Nordic Wittgenstein Review (NWR)
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Linguistic Injustice: The Fragility of Women\u27s and Girls’ Voices in Sexist Contexts
Get PDFMy paper deals with the fragility of women and girls’ voices in sexist contexts. I describe this situation as one of linguistic injustice, and I propose an approach based on Wittgenstein and Cavell’s works. I argue that the characteristic female experience of being silenced when they express their experiences in sexist contexts can be understood as a lack of attunement with the community of male locutors
Book Review: Karen Zumhagen-Yekplé: A Different Order of Difficulty, Literature after Wittgenstein, Chicago: Chicago University Press 2020
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"I should have liked to produce a good book. It has not turned out that way"
Get PDFWittgenstein wrote in the Preface to the Investigations that he would have liked to write a good book, but it didn’t turn out that way. This may superficially seem to be false modesty, given that what he wrote is a masterpiece. This paper argues that it is not false modesty, and attempts to pin down various flaws in the book, some structural and others not. These include the opening quotation from Augustine, the thin character of language game 2, the rule following considerations, the private language arguments, and the poorly located, well-disguised and over-compressed discussion of the pictoriality of the proposition and critique of the picture theory of meaning in §§428–65
The Joke\u27s On Who: The Performative Possibilities of Humour
No full textIn this paper, I argue that humour is an underutilized tool in countering social injustice. Within feminist epistemology much has been made about implicit bias stemming from knowledge gaps. Yet studies that have shown that awareness of our implicit bias does little to change our behaviour. Instead, I argue that overcoming bias might require a less purely intellectual, more creative approach. Wittgenstein speculated that one could write a book of philosophy entirely in the form of jokes. In part, he thought that jokes offer an illuminating synopsis or overview of a state of affairs. We might even say jokes offer a fresh gestalt. It’s not just about a picture of the facts, but of our attitude towards them. As a result, while it can be tempting to respond to oppressive comments or slurs with outrage and indignation, there is a unique effect when we respond with a joke. First, jokes can reframe the perspective suggested by the slur. Second, jokes allow the speaker to make a lateral conversational move to evade being trapped in a defensive argumentative position. Using tone to open up new discursive planes allows for more communicative possibilities on an emotional as well as intellectual level.
 
Text-Genetic-Philosophical Notes About the Wittgenstein Nachlass: Band Series I Items MSS 105-122
Get PDFThe Wittgenstein Archives at the University of Bergen (WAB) has commissioned Joachim Schulte to author text-genetic-philosophical descriptions for each single item of the Wittgenstein Nachlass. The descriptions, called “notes”, will be published successively in the metadata section (“m”) of the Bergen Nachlass Edition (BNE) on Wittgenstein Source http://www.wittgensteinsource.org/ (for an example see http://www.wittgensteinsource.org/Ms-105_m). Moreover, the descriptions will, beginning with this issue, be published in packets in the “From the Archives” section of the Nordic Wittgenstein Review. This first publication includes descriptions of each item pertaining to the first Band series of the Nachlass, numbered by Wittgenstein I–XVIII (MSS 105–122), as well as a description of the entire series as such
Book Review: Veena Das, "Textures of the Ordinary: Doing Anthropology after Wittgenstein"
No full textG. H. von Wright\u27s Unpublished Edition of Wittgenstein\u27s "Last Writings": Editors\u27 Preface and Other Materials, ca. 1967–68
No full textPart II of this contribution makes available materials preserved of G. H. von Wright’s hitherto unknown edition of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s last writings (1949–51) from 1967–68. The edition was never published. The underlying MS material (MS 169–177) was, instead, published in four different edited volumes in 1969, 1977 and 1992. Part I, an introduction to the archival items, contextualizes von Wright’s edition historically, presents a reconstruction of its structure, compares it with the published volumes and discusses reasons for its abandonment
‘The swaying scaffolding’: A remark on belief in God, imponderable evidence and subjective certainty
Get PDFIn one of his late notebooks containing remarks on the philosophy of psychology, Wittgenstein states in passing: ‘If someone can believe in God with complete certainty, why not in Other Minds?’ (MS 137, 67a). In this paper, I introduce and explain some of the assumptions and observations behind this remark. In doing so, I give an example of what I describe as an ‘indirect or derived philosophy-of-religion reading strategy’, which highlights some of Wittgenstein’s very late thoughts on the grammar of religious belief and language. The crucial observation in Wittgenstein’s remark is the existence of a family resemblance between ‘the foundation’ of the religious attitude and belief on the one hand, and the complex ‘pattern of our experience that is hard to describe’, and which forms the basis of our reactions to and understanding of other persons’ behaviour and psychical states (MS 174,2) on the other. Thus this paper draws attention, firstly, to the fact that, in his late work, Wittgenstein emphasises that our use of concepts to determine other people’s feelings and states is comparable to certain religious uses of language, and secondly, to some of the familial connections between these uses of language
