In fashion, from fashion, and now, quietly, a philosophical comeback: the work of the famous philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951). After two new translations of his best -known work, the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921/1922) is now there Wittgenstein meaningA book by Emeritus-professor of Language Philosophy Martin Stokhof (1950). For years he gave lectures on the enigmatic Austrian, who brought about a revolution in logic and language philosophy.
Stokhof’s book was intended for the series Elementary particles (Athenaeum), he tells in the office he still has at the University of Amsterdam, but grew into a monograph. It is both an introduction-up level in the thinking of Wittgenstein and Stokhof’s own view of the continuity in it.
Hence the ambiguous title, which refers to both the meaning of Wittgenstein and the theme of the book: Stokhof’s vision that ‘meaning’ in his work gradually gets a wider scope. Wittgenstein started with the unapproachable logical worldview of the Tractatus (in which only images of situations (combinations of ‘positions’) have meaning). He exchanged that for multi -shaped ‘language games’ (of which logic is only one) in the posthumously published Philosophic Untersuchungen (1953). Finally, the idea came that language gets meaning in concrete practices and ‘living forms’, in the short Über Gescheit (1969). Meaning is no longer a purely logical structure but is created socially.
Stokhof: “That early work is sometimes misunderstood. In the Tractatus His ethical statements – and philosophical – according to Wittgenstein meaningless because they do not portray factual or possible situations. But that’s why they are not worthless yet. ” On the contrary, Wittgenstein’s work has an “ethical pointe.” “He made a sharp distinction between the ‘contingent’ world, in which everything could have been different and that we can study empirically, and the domain of ethics and religion that cannot be discussed in that way, but that is nevertheless valuable. That is his ethical point. But of course he also liked to do Logica, to that field.”
Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951).
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There is already a lot of literature about Wittgenstein, also in the Netherlands. Why even an introductory book?
“I didn’t want to talk about his well -known works, but show his development. You often read that there is an ‘early’ Wittgenstein and a ‘late’, with a hard break in between. That is too simple, there is a great continuity in his work. It remains to him the limits of our language. And therefore the status of ethics that you don’t do not in The world finds but who is rather an attitude towards the world, which there is nothing else to say about. At least, not as we describe the world in science. In that sense, ethical statements in that early work are meaningless. “
What is meaning and why is it a philosophical problem?
“For philosophers, meaning is interesting because it is about language, our way of communicating. To explain something, ask, order, admire, mislead, and furthermore. You can look at it as a linguist, psychologist or neuroscientist, which makes it philosophically interesting is what all those ways of witty is to use that but that is a session. It is reflected in all sorts of ways.
Meaning is use, isn’t the adage of the later Wittgenstein?
“Yes, but that is such a slogan. He himself says so only once. In many cases, use the meaning of words. But you should not look for a definition at Wittgenstein, the point is that he teaches you to look very precisely and diverse at language.”
His most cited statement is that at the end of the tractatus: “Of which one cannot speak, one must remain silent about that.” Science has the last word about the world and the rest – philosophy, ethics, religion – is nonsense, including the philosophy of Wittgenstein itself.
“That is what some people say: if you have understood the book correctly, you can throw it away. But that is wrong that Wittgenstein himself has always continued to work on his philosophy. In his later work he treats the same problems, only in a different way. You can also easily hear about that later work that it merely therapeutic would disappear: I read him differently differently
How then?
“I think Wittgenstein is a very humanistic thinker. What is central to him is what things mean for ours, if people. That is also where the task of philosophy is, now that it has lost a lot of terrain in the sciences.”
Philosophy always loses it from the sciences, you see that happening now
That is similar to European philosophers that Wittgenstein fans often hate, such as Heidegger, who thought out the human ‘dasein’.
“I think there is a big overlap, indeed. The special thing about Wittgenstein is how meticulously he investigates ordinary language, not in abstractions about being like Heidegger.”
How relevant is Wittgenstein still? Needing only exists in logic, he thought, not in the world. But philosophers are now talking a lot about essences, natural species and necessary truths. Metaphysics is also back.
“Well, then you actually ask me what I think of the current analytical philosophy. Philosophy always loses it from the sciences, you see that now happen to the neuroscience that have caught up with philosophy of the Spirit. What remains for philosophers about? The standard answer is:” concepts analyze “or want to improve.”
And that’s?
“Show what meaning is for us in all kinds of linguistic and non-language contexts. Take generative AI, what do we mean when we say that something ‘understands’ something? I argue for one Philosophie Pauvrea modest type of philosophy that is aware of its own limitations and focuses on issues that you by definition cannot understand exactly enough. Current academic philosophy has become an industry, very close to science. He can’t do anything with Wittgenstein’s approach. But I think he’s right. “