artificial professional strictures that are sometimes taken to speak against reaching across the so-called ‘Continental Divide’ in philosophy. The larger payoff is advancing, by means of this philosophically ecumenical approach, the enterprise of liberating social thought. 
Remarks on Perception and Other Minds
Get PDFIt is a simple truth about the English language that we can see or hear or feel what others are thinking or feeling. But it is tempting to think that there is a deeper sense in which we cannot really see or hear or feel these things at all. Rather, what is involved must be a matter of inference or interpretation, for instance. In these remarks, I argue against a variety of ways in which that thought, the thought that we cannot really see or hear or feel what others are thinking or feeling, might be developed
A List of Meetings between Wittgenstein and Sraffa
Get PDFThis paper presents a list of meetings between Wittgenstein and Sraffa during the period 1929-1951. It was compiled using Sraffa’s notes from his pocket diaries and including supplement appointments noted by Wittgenstein. The information - like addresses or names of other speakers - added by Sraffa to some appointments have been here explained in the footnotes. As it is shown, it emerges by the list that the meetings between Wittgenstein and Sraffa can be divided in several different periods
Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Nachlass in the UNESCO Memory of the World register
Get PDFThe contribution reports the inclusion of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Nachlass into the UNESCO Memory of the World register
Stanley Cavell’s Argument of the Ordinary
Get PDFMy overall aim is to show that there is a serious and compelling argument in Stanley Cavell’s work for why any philosophical theorizing that fails to recognize what Cavell refers to as “our common world of background” as a condition for the sense of anything we say or do, and to acknowledge its own dependence on that background and the vulnerability implied by that dependence, runs the risk of rendering itself, thereby, ultimately unintelligible. I begin with a characterization of Cavell’s unique way of inheriting Austin and Wittgenstein – I call it “ordinary language philosophy existentialism” – as it relates to what Cavell calls “skepticism”. I then turn to Cavell’s response to Kripke in “The Argument of the Ordinary”, which is different from all other responses to Kripke’s Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language in that Cavell’s response, while theoretically powerful, is at the same time also existentialist, in the sense that Cavell finds a way of acknowledging in his writing the fundamental fact that his writing (thinking) constitutes an instance of what he is writing (thinking) about. This unique achievement of Cavell’s response to Kripke is not additional to his argument, but essential to it: it enables him not merely to say, but to show that, and how, Kripke’s account falsifies what it purports to elucidate, and thereby to show that the theoretical question of linguistic sense is not truly separable, not even theoretically, from the broadly ethical question of how we relate to others, and how we conduct ourselves in relation to them from one moment to the next
Hamann\u27s Influence on Wittgenstein
No full textThe paper examines Johann Georg Hamann’s influence on Ludwig Wittgenstein’s late philosophy. Wittgenstein’s letters, diaries and Drury’s memoirs show that Wittgenstein read Hamann’s writings in the early 1930s and 1950s. Wittgenstein’s diary notes and the Cambridge lectures show that Wittgenstein’s discussion of Hamann’s views in 1931 corresponds to adopting a Hamannian view of symbols and rule-following. The view of language as an intertwining of signs, objects and meanings in use forms a common core in the philosophies of Hamann and Wittgenstein. The harmony of language and reality takes place in communicative use, so non-communicative private languages and pre-linguistic ideal forms of representation are not possible. Language is a free response to reality, and it involves belief-systems and trust
Social Criticism, Moral Reasoning and the Literary Form
Get PDFWidely chosen by students of society as an approach under which to labour, emancipatory, liberatory or, otherwise put, critical social thought occupies a position between knowledge and practical action whose coherence is taken for granted on account of the pressing nature of the issues it attempts to deal with. As such it is rarely subjected to scrutiny and the methodological, conceptual and moral challenges it faces are not properly identified. The contribution of this article is to raise these problems into view clearly and unambiguously. This is undertaken via a careful examination of Alice Crary’s recent work, in which she attempts, firstly, to defend a left-Hegelian version of Critical Theory by relating it to the work of Peter Winch and, second, to issue a set of methodologically radical recommendations on employing the sensibility-shaping powers of the literary form. The article aims to deepen our understanding of the fundamental tensions between the Critical Theory and Wittgensteinian traditions, which Crary attempts to bring together and, ultimately, of those crucial features of our moral practices that frustrate the enterprise of critical social thought