Nordic Wittgenstein Review (NWR)
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The Philosophical Significance of Secondary Uses of Language in Wittgenstein’s Later Philosophy
Full text linkThis paper aims to provide an account of Wittgenstein’s employment of the distinction between primary and secondary use of words. Against views that circumscribe its relevance to aesthetics and ethics, the paper demonstrates that there are many instances of secondary uses in Wittgenstein’s work that are not reducible to those limited applications. Additionally, as secondary uses are often interpreted as having an expressive function, the paper argues that we cannot reduce secondariness to a single unifying principle, because the distinction is philosophical, as it works as a powerful device to tackle different, often unrelated, philosophical issues
Ludwig Wittgenstein: Dictating Philosophy. To Francis Skinner – The Wittgenstein-Skinner Manuscripts by Arthur Gibson and Niamh O’Mahony: Book review
Full text linkWittgenstein and Stenlund on Mathematical Symbolism
No full textIn recent work, Sören Stenlund (2015) contextualizes Wittgenstein’s philosophy of mathematics as aligned with the tradition of symbolic mathematics. In the early modern era, mathematicians began using purely formal methods disconnected from any obvious empirical applications, transforming their subject into a symbolic discipline. With this, Stenlund argues, they were freeing themselves of ancient ontological presuppositions and discovering the ultimately autonomous nature of mathematical symbolism, which eventually formed the basis for Wittgenstein’s thinking. A crucial premise of Wittgenstein’s philosophy of mathematics, on this view, is that the development of mathematical concepts is independent of any ontological implications and occurs in principle without normative connections to empirical applicability. This paper critically examines this narrative and arrives at the conclusion that Stenlund’s view of mathematical progress is in stark contrast to the later Wittgenstein’s writing, which emphasizes links between symbolisms and their applications
Book Review: Rupert Read, Wittgenstein\u27s Liberatory Philosophy: Thinking Through His Philosophical Investigations
No full textIn Search of a Feminist Theory of Expression
Full text linkIn the Tractactus Logico Philosophicus, Wittgenstein concludes that what cannot be spoken about is better left unsaid, which would correspond to everything that is not scientific language susceptible of being formalized in the propositional framework. It is not until Philosophical Investigations that he will find the formula of the “expression” taken in an encompassing sense with its notion of “seeing aspects”. For his part, in his course “Le problème de la parole”, Merleau-Ponty, elaborates a reflection on language that begins with the consideration of the scientific and logical naivety of language, in relation to Saussure\u27s linguistics, and ends with the comparison between Proust and Stendhal. In this last part, he proposes that literature, as a creative language and an expressive operation, is both true life, connected with the ontological foundation of what exists, and phenomenology that shows the institution of that life. In both authors, the logical consideration is overwhelmed by the expressive power of language. Our contribution will make a comparison between Wittgenstein\u27s and Merleau-Ponty\u27s reflections on language and expressiveness. With this, we will seek to propose the bases of a feminist theory of expression, that is, a theory that seeks to show the particularity of female expressiveness
Book Review: Mauro Luiz Engelmann, Reading Wittgenstein’s Tractatus: Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021
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From Doubt to Despair: A Wittgensteinian Perspective on Gaslighting
Full text link‘Gaslighting’ describes a form of manipulation that induces doubt in someone’s perceptions, experiences, understanding of events or conception of reality in general. But what kind of doubt is it? How do ‘ordinary’ epistemic doubts differ from those doubts that can lead to despair and the feeling of losing one’s mind? The phenomenon of ‘gaslighting’ has been attracting public attention for some time and has recently found its way into philosophical reflections that address moral, sexist and epistemic aspects of gaslighting. Little has been said, however, about the nature of gaslighting-induced doubts themselves, how they differ from ordinary, even ‘reasonable’ epistemic (self-) doubts and how it can come to someone doubting their own perception and conception of reality in the first place. The aim of this paper is to shed some light on these aspects by drawing on some of Wittgenstein’s remarks on doubt, published mainly in On Certainty. To this end, I will first outline the phenomenon of gaslighting as an epistemic injustice before presenting Wittgenstein’s reflections on doubt(ing). These will then be applied to the phenomenon of gaslighting, with a more specific focus on the evocation of such fundamental self-doubt in successful gaslighting, again drawing on some of Wittgenstein’s remarks
Wittgenstein and Feminism: Alice Crary in Conversation with Mickaëlle Provost
Full text linkAlice Crary is a moral and social philosopher who has written widely on issues in metaethics, moral psychology and normative ethics, philosophy and feminism, critical animal studies, critical disability studies, critical philosophy of race, philosophy and literature, and Critical Theory. She has written on philosophers such as John L. Austin, Stanley Cavell, Cora Diamond, John McDowell, Iris Murdoch and Ludwig Wittgenstein. This is the first of two parts of the interview with Crary conducted in a single exchange in the first weeks of January 2022, where she discusses ordinary language philosophy and feminism, Wittgenstein’s conception of mind and its relation to feminist ethics, the link between Wittgenstein and Critical Theory, and her own views about efforts to bring about social and political transformations. The second part on “Wittgenstein and Critical Theory” is published in the regular volume 11 of NWR
A Realistic Approach to the Performativity of Gender
Full text linkThe role of language in doing gender is a very important theme in feminist movements and in the post-structuralist approach of gender by queer theorists: Butler, for example, has mobilized a concept from the ordinary language philosophy (“performativity”) to analyze gender and what she calls the “discursive construction of sex”. Her conception has been criticized by various feminist theorists for “derealizing” social relations: forgetting the materiality of the body and neglecting the concrete conditions of women’s work and life. This paper explores how ordinary language philosophy, and especially Wittgenstein’s approach of language, may support butlerian perspective in developing a realistic understanding of the power of language
Acknowledging women: Some Wittgensteinian ideas to clarify the cis/trans debate
Full text linkMy aim in this paper is to use some contents of the later Wittgenstein’s work, and some of its interpreters, to shed some light on the cis/trans debate, in which it is disputed what a woman is and who the subject of feminisms is. There is a stance, called cisfeminism, which do not acknowledge transgender women neither as women nor as subjects of feminisms. I analyse the main cisfeminist arguments from a Wittgensteinian perspective, taking into account (1) their plausible essentialism and (2) the everyday uses of language and its changes. Finally (3), I make some considerations about the effect that theories have in human lives