About this topic
| Summary | Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) was an Austrian philosopher whom many regard to have been the most important philosopher of the twentieth century. His work is often divided into two distinct periods, early and later, with the division occurring at some point shortly after his return to Cambridge in 1929 following a period of self-imposed exile as, among other things, a village school-teacher, monastery gardener, and architect. Wittgenstein wrote extensively on many topics including the philosophy of language, logic, mathematics and mind though he published little during his lifetime. His work is distinctive particularly for his claim that philosophy is for the most part nonsense, his aim being to bring to light the confusions that give to it the appearance of sense. |
| Key works | Wittgenstein’s most important works are the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (first published in English in 1922) and the Philosophical Investigations (first published posthumously in 1953). The nature and extent of the continuity between these two works is a matter of great controversy, with one extreme representing them as offering fundamentally opposed philosophies and another treating the differences as largely stylistic. Among the many other works produced from his manuscripts and notebooks, Wittgenstein’s On Certainty, compiled from notes made in the two years before his death, is sometimes regarded as his third “masterpiece”. |
| Introductions | There are many good introductions to Wittgenstein's thought. Monk 2005 and Hacker 1999 are both short and accessible. More in-depth, but still engaging, are Child 2011, Kenny 1973, and Sluga 2011. Dean Jolley 2010 contains a good selection of essays on central topics. McGinn 2006 and McGinn 2013 provide in-depth introductions to the Tractatus and Philosophical Investigations, respectively. |
Show all references
Related categories
Siblings:
- G. E. M. Anscombe (106)
- J. L. Austin (257)
- A. J. Ayer (253)
- C. D. Broad (635)
- Rudolf Carnap (1,340 | 271)
- Roderick Chisholm (278)
- Donald Davidson (900)
- Paul Feyerabend (415)
- Philippa Foot (4)
- Gottlob Frege (2,352 | 34)
- Nelson Goodman (376)
- Paul Grice (11)
- Thomas Kuhn (873)
- Imre Lakatos (430)
- David Lewis (398)
- G. E. Moore (602)
- Derek Parfit (12)
- Karl Popper (1,862 | 161)
- W. V. O. Quine (1,301)
- John Rawls (2,381)
- Bertrand Russell (3,425)
- Gilbert Ryle (281)
- Wilfrid Sellars (661)
- P. F. Strawson (355)
- Alfred Tarski (263)
- Bernard Williams (739)
- Logical Empiricism (565)
- 20th Century Analytic Philosophy, Misc (329)
Jobs in this area
Assistant Professor, Philosophy
Assistant Professor of Philosophy
Assistant Professor - Center for Digital Ethics Cluster
Jobs from PhilJobs
7812 found
Order:
1 filter applied
|
Off-campus access
Using PhilPapers from home?
Create an account to enable off-campus access through your institution's proxy server. Monitor this page
Be alerted of all new items appearing on this page. Choose how you want to monitor it:
Editorial team
General Editors:
David Bourget (Western Ontario) David Chalmers (ANU, NYU) Area Editors: David Bourget Gwen Bradford Berit Brogaard Margaret Cameron David Chalmers James Chase Rafael De Clercq Ezio Di Nucci Barry Hallen Hans Halvorson Jonathan Ichikawa Michelle Kosch Øystein Linnebo JeeLoo Liu Paul Livingston Brandon Look Manolo Martínez Matthew McGrath Michiru Nagatsu Susana Nuccetelli Giuseppe Primiero Jack Alan Reynolds Darrell P. Rowbottom Aleksandra Samonek Constantine Sandis Howard Sankey Jonathan Schaffer Thomas Senor Robin Smith Daniel Star Jussi Suikkanen Lynne Tirrell Aness Kim Webster Other editors Contact us Learn more about PhilPapers |
