Stanley Cavell, einer der originellsten und provokantesten Denker der amerikanischen Gegenwartsphilosophie, findet in den letzten Jahren immer größere internationale Aufmerksamkeit. Gemessen am Mainstream der analytischen Philosophie ist er ein recht atypischer Autor; er setzt sich nicht nur mit Wittgenstein, Austin und Kant, sondern auch mit Nietzsche, Heidegger und Derrida auseinander und diskutiert das Phantastische der Philosophie. Er interpretiert Dichter wie Shakespeare und Beckett, schreibt aber auch brillante Studien über Fotografie und Film. Die Überfülle der Themen und das Nebeneinanderbestehen werden dem (...) orthodoxen analytischen Philosopen ungewöhnlich, ja suspekt vorkommen..." (Davide Sparti) Der vorliegende Band bietet einen repräsentativen Querschnittdurch Stanley Cavells philosophische und kunsttheoretische Essays. (shrink)

Beitrage von Ludwig Nagl, Richard Heinrich, Arthur C. Danto, Barry Stroud, Peter F. Strawson, Herbert Hrachovec, Richard Rorty, Stanley Cavell, Hubert L. Dreyfus und Stuar E. Dreyfus, Kurt R. Fischer und Franz M. Wimmer.

_Philosophical Delusion and its Therapy_ provides new foundations and methods for the revolutionary project of philosophical therapy pioneered by Ludwig Wittgenstein. The book vindicates this currently much-discussed project by reconstructing the genesis of important philosophical problems: With the help of concepts adapted from cognitive linguistics and cognitive psychology, the book analyses how philosophical reflection is shaped by pictures and metaphors we are not aware of employing and are prone to misapply. Through innovative case-studies on the genesis of classical problems (...) about the mind and perception, and on thinkers including Locke, Berkeley and Ayer, the book demonstrates how such autonomous habits of thought systematically generate unsound intuitions and philosophical delusions, whose clash with reality, or among each other, gives rise to ill-motivated but maddening problems. The book re-examines models of therapeutic philosophy, due to Wittgenstein and J. L. Austin, and develops an approach that may let us overcome philosophical delusions and the problems they engender. In this way, the book explains where and why therapy in called for in philosophy, and develops techniques to carry it out. (shrink)

This paper presents a neglected philosophical approach, redevelops it on fresh empirical foundations, and seeks to bring out that it is of not merely historical interest. Building on ideas Ludwig Wittgenstein mooted in the early 1930s, Friedrich Waismann developed a distinctive metaphilosophy: Through case studies on particular philosophical problems, he identified a characteristic structure and genesis displayed by several philosophical problems and presented a distinctive dialogical method for dissolving problems of this kind. This method turns on exposing the need (...) to endow philosophical questions or claims with more determinate meaning and meeting this need by proposing linguistic rules and explanations which the problems’ proponents are free to accept or reject. The approach is embedded in the view that unconscious thought decisively shapes the formulation of philosophical problems. This paper first presents the approach on the basis of Waismann’s texts and then redevelops it through a case study on the ‘problem of perception’ and within a post-Freudian conception of unconscious thought: We will draw on psycholinguistic findings about automatic inferences in language comprehension and production, to examine how unconscious cognition shapes the problem formulation. Findings provide fresh, empirical foundations for the approach which has advantages over more familiar critical projects in ordinary language philosophy, to which it is kindred in spirit. (shrink)

The paper develops and addresses a major challenge for therapeutic conceptions of philosophy of the sort increasingly attributed to Wittgenstein. To be substantive and relevant, such conceptions have to identify “diseases of the understanding” from which philosophers suffer, and to explain why these “diseases” need to be cured in order to resolve or overcome important philosophical problems. The paper addresses this challenge in three steps: With the help of findings and concepts from cognitive linguistics and cognitive psychology, it redevelops the (...) Wittgensteinian notion of “philosophical pictures.” Through a case study on seminal versions of familiar mind-body problems, it examines how such pictures shape philosophical reflection and generate ill-motivated but captivating problems. Third, it shows that philosophical pictures are constitutive of “diseases of the understanding,” in a quite strict sense of the term. On this basis, the paper explains when and why philosophical therapy is required. (shrink)

Die Frage nach Gott war seit Platon – und verstärkt im Denken Augustins – ein Hauptpunkt des philosophischen Fragens überhaupt. Noch Kant zählte sie zu den »Kardinalsätzen der reinen Vernunft«, zu den Fragen, an denen »die Vernunft ihr größtes Interesse hat«. Martin Heidegger, dessen Denken weithin von der Gottesfrage angeregt ist und um sie kreist, hat dagegen erwogen, »von Gott im Bereich des Denkens zu schweigen« – nicht weil er diese Frage für belanglos hielt, sondern weil das Denken sich für (...) diese Frage erst neu öffnen und vorbereiten müsse. In die von Kant und Heidegger bestimmte Situation hinein hat Emmanuel Levinas ein Denken entfaltet, das – im Wissen um die Schwierigkeiten – einen neuen Zugang zur Gottes- frage eröffnet. Der aus einem Symposion entstandene Band enthält Beiträge von Levinas-Interpreten der ›ersten Stunde‹ (Bernhard Casper, Jean Greisch und Ludwig Wenzler), aber auch Beiträge, die Levinas in Verbindung mit Autoren der abendländischen Philosophie sehen (Johannes Brachtendorf, Norbert Fischer und Eduard Zwierlein), und schließlich Beiträge, die sich der immanenten Auslegung von Aspekten seines Werks zuwenden (Sarah Allen, Reinhold Esterbauer, Branko Klun und Jakub Sirovátka). (shrink)

Von der offenen Ablehnung Bertrand Russells bis zur positiven Einschätzung durch Arthur Danto hat Nietzsche einen schlechten Ruf als Philosoph in der Analytischen Tradition gehabt. Im Wiener Kreis, der eine nicht wegzudenkende Rolle in der Geschichte der Analytischen Philosophie spielt, wurde Nietzsche jedoch schon immer zutiefst respektiert als jemand, durch dessen Werk Rolle und Funktion der Analyse historisch verständlich wird. Dies gilt vor allem für Moritz Schlick und Rudolf Carnap, aber auch für Ludwig Wittgenstein und für Otto Neurath, (...) class='Hi'>Ludwig von Mises und Kari Popper. Sie alle nehmen Nietzsche als Denker ernst, ohne sich ihm mit analytischem Begriffsinventar zu nähern. (shrink)

Von der offenen Ablehnung Bertrand Russells bis zur positiven Einschätzung durch Arthur Danto hat Nietzsche emen schlechten Ruf als Phüosoph in der Analytischen Tradition gehabt. Im Wiener Kreis, der eine nicht wegzudenkende Rolle in der Geschichte der Analytischen Phüosophie spielt, wurde Nietzsche jedoch schon immer zutiefst respektiert als jemand,durch dessen Werk Rolle und Funktion der Analyse historisch verständlich wird. Dies güt vor allem für Moritz Schlick und Rudolf Carnap, aber auch für Ludwig Wittgenstein und für Otto Neurath, Ludwig (...) von Mises und Kari Popper. Sie alle nehmen Nietzsche als Denker ernst, ohne sich ihm mit analytischem Begriffsinventar zu nähern. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Using Stanley CavellMichael FischerContending with Stanley Cavell, edited by Russell B. Goodman, 205 pp. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005, $45.00Reading Cavell, edited by Alice Crary and Sanford Shieh, 262 pp. London: Routledge, 2006, $120.00Stanley Cavell, edited by Richard Eldridge, 260 pp. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003, $24.99.Stanley Cavell often speaks of inheriting and carrying on the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and other (...) writers. These writers help him move on in his own thinking, turning him around when he feels lost, provoking him when he gets discouraged or stuck. His indebtedness to J. L. Austin in the acknowledgements to Must We Mean What We Say? (1969) captures one way he benefits from all the writers who have influenced him: "To the late J. L. Austin I owe, beyond what I hope is plain in my work, whatever is owed the teacher who shows one a way to do relevantly and fruitfully the thing one had almost given up hope of doing."1 By taking up the work of the writers he values, Cavell hopes to undo what he sees as their neglect and misappropriation by the culture at large and by the academic profession. He makes his case for these writers not so much by exhortation as by his own use of them.The impact of Cavell's own writing on his readers continues to unfold, as these three books attest. Each is a helpful collection of essays by scholars in various fields discussing his work. Reading Cavell includes [End Page 198] an essay by Cavell ("The Wittgensteinian Event"), as does Contending with Stanley Cavell ("Passionate and Performative Utterance: Morals of Encounter"), which also features a response by Cavell to the other essays in the volume.The contributors in these three volumes all begin from the assumption that Cavell, like the writers who have influenced him, remains marginalized even though interest in his work has grown. But his isolation can be overstated. In an otherwise insightful essay on Cavell's literary criticism ("The Avoidance of Stanley Cavell" in Contending with Stanley Cavell ), Garrett Stewart laments "the regrettable undercirculation of Cavell's ideas" (p. 140) in literary studies and predicts that "mainstream literary scholars will increasingly have a hard time" with his writing—Stewart calls it "literary prose"—because it calls on reading skills that in the "epoch of cultural studies, discourse analysis, and the semiotics of social energy" have "atrophied" (p. 153). In the introduction to this same volume, Russell Goodman offers a more measured, less pessimistic assessment that gets Cavell's peculiar professional status exactly right: "Cavell occupies a curious position in all the fields in which he works: he is at the same time a major figure and one whose work people do not quite know how to use" (p. 3).In figuring out how to use Cavell, several contributors to these volumes begin by explicating his key ideas and texts. The writers in Stanley Cavell assess his contributions to several broad areas, including ethics, theory of action, philosophy of mind and language, aesthetics, and Shakespeare criticism. Reading Cavell and Contending with Stanley Cavell include essays on such central topics as his view of skepticism and his understanding of the ordinary. Of special note is Stephen Mulhall's close reading of the opening of The Claim of Reason, "On Refusing to Begin," in Contending with Stanley Cavell. One barrier to using Cavell remains his style, which readers either love or hate. Mulhall shows that the very features of Cavell's writing that some readers find most annoying—for example, his penchant for complicating and qualifying even the apparently most obvious point—in fact instruct us in how to read him. Mulhall astutely describes The Claim of Reason and Philosophical Investigations as modernist texts written in the absence of philosophical conventions that the writers can take for granted. Such writing must resemble "a half-built edifice whose form acknowledges both its origin in ruins and the completion it foreshadows" (p. 32)—but never attains.In addition to explicating Cavell, other contributors to these volumes extend his work to texts and issues he does not address. These... (shrink)

In this article, I develop the so‐called ‘problem of linguistic creativity’ for two object‐languages, one finite, the other infinite. I then employ an approach first outlined by Ludwig Wittgenstein’s collaborator Friedrich Waismann, to ‘dissolve’ that problem, in a sense made precise by working through the example. This is to unsettle the computational picture of linguistic understanding as turning on the generation of semantic information about sentences on the basis of semantic information about their constituent parts, and to provide a (...) reasonably clear conception of to what such ‘philosophical dissolution’ of a problem amounts. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Stanley Cavell and Criticizing the University from WithinMichael FischerStanley Cavell has spoken often of his "lifelong quarrel with the profession of philosophy" but he has said less about the university as a whole and its pressures on all academic disciplines, philosophy included. 1 In Cavell's work, "academic" or "professional" philosophy takes shape in an institutional context he has not yet fully analyzed. I want here to extrapolate from Cavell's (...) work a critical, yet sympathetic, response to the university that I think is especially needed today, when the rise of the so-called corporate university is intensifying some of the professional pressures that Cavell resists.Cavell's discomfort with academic philosophy stems in part from what he regards as its narrowness, specifically, its marginalization of Ludwig Wittgenstein and other philosophers, not to mention Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson, the comedies of remarriage, and other work that Cavell cares about. In his view, the professional marginalization of these writers partly results from their exemplifying what can seem to be a vague moral seriousness, even at times a prophetic urgency, that calls for something akin to conversion rather than issuing in specific conclusions or reforms. According to Cavell, academic philosophy, by contrast, subsumes moral concerns under ethics, a separate field in which the "point of conversation is getting the other to agree to, or to do, something." 2Although Cavell does not systematically analyze the institutional pressures on academic philosophy, he does drop some hints. As befitting a subject seeking legitimacy in the university, academic philosophy has aligned itself with teachable subjects such as science, as opposed to more elusive pursuits such as painting and creative writing, which [End Page 471] have been less at home in the university and where the necessity of university instruction may be less clear and the line between success and failure harder to draw. 3 What can be taught in academic philosophy is a method of analysis, mastery of which can be certified in students by professors and in professors by journals, promotion and tenure committees, and administrators. Subdividing philosophy into discrete fields such as ethics makes it even more manageable, or less susceptible to sweeping pronouncements that cannot be tested by experts. Finally, the interest in getting "the other to agree to, or to do, something" associates academic philosophy, or at least ethics, with measurable results and maybe even progress.The rise of the so-called corporate university has exacerbated the emphasis on teachable expertise and definable outcomes that I have been describing. Take the largest private university in the United States—the University of Phoenix—as a model that some state and non-profit private universities may be emulating as they struggle to cut costs, meet external expectations, and work with reduced budgets. At the University of Phoenix, the interest in measurable results gets recast as learning outcomes that teachers enable students to reach as efficiently as possible. Specialization narrows these learning outcomes to sharply defined skills, such as writing business memos, which students can master and build on. Finally, the emphasis on method does not simply depersonalize instruction; it reduces the need for instructors. Each instructor is tasked with teaching as many students as possible, sometimes through distance learning, with class size reaching a limit only when the learning outcomes cannot be delivered. Lacking tenure, these instructors can be replaced, like interchangeable parts, when they wear out or their student customers become too dissatisfied with them. At another rapidly growing for-profit university, DeVry, students unhappy with their instructors are assured, in the words of a campus dean, that "weak links" will be "fixed" in a "total quality management" environment. 4Along similar lines, Lindsay Waters has recently explored how "the corporate makeover of the university" and "the commercialization of higher education" have affected academic publishing. 5 Universities compete in an increasingly cutthroat marketplace and face an escalating insistence on results from state legislatures, federal agencies, accrediting associations, and boards. Capitulating to this "accountability culture" (EP, p. 20), bottom-line driven administrators have stepped up demands for faculty productivity, measured in quantitative terms by numbers of students taught, grants won, and, what most concerns Waters, books and [End... (shrink)

Wittgenstein finished part 1 of the Philosophical Investigations in the spring of 1945. From 1946 to 1949 he worked on the philosophy of psychology almost without interruption. The present two-volume work comprises many of his writings over this period. Some of the remarks contained here were culled for part 2 of the Investigations ; others were set aside and appear in the collection known as Zettel . The great majority, however, although of excellent quality, have hitherto remained unpublished. This bilingual (...) edition of the Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology presents the first English translation of an essential body of Wittegenstein's work. It elaborates Wittgenstein's views on psychological concepts such as expectation, sensation, knowing how to follow a rule, and knowledge of the sensations of other persons. It also shows strong emphasis on the "anthropological" aspect of Wittgenstein's thought. Philosophers, as well as anthropologists, psychologists, and sociologists will welcome this important publication. (shrink)

This is a selection of essays on moral responsibility that represent the major components of John Martin Fischer's overall approach to freedom of the will and moral responsibility. The collection exhibits the overall structure of Fischer's view and shows how the various elements fit together to form a comprehensive framework for analyzing free will and moral responsibility. The topics include deliberation and practical reasoning, freedom of the will, freedom of action, various notions of control, and moral accountability. The (...) essays seek to provide a foundation for our practices of holding each other (and ourselves) morally and legally accountable for our behavior. A crucial move is the distinction between two kinds of control. According to Fischer, "regulative control" involves freedom to choose and do otherwise ("alternative possibilities"), whereas "guidance control" does not. Fischer contends that guidance control is all the freedom we need to be morally responsible agents. Further, he contends that such control is fully compatible with causal determinism. Additionally, Fischer argues that we do not need genuine access to alternative possibilities in order for there to be a legitimate point to practical reasoning. Fischer's overall framework contains an argument for the contention that guidance control, and not regulative control, is associated with moral responsibility, a sketch of a comprehensive theory of moral responsibility (that ties together responsibility for actions, omissions, consequences, and character), and an account of the value of moral responsibility. On this account, the value of exhibiting freedom (of the relevant sort) and thus being morally responsible for one's behavior is a species of the value of artistic self-expression. (shrink)

Bazzocchi disposes the text of the Tractatus in a user-friendly manner, exactly as Wittgenstein's decimals advise. This discloses the logical form of the book by distinct reading units, linked into a fashioned hierarchical tree. The text becomes much clearer and every reader can enjoy, finally, its formal and literary qualities.

These works, as the sub-title makes clear, are unfinished sketches for Philosophical Investigations, possibly the most important and influential philosophical work of modern times. The 'Blue Book' is a set of notes dictated to Witgenstein's Cambridge students in 1933-1934: the 'Brown Book' was a draft for what eventually became the growth of the first part of Philosophical Investigations. This book reveals the germination and growth of the ideas which found their final expression in Witgenstein's later work. It is indispensable therefore (...) to students of Witgenstein's thought and to all those who wish to study at first-hand the mental processes of a thinker who fundamentally changed the course of modern philosophy. (shrink)

Vorwort -- Vortrag über Ethik -- Bemerkungen über logische Form -- Bemerkungen über Frazers Golden Bough -- Aufzeichnungen für Vorlesungen über "privates Erlebnis" und "Sinnesdaten" -- Ursache und Wirkung ; Intuitives Erfassen -- Textnachweise.

Written in code under constant threat of battle, Wittgenstein's searing and illuminating diaries finally emerge in this first-ever English translation. During the pandemic, Marjorie Perloff, one of our foremost scholars of global literature, found her mind ineluctably drawn to the profound commentary on life and death in the wartime diaries of eminent philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951). Upon learning that these notebooks, which richly contextualize the early stages of his magnum opus, the Tractatus-Logico-Philosophicus, had never before been published in English, (...) the Viennese-born Perloff determinedly set about translating them. Beginning with the anxious summer of 1914, this historic, en-face edition presents the first-person recollections of a foot soldier in the Austrian Army, fresh from his days as a philosophy student at Cambridge, who must grapple with the hazing of his fellow soldiers, the stirrings of a forbidden sexuality, and the formation of an explosive analytical philosophy that seemed to draw meaning from his endless brushes with death. Much like Tolstoy's The Gospel in Brief, Private Notebooks takes us on a personal journey to discovery as it augments our knowledge of Wittgenstein himself. (shrink)

Editorial preface to the fourth edition and modified translation -- The text of the Philosophische Untersuchungen -- Philosophische untersuchungen = Philosophical investigations -- Philosophie der psychologie, ein fragment = Philosophy of psychology, a fragment.

[1] Biographie, Philosophie, Praxis -- [2] Het spel van het naamloze / naar een concept van Joseph Kosuth.

'Philosophische Anthropologie' meint in dieser Studie nicht eine philosophische Subdisziplin, sondern eine besondere Theorierichtung in der deutschsprachigen Philosophie des 20. Jahrhunderts, die mit den Namen Max Scheler, Helmuth Plessner, Erich Rothacker, Arnold Gehlen, Adolf Portmann u.v.a. mehr verbunden ist. Der erste Teil erzählt die verwickelte, teils abenteuerliche Entstehungs-, Aufstiegs- und Entfaltungsgeschichte dieser Denkergruppe von 1919 bis 1975 - einschließlich ihrer beachtlichen Wirkungsgeschichte in verschiedenen Disziplinen wie der Soziologie, Psychologie, Biologie und der Philosophie selbst. Im zweiten Teil wird der philosophische Identitätskern (...) dieser Philosophischen Anthropologie als Denkansatz präzisiert. (shrink)

Bazzocchi disposes the text of the Tractatus in a user-friendly manner, exactly as Wittgenstein's decimals advise. This discloses the logical form of the book by distinct reading units, linked into a fashioned hierarchical tree. The text becomes much clearer and every reader can enjoy, finally, its formal and literary qualities.