Reviews for Wittgenstein's Vienna

The average rating for Wittgenstein's Vienna based on 2 reviews is 5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2013-05-24 00:00:00 Peter Grossman It is somewhat of a surprise to me, but this may be one of my favorite works of philosophy. The reason why is simple: Wittgenstein's Vienna studies the thought of a particular individual not just on its apparent ground, but also, and possibly more fundamentally, within the context of the culture and history in which it arose. This is something that should be done with many of the thinkers and artists of days past, but Wittgenstein in particular almost demands this treatment. The proof of this is given in how much he has been misunderstood. Let me give an example: "A whole generation of disciples was able to take Wittgenstein as a positivist, because he has something of enormous importance in common with the positivists: he draws the line between what we can speak about and what we must remain silent about just as they do. The difference is only that they have nothing to be silent about. Positivism holds--and this is the essence--that what we can speak about is all that matters in life. Wittgenstein passionately believes that all that really matters in human life is precisely what, in his view, we must remain silent about!" - Paul Engelmann. I think it has more to do with my stance than some great intellect or anything that my initial reading of the Tractatus -- which in detail I barely understood upon first reading -- is in fact what Wittgenstein had intended, and precisely what many smarter and more famous individuals than myself had completely misunderstood. The last section of the book, which people like Russell though was a sort of throwaway addendum, is in fact the very heart of the matter. And W's later work (touched on in the posthumous Discourses) is not so much a departure from his earlier thought as a clarification about language, which does throw a serious curveball in regard to the demarcation between that-which-can-be-spoken and that-which-must-be-passed-over-in-silence. The Tractutus, in other words, is essentially not a work on logic and language, but rather a work on ethics/value/meaning. This thesis is presented very well in Janik and Toulmin's book, and their methodology is such that it wound up being one of the central books in our first investigation of myth, "The Immanence of Myth." (Weaponized.)

Review # 2 was written on 2014-01-07 00:00:00 Rosetta James I first read Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (TLP) in a class in 1975. In 1976-77 I undertook to compile what I called a "Cultural-Historical Introduction to Wittgenstein's Tractatus." But I soon discovered that this book had been published in 1973, accomplishing most all of what I had wanted to do, only far better. This is essential reading for anyone interested in the TLP. This is about the 4th time I've read the book, but I am only now listing it in Goodreads b/c my listings only cover what I have read since 2006. This book provides all the Austrian background to Wittgenstein that Anglophone students were generally unaware of. I have recently come back to my original project--now as a collection of materials that influenced Wittgenstein (positively or negatively) in his composition of the TLP. So I returned to this book for help in finding references. But it was worth the re-read. The book is co-authored, and I have come to know the first author (Allan Janik)--in fact my current copy of the book is signed by him--a fine scholar and man. He emphasizes the importance of Karl Kraus for setting up the problems that Wittgenstein came to address in TLP. I recently read a new edition and commentary on some of Kraus's writings (by Jonathan Frazen) and this makes for an interesting comparison. Both books look at what Kraus means for today (though "today" in this book was the early 1970s). While this book's applications (Ch 9) are dated, this book's account of Kraus and his relevance as a cultural critic is far superior to Frazen's discussion. Even if you are not a philosopher interested in Wittgenstein, this book offers a wide-ranging account of cultural issues generally that touches on such figures as Schoenberg (music), Loos (architecture), Musil (literature), Hertz (physics), and dozens of others.