Anthem Studies in Wittgenstein Series

In this Beginner’s Guide, Peter Hacker, the leading authority on the philosophy of Wittgenstein and author of a dozen books on his work, introduces the later philosophy of Wittgenstein to those with an enquiring mind. It selects an array of topics that will capture the interest of all educated readers: the nature of language and linguistic meaning, the analysis of necessity and its roots in convention, the relation of thought and language, the nature of the mind and its relation to behavior, self-consciousness, and knowledge of other minds. No philosophical knowledge is presupposed – only curiosity and a willingness to shed prejudices. Written in a laid-back colloquial style and interspersed by dialogues between the author and questioners, the book is amusing and entertaining to read. Nothing comparable to this exists in the literature on Wittgenstein. Wittgenstein’s ideas are presented in all their profundity for the widest possible audience, in a style that is intellectually stimulating and provocative.

'Intellectual Entertainments' consists of eight philosophical dialogues, each with five participants, some living, some imaginary and some dead. The dialogues take place either in Elysium or in an imaginary Oxford Common Room. Each historical figure speaks in his own idiom with a distinctive turn of phrase. The imaginary figures speak in the accent and idiom of their respective countries (English, Scottish, American, Australian). The themes are the nature of the mind and the relation between mind and body; the nature of consciousness and its demystification; the nature of thought and its relation to speech; and the objectivity or subjectivity of perceptual qualities such as colour, sound, smell, taste and warmth. Each participant presents a different point of view and defends his position against the arguments of the others. No philosophical knowledge is presupposed.

This volume unites Peter Winch’s previously unpublished work on Baruch de Spinoza. The primary source for the text is a series of seminars on Spinoza that Winch gave, first at the University of Swansea in 1982 and then at King’s College London in 1989. What emerges is an original interpretation of Spinoza’s work that demonstrates his continued relevance to contemporary issues in metaphysics, epistemology and ethics, and establishes connections to other philosophers - not only Spinoza’s predecessors such as René Descartes, but also important 20th Century philosophers such as Ludwig Wittgenstein and Simone Weil. Alongside Winch's lectures, the volume contains an interpretive essay by David Cockburn, and an introduction by the editors.

In Wittgenstein and the Social Sciences, Robert Vinten takes a fresh look at the relationship between Wittgenstein’s philosophy and the social sciences. He argues that although social sciences are quite different to the natural sciences, they are nonetheless properly called ‘sciences’. The book looks in detail at whether Wittgenstein can be claimed by conservatives, liberals, or socialists as their own. Wittgenstein’s philosophical remarks and remarks about politics and culture are taken into account in deciding where to locate Wittgenstein in relation to various ideologies. In the final part of the book, Vinten considers how Wittgenstein’s philosophy can be of use in resolving or dissolving problems in the social sciences. Along the way, he critically assesses work from Perry Anderson, Terry Eagleton, Richard Rorty, and Chantal Mouffe in the light of Wittgenstein’s philosophical oeuvre. The book makes a compelling examination of how Wittgenstein’s work remains as relevant as ever to thinking about our cultural and political situation.

This work is guided by the idea that Wittgenstein’s thought opens the door to a more profound break with the philosophical tradition than has been generally recognized. It brings this insight to bear on some basic problems of philosophy. Wittgenstein’s work has been assimilated to the analytic tradition in such a way that its radical character has been made nearly invisible. In fact, Wittgenstein formulates a basic critique of a predominant conception in contemporary analytic philosophy, according to which language can be seen as a formal structure describable in general terms. This conception neglects the profound context-dependence of the way things said are to be understood, thus imposing a schematic view of the connections between words and life. By distancing us from the life we live with language, it makes the problems of philosophy come to appear intractable. In this work, the attempt is made to show how philosophical confusions are to be overcome through attending to the actual use of words in conversation. 

The essays in Logos and Life, mainly dating from 2014 and later, cover topics in philosophy of mind, philosophy of action, ethics and philosophy of language. There are numerous strands connecting these four areas, which Roger Teichmann highlights: in this sense the collection exhibits thematic unity as well as diversity. Several of the essays take as their starting points the ideas and philosophical methods of Wittgenstein and of Elizabeth Anscombe, and so will be of interest to anyone studying those philosophers. A newly written Introduction serves to indicate the main themes and arguments of the book, and provides an overall statement of Teichmann’s philosophy.

Central to any interpretation of Wittgenstein’s later philosophy is an understanding of his philosophical method and the nature of the turn which characterises the evolution from his early to his later work. In the essays in Wittgenstein, Scepticism and Naturalism, Marie McGinn argues that this methodological shift has at its heart a highly distinctive form of naturalism, which has its roots in the works of Goethe. This form of naturalism emphasises achieving a clarified view of complex, natural phenomena in their natural setting, with a view to describing patterns and connections that are in plain view. Wittgenstein is seen as applying these methods to the task of conceptual clarification, whose aim is to dissolve philosophical problems and paradoxes. The essays cover the following topics: scepticism about the external world; scepticism about other minds; knowledge and belief; meaning and rule-following; psychological states and the distinctive first-person use of psychological concepts; the relation between the early and the later philosophy; and the nature of Wittgenstein’s naturalism.

The book is a first detailed discussion of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Remarks on Colour, a compilation of writings on the subject from the last fifteen months of his life. The origin and significance of the remarks are explained along with a remark-by-remark guide to what Wittgenstein says. In addition to serving as an account of the thought recorded in the text, the book provides an interpretation of Wittgenstein’s treatment of colour concepts and an account of his distinctive philosophical style. Remarks on Colour is shown to be a good way into the philosophy, to reveal a great deal about how Wittgenstein approaches philosophy, and to bring out features of his thought elided, if not missed, by more general studies, especially those that focus on more finished work.

Julia Tanney’s Meaning, Mind, and Action challenges widely held presuppositions within philosophy in its classical ‘analytic’, ‘naturalist’, and ‘cognitivist’ forms. Beginning with canonical views in the philosophy of language and logic, the arguments are then applied to discussions of knowledge, action, causation, the nature of the mental, consciousness, and thinking. Responding to a tradition that harks back to Plato and was resurrected by Mill, Frege, Russell, Moore, and the early Wittgenstein, Meaning, Mind, and Action challenges today’s orthodoxy on its own terms, beginning with canonical views in the philosophy of language and philosophical logic. The arguments of these early chapters are then applied to the theory of knowledge, action, and causation, followed by those on the nature of the mental, consciousness, and thinking. The final section, on the logic of the mental, widens the arguments to include the subject of animal minds, the postulation of mental representations in cultural anthropology, the author’s intention in literary theory, and the philosophical problem of irrationality in psychiatry.

The early decades of the twentieth century were a period of major economic and cultural upheaval across Europe and America. Scholars have typically held that novelists responded to these shifts by questioning language’s capacity to picture the world accurately. But, even as modernist novels move away from a view of language as a means of gaining knowledge, they also underscore its capacity to grant acknowledgment; they treat words as tools for recognizing and responding to the inner lives of others. This book brings out this crucial feature of modernism by engaging with the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein and with Stanley Cavell’s pioneering interpretation of Wittgenstein’s thought. The book shows how Wittgenstein’s interest in acknowledgment emerges over the course of his career-long effort to grapple with the same disorienting conditions of modern life that the experimental fiction of this period registers, including world wars, industrialization, and new conceptions of sexuality. It, then, argues that modernist novels by E.M. Forster, Virginia Woolf, Nella Larsen, William Faulkner, and others exhibit a similar interest in language’s capacity to grant acknowledgment. These novels offer readers a way of hearing what Wittgenstein calls “the silent soliloquy of others,” giving us words by which we might acknowledge the otherwise unvoiced inner lives of socially marginalized figures.

Hinge Epistemology is rapidly becoming one of the most exciting areas of epistemology and Wittgenstein studies. In connecting these two fields it brings a revived energy to both, opening them up to fresh developments. The essays in this volume extend the subject in terms of both depth and breadth. They present new voices and challenges within hinge epistemology. They explore new applications and directions of hinge epistemology, particularly as it relates to the philosophy of mind, society, ethics, and the history of ideas.

This volume addresses, from a Wittgensteinian perspective, the philosophical question of how to understand other cultures. It develops an approach to this question that emphasizes the connection between its epistemological, ethical and political aspects, bringing into conversation Wittgensteinian and other cultural philosophical traditions, notably from Japan, China, India and the West-African Yoruba communities.

This volume brings together thirteen papers on hinge epistemology written by Annalisa Coliva and published after her influential monographs Moore and Wittgenstein. Scepticism, Certainty and Common Sense (2010), Extended Rationality. A Hinge Epistemology (2015). By mixing together Wittgenstein scholarship and systematic philosophy, they illuminate the significance of hinge epistemology for current debates on skepticism, relativism, realism and anti-realism, as well as alethic pluralism, and envision its possible extension to the epistemology of logic. Along the way, other varieties of hinge epistemology, such as Moyal-Sharrock’s, Pritchard’s, Williams’ and Wright’s, are considered, both with respect to Wittgenstein scholarship and in their own right.

This book is a collection of 15 essays on important themes in Wittgenstein’s philosophy, divided into three sections. The first section is about philosophy of language, in particular Wittgenstein’s key idea of linguistic normativity. The second section is mainly concerned with important Wittgensteinian contributions to the philosophy of mind and action: his analysis of sensation language, the concept of understanding, the explanation of human behaviour and the concept of knowledge. The final section focusses on questions of value, mainly in aesthetics, but also in ethics and religion. 

This is a collection of essays on Wittgenstein and Wittgensteinian themes that appeared between 1996 and 2019. It is divided into three parts, with a common trajectory laid out in a substantial introduction. The first part links meaning, necessity and normativity. It defends and modifies Wittgenstein’s claim that the idea of a ‘grammatical rule’ holds the key to understanding linguistic meaning and its connection to necessary truth. The second part elucidates the connections between meaning, concepts and thought in Wittgenstein and beyond. It shows how he laid the grounds for a sound understanding of four contested issues—radical interpretation, concepts, nonsense and animal minds. The third part provides a qualified defence of Wittgenstein’s controversial idea that philosophical problems are conceptual, and thereby rooted in confusions concerning the meanings of and semantic relations between linguistic expressions. Against irrationalist interpretations, it demonstrates that Wittgenstein’s method is argumentative rather than therapeutic. The collection as a whole makes a powerful case for an analytic perspective on Wittgenstein. The essays bring out the abiding relevance of Wittgenstein’s reflections to contemporary debates on central topics such as the role of normativity, the foundations of linguistic meaning, the nature of concepts, the possibility of animal thought, and the proper methods of philosophy.