Word: wittgenstein
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...functioning hands would seem to be the minimum basic requirement for a concert career, but fortunately musical history says otherwise. When the pianist Paul Wittgenstein, brother of the philosopher Ludwig, lost his right arm serving with the Austrian army in World War I, he reacted with logical positivism: he commissioned several leading composers to write works for the left hand alone...
Furthermore, this imbroglio underscores a more central issue. We are as concerned as you are about the inherent prejudices of language. But as Wittgenstein noted, all words impose arbitrary categorical limitations on the nominal world...
...surprising that most council members found the meetings boring. They got tired of hearing the same representatives ask the same questions of different proposals, meeting after meeting. To save themselves from the tedium, at least two representatives studied foreign language flash-cards, while another worked his way through Wittgenstein. Others found equally productive ways to pass the time...
Cavell's treatment of the Kripke reading reflects his longtime concern with establishing the "seriousness of Wittgenstein's investment in the ordinary." According to Cavell, Wittgenstein shares with Emerson an attitude toward thinking characterized by an "entrustment of ordinary words." This attitude, if I understand it, is also the condition for the "Conversation of Justice"--the conversation whereby a democratic society comes to know and to criticize itself from within...
Although Cavell's Moral Reasoning course draws on much of the material found in the book, Conditions is not an introduction to philosophy. It presupposes considerable familiarity with Emerson, Nietzsche, Wittgenstein and Rawls. But the book does serve as an introduction to Cavell's thought, to his stunning literary interpretations, his mind-bending prose and his commitment to the future of American philosophy. As Cavell himself notes, the lectures are open-ended--their achievement, in part, lies in the relations they establish and the foundations they lay. And so, while not as satisfying as some of Cavell's other work...