Metaphilosophy 40 (2):260-272 (2009)
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Abstract: In this article I contest a reading of Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations —a reading of it as debunking philosophy. I concede that such a reading is not groundless, but I show why it is nonetheless mistaken. To do so, I distinguish two different ways of viewing Philosophical Investigations and its concern with philosophical problems, an External View and an Internal View. On the External View, readers of the book are taken to know ahead of time what philosophical problems are. On the Internal View, readers are not taken to know this ahead of time: the task of the book is to disclose what philosophical problems are, to show them coming into being. One thing disclosed is our participatory role in philosophical problems coming to be. Learning about the nature of philosophical problems is thus learning about our own nature; metaphilosophical knowledge is in part self-knowledge. If the Internal View is correct (as I believe it is), then Philosophical Investigations does not debunk philosophy but provides a different conception of philosophy and the philosopher's task.
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Keywords | literature of knowledge debunking philosophical problems Ludwig Wittgenstein literature of power self‐knowledge Richard Rorty Kenneth Burke Philosophical Investigations Thomas De Quincey metaphilosophy |
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DOI | 10.1111/j.1467-9973.2009.01581.x |
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References found in this work BETA
Authority and Estrangement: An Essay on Self-Knowledge.Richard Moran - 2001 - Princeton University Press.
Philosophical investigations.Ludwig Wittgenstein & G. E. M. Anscombe - 1953 - Revue Philosophique de la France Et de l'Etranger 161:124-124.
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Citations of this work BETA
Mensurable Confusion? Wittgenstein’s Meter-Stick and Beyond.Kelly Dean Jolley - 2010 - The Pluralist 5 (2):105-140.
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