Dieser Band umfasst 35 Texte des Wiener Philosophen und Wissenschaftstheoretikers Friedrich G. Wallner aus den 1980er Jahren. Sie setzen sich allesamt auseinander mit dem sprachphilosophischen Denken des fruhen wie spaten Wittgenstein. Die Auseinandersetzung erfolgt dabei in einer zweifachen Weise: In einem ersten Teil gilt es den Texten, Grundgedanken Wittgensteins zu analysieren, zu erhellen sowie deren Pragungen und Einflusse aufzuzeigen. Dabei werden der Ansatz seines Denkens sowie dessen Bedeutung fur Wissenschaftstheorie und Dichtung erortert. In einem zweiten Teil verfolgen die Texte (...) das Ziel, im Anschluss an Wittgenstein ein Konzept von Philosophie auszuarbeiten, welches Philosophie als Therapie begreift. Ein Konzept, welches im Horizont der Einzelwissenschaften mehrfach zur Anwendung kommt.". (shrink)

In this study Friedrich Waismann gives a systematic presentation of insights into philosophical problems which can be achieved by clarifying the language in which the problems are posed. Much of the material and the method itself derive from Wittgenstein's work in the early 30s. The book was originally envisaged as a lucid and well organized account of Wittgenstein's distinctive form of linguistic philosophy to enable the Vienna Circle to incorporate these valuable methods into their own programme of analysis. The (...) project evolved over many years into a wide-ranging survey of the dissolution of many philosophical problems and the construction of a systematic philosophical grammar. Waismann shows in detail how puzzlement can be removed by careful description of the uses of the terms employed in framing problems. At the same time, he sketches a general framework for analysis of language, including chapters on names, general terms, logical operators, propositions, questions, etc. This book is an authoritative presentation of Wittgenstein's influential philosophy of language in a format much easier to follow than his own intricate and elusive texts. Waismann exhibits clearly the merits of this method of philosophizing. This book should serve as an important and useful text for those who wish to understand the method and power of linguistic philosophy. It has no equal as an introduction to Wittgenstein's philosophy. (shrink)

The Voices of Wittgenstein brings for the first time, in both the original German and in English translation, over one hundred short essays in philosophical logic and the philosophy of mind. This text is of key historical importance to understanding Wittgenstein's philosophical thought and development in the 1930's. Transcribed from the papers of Friedrich Waismann and dating from 1932 to 1935, the majority are highly important dictations by Wittgenstein to Waismann. It also includes texts of redrafted material by Waismann, (...) closely based on these dictations. (shrink)

The author attempts to sketch a new picture of language: language is stratified into layers, each layer having a logic of its own and being separated from the others by gaps over which one may jump but which cannot be bridged by logical processes. Philosophers try to bridge the gaps and become entangled in pseudo-problems. Law statements exemplify one stratum, thing statements another, sense-datum statements another, ethical statements another, and so on. The different subject-matters are to be characterized by reference (...) to the different strata, rather than conversely; a sense impression is something that is describable in a language of such-and-such structure; a material object is something which can be described in such-and-such language; and so on. A consequence of the theory is said to be that logic loses its universal validity: logic can only be applied to statements that are homogeneous. However, relations between the layers do claim the attention of the logician. (shrink)

The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (1884), was a provocative and profoundly influential critique of the Victorian nuclear family. Engels argued that the traditional monogamous household was in fact a recent construct, closely bound up with capitalist societies. Under this patriarchal system, women were servants and, effectively, prostitutes. Only Communism would herald the dawn of communal living and a new sexual freedom and, in turn, the role of the state would become superfluous.

"With exceptional clarity, but with no evasion of essential ideas, the author outlines the fundamental structure of mathematics."--Carl B. Boyer, Brooklyn College. This enlightening survey of mathematical concept formation holds a natural appeal to philosophically minded readers, and no formal training in mathematics is necessary to appreciate its clear exposition. Contents include examinations of arithmetic and geometry; the rigorous construction of the theory of integers; the rational numbers and their foundation in arithmetic; and the rigorous construction of elementary arithmetic. Advanced (...) topics encompass the principle of complete induction; the limit and point of accumulation; operating with sequences and differential quotient; remarkable curves; real numbers and ultrareal numbers; and complex and hypercomplex numbers. 1959 ed. 27 Figures. Index. (shrink)

The present work carries us back to a period which, although chronologically no more than a generation or so behind us, has become as foreign to the present generation in Germany as if it were already a full hundred years old. Yet it was the period of Germany's preparation for the Revolution of 1848; and all that has happened in our country since then has been merely a continuation of 1848, merely the execution of the last will and testament of (...) the revolution. Just as in France in the eighteenth century, so in Germany in the nineteenth, a philosophical revolution ushered in the political collapse. But with what a difference! The French were in open combat with all official science, with the church and often also the state; their writings were printed beyond the frontier, in Holland or England, while they themselves were often on the point of landing in the Bastille. But the Germans were professors, state-appointed instructors of youth; their writings were recognized textbooks, and the system rounding off the whole development---the Hegelian system---was even raised, in some degree, to the rank of a royal Prussian philosophy of state! Was it possible that a revolution could hide behind these professors, behind their pedantically obscure phrases, their ponderous, wearisome sentences? Were not the liberals, the very people who then passed as the representatives of the revolution, the bitterest opponents of this brain-befuddling philosophy? But what neither governments nor liberals saw was seen by at least one man as early as 1833, and indeed by a man called Heinrich Heine. (shrink)

[1] T. 1. Die Metaphysik des Schönen. T. 2. Das Schöne in einseitiger Existenz.--[2] T. 3. [Bildende Künste] T. 4. Bildnerkunst. Malerei.--[3] T. 5. Die Musik. T. 6. Dichtkunst. Register.

It seems to make perfectly good sense to distinguish between what is expressed and the way in which it is expressed. There is little doubt that there are many different ways of saying the same thing open to us. If I denied this, I would certainly be wrong. And yet a word of caution may not be amiss. Among logicians a tendency has grown up to concentrate their attention on those properties of a statement which make it true or false, (...) what they call a “proposition”, and to neglect the form in which it is expressed. I think it is a dangerous tendency as it may lead to overlooking all sorts of differences which are due to the form. Let me give an example taken from F. P. Ramsey. (shrink)

Bibliography of works by and about F. Waismann : p. [177]-184.