Ludwig Wittgenstein
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 1998 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. |
- G. E. M. Anscombe (151)
- J. L. Austin (273)
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- Rudolf Carnap (1,395 | 299)
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- Gottlob Frege (2,491 | 75)
- Nelson Goodman (395)
- Paul Grice (18)
- Thomas Kuhn (914)
- Imre Lakatos (420)
- David Lewis (413)
- G. E. Moore (655)
- Derek Parfit (19)
- Karl Popper (1,954 | 56)
- W. V. O. Quine (1,353)
- John Rawls (2,525)
- Bertrand Russell (3,558)
- Gilbert Ryle (290)
- Wilfrid Sellars (690)
- P. F. Strawson (394)
- Alfred Tarski (275)
- Bernard Williams (756)
- Logical Empiricism (590)
- 20th Century Analytic Philosophy, Misc (347)
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