In some sections of On Certainty, Wittgenstein uses the term “persuasion,” pitting it, on the one hand, against “giving reasons”, and comparing it, on the other, to conversion, while, finally, defining it as “giving someone one's own picture of the world.” In this essay, I analyse these sections, in an effort to fit them into the broader context of On Certainty, and to clarify the meaning and the limits of the comparison between persuasion and conversion. My aim is to show (...) that persuasion as Wittgenstein understands it here is quite similar to what we could call “re-education.”. (shrink)

This is a compilation of essays by thirteen authors dedicated to a direct exploration of Wittgenstein and Plato.

This chapter argues that Wittgenstein wasn’t a mere pretext for Paolozzi and that it is impossible to fully understand the artist’s work without considering his relationship to the Austrian philosopher. Furthermore, Paolozzi—as an artist—recognized various aspects of Wittgenstein’s thought and let them come to light in a period when they were still concealed to the majority of interpreters with a philosophical background. In this sense, Perissinotto demonstrates that Paolozzi’s work fully belongs to the general story of Wittgenstein’s critical reception. (...) In order to do so, the chapter attempts a reconstruction of the cultural environment where Paolozzi met Wittgenstein, meant both as the general philosophical reception of Wittgenstein in the 1950s and 1960s, as well as Paolozzi’s direct testimony on his encounter with the Austrian philosopher. Eventually, Perissinotto systematically analyses several “wittgensteinian” works of Paolozzi to understand how much of these works is borrowed from Wittgenstein, but also what of Wittgenstein and which Wittgenstein lives and acts in them. (shrink)

The essay has as its main theme proposition 6.5 of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus logico-philosophicus and, in particular, its second paragraph "The riddle does not exist". In the first section, the notion of riddle is compared with that of problem, emphasising, among other things, the great relevance that, for Wittgenstein, the distinction between problems of philosophy and problems of natural science has; in the second, an attempt is made to clarify the meaning that Wittgenstein assigns to the word “riddle”: a riddle would (...) be a question “in the void”, without any “direction”, that is, so to speak, a question that does not know what it is asking. This means that, even if it presents itself as a question, the riddle is a non-question. The third section highlights how the denial that there is the enigma is complementary to the denial, so characteristic of the Tractatus, that there are a priori true thoughts or propositions. (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 6, Issue 2-3, pp 143 - 164 In §513 of _On Certainty_ Wittgenstein asks “What if something _really unheard-of_ happened?” But with this question he is not asking us to make a forecast, a prediction, or some sort of empirico-psychological prophecy about our possible reactions. As I will attempt to show, the question regarding the unheard-of is part of Wittgenstein’s philosophical method—which is to say, it is one of the instruments with which he combats what he sees (...) as the principal source of the confusions of philosophy: mistaking the grammatical for the empirical or, as he also says, the conceptual for the factual. In this sense the question regarding the unheard-of can shed some light on the grammatical status of what he calls “hinges.”. (shrink)

This essay analyses some remarks of Wittgenstein’s On Certainty in which Wittgenstein compares human behaviour to that of animals and says he wants to consider man as an animal. The essay’s main purpose is to show that these remarks are essentially understood as part and parcel of what Wittgenstein calls “conceptual investigations” and that, consequently, they give little support to On Certainty’s naturalistic interpretations. A second purpose of the essay is to show that Wittgenstein does not intend to combat the (...) use of “I know” in contexts such as those evoked by Moore; rather he wants to draw attention to the different ways in which we say or can say “I know.”. (shrink)

The article sheds light on some points of convergence between Rorty’s theoretical proposal to reject systematic and foundational philosophy favoring a “post-Philosophy” and Gargani’s idea of knowledge without foundations. In particular, the article argues how Gargani’s interpretation of Rorty’s thought is in line with Gargani’s critique of universal and ahistorical rationality in favor of naturalized anthropology, expressing in a praxis that, although without foundations, is not an expression of irrationality. The last part of the article highlights some differences between Gargani (...) and Rorty on the possibility of adopting some different facets of Heidegger’s thought. (shrink)

Starting from some classical of philosophy of the 20th century , the essay locates the ambit within the contextualism was introduced, examining particularly the problems of the immediate datum and of the reductionism and also adumbrating some answers to the criticisms coming from anti-contextualist positions.

This book explores Wittgenstein's conception of ethics, religion and philosophy. It aims at providing us with the tools necessary for assessing to what extent the Austrian philosopher can be considered an anti-Enlightenment thinker. The articles collected in this volume explore the relationship between Wittgenstein's thought and that of several authors who were, in various ways, key to the counter-enlightenement, authors such as Hume, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Tolstoy, James and Pierce. One of the central issues examined here is Wittgenstein's opposition to the (...) Cartesian method of doubt a cornerstone of the enlightened movement against prejudice and superstition.". (shrink)

The present book is a collection of 9 essays, focusing on the ethical, religious, and political aspects of Wittgenstein's thought, illustrated and investigated with reference to their complex interaction with Wittgenstein's philosophical method and with his conception of language and human agency.

This chapter serves as an introduction to a carefully planned research and mutually curated volume on the relationship between Pop art initiator Eduardo Paolozzi and celebrity philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. Mantoan and Perissinotto argue that this peculiar encounter between an artist and a philosopher—both as a man and as far as his philosophy is concerned—was a “kind of happening”, which took place years before the generation of future conceptual artists had even entered art school. Not only was Paolozzi the first (...) and perhaps still is the only artist who devoted a substantial part of his oeuvre to the Austrian philosopher, but his works also impress even a philosophically qualified audience for the level of expertise and intuitiveness with which the writings of Wittgenstein are handled. Hence, Mantoan and Perissinotto pursue a twofold aim: on the one side, to present the artist Paolozzi as a precursor in reading Wittgenstein in the field of contemporary art, influencing or forestalling the then upcoming generation of conceptual artists; on the other side, to demonstrate how the reader Paolozzi may even be seen as a precursor as regards the interpretation of Wittgenstein’s philosophy. (shrink)

This impressive edited collection investigates the relationship between British Pop Art pioneer Eduardo Paolozzi and the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. At this time, when Paolozzi’s oeuvre is in the process of being rediscovered, his long-time fascination with Wittgenstein requires thorough exploration, as it discloses a deeper understanding of his artistic production, further helping to reassess the philosopher’s actual impact on visual arts and its theory in the second half of the 20th century. With 13 diverse and comprehensive chapters, bringing together philosophers (...) and art historians, this volume aims at retracing and pondering the influence of Wittgenstein on the idea of art in Paolozzi, thus giving an unprecedented insight into Wittgenstein’s philosophy as employed by contemporary artists. (shrink)

The political legacy of classical German philosophy can contribute in a crucial way to the most recent developments of contemporary political thought, thereby also making sense of the contradictions underlying the social practices and institutional values of our societies. What justifies this perspective is, in the first place, the complexity of contemporaneity, which holds within itself a doubleness that can be understood in the light of the conceptual tools of classical German philosophy. On the one hand, contemporary societies seem to (...) be facing relentless crises in the modern idea of democracy, the political subject of the nation-state, and capitalist economic structures. On the other hand, there is an ever-increasing demand for rights and new forms of recognition, not to mention the emergence of grassroots movements that strive for greater political participation and generate new collective subjectivities. By radically questioning traditional philosophical categories, Kant, Fichte and Hegel provide a new and insightful understanding of the crucial challenges of modernity. They outline a conception of practical rationality and its multiple manifestations that is irreplaceable for philosophically understanding our contemporary world. (shrink)

The printed images in the frontispiece of modern philosophical books were not simply meant as decorations, but offered in remarkable cases a pictorial synthesis of the ideas expounded in the book. This is true not only of Bacon’s Instauratio magna, on the background of an explicit theoretical reflection on the use of fables and metaphors in the exposition of scientific truth, but also of Hobbes’ Leviathan, notwithstanding Hobbes’ own criticism of metaphorical language. One third impressive example is the “dipintura” of (...) Vico’s La Scienza Nuova, which is the object of a lengthy hermeneutical analysis by the author himself. The paper argues that the prominent importance of the image in these modern classics reflects the search for a more immediate connection between words and things, whose actuality is still debated in XXthcentury philosophy. (shrink)

Principi e ordinamento romano : una riflessione sulle orme di Fritz Schulz -- Homo liber e homo sacer : due archetipi dell'appartenenza -- L'humanitas tra diritto romano e totalitarismo hitleriano -- Sull'eccezione di dolo generale -- L'arbitraggio sul prezzo -- Diritto romano e scienza del diritto -- Roma e i suoi giuristi nel pensiero di Nicolás Gómez Dávila -- Tradizione e misura umana del diritto: considerazioni sulla figura del giurista a partire da Giuseppe Grosso.

In the Critique of Practical Reason, Immanuel Kant provides two different propositions of freedom. According to the first, in the “Analytic of Pure Practical Reason,” freedom establishes the possibility of moral agency—i.e., it is the ratio essendi of the moral law. According to the second, in the “Dialectic of Pure Practical Reason,” freedom is the object of one of the practical postulates (CPrR 246–54; AA 5:132–41). Why should Kant postulate something that has been allegedly established as the ground of moral (...) agency? Does Kant appeal to two different conceptions of freedom? In this paper, I argue that Kant (1) in both cases conceives of freedom as an unconditioned form of causality, and (2) pursues two different aims according to two different but complementary arguments. On the one hand (the practical standpoint), he wants to argue that the causality of freedom is actual, through moral agency, in the domain where the laws of nature also apply. On the other hand (the theoretical standpoint), he is aware that the possibility of achieving the highest good would be compromised if we did not assume, along with the other two postulates, a world in which only the causality of freedom applies. While freedom as the ratio essendi of the moral law is actual, freedom as a postulate is a mere object of belief. (shrink)