Word: wittgensteins
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Language Games. Many philosophers -including Ayer himself-have now backed away from that dogmatic view, thanks in large part to the influence of an eccentric Austrian-born Cam bridge don named Ludwig Wittgenstein, who died in 1951. Wittgenstein, perhaps the century's most important philosopher, believed that there was a wide variety of discourse-ranging from jokes to the "God-talk" of theologians -that could not be empirically verified, but nevertheless was useful and in some ways meaningful to man. Instead of dismissing this nonempirical discourse as nonsense, Philosophy should treat it as a "language game" and-without passing...
Prokofiev: Concerto No. 4 for Piano (Left Hand) and Orchestra (Rudolf Serkin; Columbia). This controversial concerto was written in 1931 for Paul Wittgenstein, the one-armed pianist, but languished unheard for 25 years. "Aggressively modern," snorted Wittgenstein, refusing to play it. His was a harsh verdict, judging by Serkin's performance...
...order to understand how the Harvard Philosophy Department stands on such issues, it is well to consider certain basic views of philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, who was the chief inspirer of that viewpoint known as linguistic analysis. This is for two reasons: because Wittgenstein's views have so influenced philosophy at Harvard, and because they illustrate so well the difference between humanistic issues and those technical issues with which the Harvard department is largely concerned. Wittgenstein's professed ultimate aim was to show that the traditional philosophical problems were really pseudo-problems; he wished to dissolve them by analysis of language...
...humanistic problems cannot be dissolved without dissolving human life itself. So Wittgenstein could not have been dealing with the humanistic issues of traditional philosophy. Rather, he was dealing with technical problems, i.e., problems which have no significant degree of relevance to understanding human nature or the human condition. Linguistic analysts, largely following Wittgenstein, seek most of all to speak about speaking; this leads to concern with technical issues only...
...analysis itself, but the term "analysis", as applied at Harvard, has a special implication; it implies that since only certain technical questions are appropriate for analytic treatment, only these questions can seriously be considered. For example, a typical Harvard philosophy professor would consider it quite proper to analyze Wittgenstein's notion of "criteria"" for use of words but he would not find it proper to analyze Sartre's use of the word "freedom." The various areas of philosophy comprise a hierarchy of sterility, and those subjects highest in the hierarchy are most respected at Harvard. Symbolic logic and philosophy...