Ludwig wittgenstein professional#

Given this extreme pessimism about the potential of philosophy - perhaps tantamount to a denial that there is such a subject - it is hardly surprising that “Wittgenstein” is uttered withĪ curl of the lip in most philosophical circles. Leaving behind only bits of stone and rubble)” - and answers that “(w)hat we are destroying is nothing but houses of cards and we are clearing up the ground of language on which they stand.”īertrand Russell, one of Wittgenstein's early teachers, at his home in London in 1962. Therefore traditional philosophical theorizing must give way to a painstaking identification of its tempting but misguided presuppositions and an understanding of how we ever came to regard them as legitimate.īut in that case, he asks, “here does investigation get its importance from, since it seems only to destroy everything interesting, that is, all that is great and important? (As it were all the buildings, That the “philosophy” aiming to solve them has been marked by perennial controversy and lack of decisive progress - by an embarrassing failure, after over 2000 years, to settle any of its central For these are mere pseudo-problems, the misbegotten products of linguistic illusion and muddled thinking. If so, then we are duped and bound to be disappointed, says Wittgenstein. Isn’t that why we are so fascinated by it? Knowledge of the external world is possible, of whether our decisions can be truly free, of the structure of any just society, and so on - and that philosophy’s job is to provide such understanding. It’s taken for granted that there is deep understanding to be obtained of the nature of consciousness, of how Philosophy is respected, even exalted, for its promise to provide fundamental insights into the human condition and the ultimateĬharacter of the universe, leading to vital conclusions about how we are to arrange our lives.

This attitude is in stark opposition to the traditional view, which continues to prevail. Indeed the whole idea of a subject that could yield such results is based on confusion and wishful thinking. There are no startling discoveries to be made of facts, not open to the methods of science, yet accessible “from the armchair” through some blend of intuition, pure reason and conceptual analysis. Wittgenstein claims that there are no realms of phenomena whose study is the special business of a philosopher, and about which he or she should devise profound a priori theories and sophisticated supporting arguments. But this dismissal disguises what is pretty clearly the real cause of Wittgenstein’s unpopularity withinĭepartments of philosophy: namely, his thoroughgoing rejection of the subject as traditionally and currently practiced his insistence that it can’t give us the kind of knowledge generally regarded as its Is self-indulgently obscure and that behind the catchy slogans there is little of intellectual value. Apart from a small and ignored clique of hard-core supporters the usual view these days is that his writing

Ludwig wittgenstein professional#

A reminder of philosophy’s embarrassing failure, after over 2000 years, to settle any of its central issues.Īdmittedly, few would agree with this rosy assessment - certainly not many professional philosophers.