Ostrow (sociology, Bentley College) concludes that the world is inherently social because individuals are immersed in social sensitivity at a young age. Paper edition (unseen), $10.95. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.

Wittgenstein once wrote that 'The philosopher strives to find the liberating word, that is, the word that finally permits us to grasp what up until now has intangibly weighed down our consciousness'. Would Wittgenstein have been willing to describe the Tractatus as an attempt to find 'the liberating word'? This is the basic contention of this strikingly innovative study of the Tractatus. Matthew Ostrow argues that, far from seeking to offer a new theory in logic in the tradition of Frege (...) and Russell, Wittgenstein from the very beginning viewed all such endeavors as the ensnarement of thought. Providing a lucid and systematic analysis of the Tractatus, he argues that Wittgenstein's ultimate aim is to put an end to philosophy itself. He also highlights the intrinsic obstacles to any kind of interpretation that claims to summarize Wittgenstein's thought. (shrink)

Book reviewed: Matthew B. Ostrow. Wittgenstein's Tractatus: A Dialectical Interpretation.

With the exception of James Ostrow’s 1990 study, social sensitivity has received scarce attention in philosophy, whilst it has become an important area of research in social and clinical psychology, where it is commonly known as interpersonal sensitivity. The latter is usually understood as a form of social skill to appropriately recognise and decode the appearance and behaviour of others. However, this view suffers from conceptual limitations in that it tends to reduce social sensitivity to standardised skilful behaviour. Drawing on (...) Husserl’s phenomenology of perception, I disambiguate social sensitivity from social skills, arguing that the former builds on the receptivity of habit to beliefs and cognitive dissonance. In this revised sense, social sensitivity informs processes of attitude change that challenge ingrained dispositions and potentially defy social codes and expectations. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 41.2 (2003) 281-282 [Access article in PDF] Matthew B. Ostrow. Wittgenstein's Tractatus: A Dialectical Interpretation. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Pp. xi + 175. Paper, $20.00. This contribution to the new readings of the early Wittgenstein presents in detail how one might read the Tractatus as a sustained attack on Frege's and Russell's philosophical and logical conceptions while at the same time (...) presuming Wittgenstein to have always been in some sense a "late Wittgensteinian," that is, already embarked on the therapeutic task of setting down "the way of release" from philosophical confusion and "ensnarement of thought" (1). Taking seriously the passage in the Tractatus (6.54) in which Wittgenstein assesses his "elucidations" as "nonsensical," Ostrow places himself among those readers who infer that straightforward theory-making was not Wittgenstein's aim, but differs from them in his original and challenging account of how the propositions of the Tractatus are nonsense.Wittgenstein, Ostrow contends, employed such (apparent) doctrines as the picture theory, the showing doctrine, the notion of tautology, and so forth dialectically, that is, as self-detonating attempts to expose philosophical nonsense in situ which were not themselves intended to be argued pro or con as philosophical assertions or theories. Wittgenstein's purpose in speaking in the Tractatus in avowedly though not patently nonsensical ways is, the author argues, to encourage us instead to see philosophical nonsensicality as "given in and through" the process of making such philosophical assertions, and in seeing how they "change their character, how they undermine their initial presentation as straightforward truth claims" (12). Thus the "central notions" and propositions in the Tractatus, according to Ostrow, "only have their life in relation to the philosophical temptations that the book aims to eradicate" (43).Such a reading involves the author (and his readers) in a task that is both detailed and delicate. Ostrow's work is detailed because he reads Wittgenstein as engaged in a systematic attempt to expose philosophical theories as nonsense case-by-particular-case, that is, by "working through philosophy from the inside, without making appeal to any kind of fixed criteria of sense and nonsense" (99). It is for this reason that Wittgenstein's articulation of the many structures in the Tractatus is necessary, and Ostrow's work, which he views as largely descriptive, must trace the same path.Ostrow's task is a delicate one because he must explore the themes in Wittgenstein's Tractatus (pictures, significant propositions, logical propositions, etc.) without appearing to contradict his position that the Tractatus offers no general doctrines meant to be taken as they stand. Thus, for instance, when Ostrow argues that for Wittgenstein pictorial form is constituted by a picture's application to reality and not an independent entity, he must remind the reader that he is not attributing to Wittgenstein a doctrine of "constitution of form" offered up as a philosophical alternative. Just as we are not to make pictorial form and its emergence in the Tractatus into a substantive theory in its own right but rather see it as having a role only in Wittgenstein's battle to expose such shibboleths (44), so too for all other parts of the Tractarian structure. Thus Wittgenstein's apparent explanation of the [End Page 281] possibility of depiction in terms of isomorphism is said to aim at showing that as an explanation, "talk of an isomorphism is empty" (39); Wittgenstein's show/say distinction is taken as a foil used to expose the logician's desire to get at essence (42), and so forth. Even the notion of tautology is, according to Ostrow, "as dialectical a move as any other," not one "put forth as a self-standing claim, an attempt to offer an overarching characterization of truth" (105).This book engages in its daunting task very ably and in fluid, confident prose. The author is clearly aware of the various challenges he is likely to meet and suggests ways of doing battle with them. To cite one case, Ostrow examines Wittgenstein's later comments on his... (shrink)

Albert Maslow points out that Wittgenstein dedicated a copy of the Tractatus to Morris Schlick with the following sentence: “ Jeder disese Sätze ist der Ausdruck einer Krankheit ” (Each of this propositions is the manifestation of a disease.) We will try to see some of the treatments to see if the remedy is not, in many cases, worse than the disease. Few philosophical texts have so many material surrounding it as the Tractatus, but and at the same time do (...) maintain such a vast spectrum of interpretations. To the point that one can expect every now and then, exegetical revolutions. Like the political ones, they usually burry the past in its way. An example: the appearance in the 1980s of Wittgenstein's Vienna was a fundamental milestone that showed that it is impossible to dissociate the author from the Viennese intellectual environment. However, attempts have been made to present this new approach as the refutation of the rest, falsely equating the Tractatus with continental philosophy in a book that is really weak in terms of elements of symbolic logic and without any expertise in regard to the philosophy of logic of Frege and Russell, which are essential to understand the context of the concepts in the text of the Tractatus itself and the records of the time. A similar case is the new interpretation that was awarded some ten years later by the North American school: they rightly called attention to the neglect of the essential paradox of the Tractatus of having intended to say what is shown. However, the value of this perspective is lost when the book is treated as the work of a postmodern nihilist, an antimetaphysical dialectician. The same can be said of the interpretation of Raymond Bradley, whose praiseworthy efforts to highlight the Tractarian modal element have resulted in an inadequate Leibnizian framing in his work The Nature of All Being (Bradley, 1992). To show an overview, I would broadly follow the outline of Cerezo (1998), adding and extending his taxonomy a bit. I think Cerezo´s outline is accurate and simple. Cerezo does not take into account contextualist readings or, in any case, it isnt her concern in her Lenguaje y Lógica in Wittgenstein's Tractatus. Let us mention among the ways of reading the Tractatus the empiricist perspectives (in classical version, like Russell, or positivist, like those of Shlick and Carnap ), non-empiricist logicists ( Anscombe, Kenny ), Kantian ( Stenius, Coffa ), metaphysical (in actualist variant, Hacker, or positilist Leibnizian, Bradley), continental (such as Janik and Toulmin ), nihilistic ( Diamond and Conant, Ostrow and his dialectical idea ), and MacGuinn 's elucidatory -ecumenical attempt. David Stern (Stern,1998 ) made a stratification that is not incompatible with the one I point out. 1. The logical-atomistic reading ( logical atomist reading ) of Russell ; 2. The reading of logical positivism ( logical positivist reading ) : with the belligerent antimetaphysical charge ; 3. Metaphysical reading ( metaphysical reading ), like Hacker's, with a logically based idea of metaphysics; 4. The irrationalist reading ( irrationalist reading ) that Toulmin and Janik maintain, for example, or Isidro Reguera, where there is pre-eminence of the religious ethic elements; and 5. therapeutic reading ( therapeutic reading ), which poses it as a kind of infinity joke. We are going to add to the list a reading, which we will call a pathological reading. (shrink)

CHRISTOPHER PINCOCK, Department of Philosophy, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN 47907, USA The volume under review contains fifteen new essays by some of the most influential scholars of the history of early analytic philosophy. The focus of the essays is, as the editor says in the preface, ‘the work of Gottlob Frege and of Ludwig Wittgenstein (mostly the early Wittgenstein), as well as various ties between them’ (p. x). The essays are divided into four parts. The first part, ‘Background and (...) General Themes’, contains essays by E. Reck, G. Gabriel and S. Gerrard. The second part on Frege has contributions by H. Sluga, S. Shieh, M. Ruffino and J. Weiner. Essays on the relation between Frege and the early Wittgenstein by W. Goldfarb, D. Macbeth, T. Ricketts and C. Diamond comprise the third part. The volume concludes with essays by I. Proops, J. Floyd, M. Ostrow and J. Conant on the early Wittgenstein. This volume is an important contribution to our understanding of Frege and the early Wittgenstein and should prove a help to specialists in the history of analytic philosophy. I have chosen to briefly discuss seven of these essays with an emphasis on topics in the history and philosophy of logic. Reck’s opening essay, ‘Wittgenstein’s “Great Debt” to Frege: Biographical Traces and Philosophical Themes’, gives a helpful overview of our current knowledge of the contacts between Frege and Wittgenstein. Reck argues quite persuasively for the conclusion that Wittgenstein engaged with Frege’s work throughout his philosophical career. The depth of this engagement is in-. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 41.1 (2003) 138-139 [Access article in PDF] Erich H. Reck, editor. From Frege to Wittgenstein: Perspectives on Early Analytic Philosophy. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. Pp. xv + 470. Cloth, $65.00. The volume is divided into four main parts: I: "Background and general themes," II: "Frege," III: "Frege to early Wittgenstein," and IV: "Early Wittgenstein." Part I includes the following essays: Erich (...) H. Reck, "Wittgenstein's 'great debt' to Frege: biographical traces and philosophical themes"; Gottfried Gabriel, "Frege, Lotze, and the continental roots of early analytic philosophy"; and Steven Gerrard, "One Wittgenstein?". Part II includes: Hans Sluga, "Frege on the indefinability of truth"; Sanford Shieh, "On interpreting Frege on truth and logic"; Marco Ruffino, "Logical objects in Frege's Grundgesetze, section 10"; and Joan Weiner, "Section 31 revisited: Frege's elucidations." Part III includes: Warren Goldfarb, "Wittgenstein's understanding of Frege: the pre-tractarian evidence"; Danielle Machbeth, "Frege and early Wittgenstein on logic and language"; Thomas Ricketts, "Wittgenstein against Frege and Russell"; and Cora Diamond, "Truth before Tarski: after Sluga, after Ricketts, after Geach, after Goldfarb, Hylton, Floyd, and Van Heijenoort." Part IV includes: Ian Proops, "The Tractatus on inference and entailment"; Juliet Floyd, "Number and ascriptions of number in Wittgenstein's Tractatus"; Matthew B. Ostrow, "Wittgenstein and the liberating word"; and James Conant, "The method of the Tractatus."Reck, while opposing the "widespread view" that Wittgenstein's "debt" to Frege was "rather minimal," warns the reader against going too far in the contrary direction (exemplified by Geach). Gabriel maintains (39) the thesis that "at least early analytic philosophy has its roots in the tradition of continental philosophy, especially in the philosophy of Hermann Lotze" (the founder of neo-Kantianism). Gerrard argues against the common distinction of an "early" and a "late" Wittgenstein.Sluga writes in favor of the significance of Frege's remark (rather neglected in the Fregean literature) that "the content of the word 'true' is altogether unique and indefinable." Shieh's "principal question," observing that Frege's philosophy of logic has been interpreted in two opposite ways: "semantical" (Dummett), and "antisemantical" (Ricketts), is: "Did Frege provide an explanatory justification of logical laws in semantic terms?" The "central result" of the essay is that "the substance of the disagreements between the antisemantical interpreters and their perceived opponents is not what they suggest it to be" (97). Ruffino focuses on the Fregean attempt to determine the nature of the extensions introduced by his (in)famous Axiom V, and compares Frege's handling of this issue with the seemingly analogous issue of determining the nature of numbers introduced by what is nowadays called "Hume's principle." Weiner attacks another crucial portion of Frege's work: Grundgesetze I §31, and proposes to read it as "elucidation" rather than as proof.Goldfarb intends to "cast doubt on the assessment of Frege's influence on Wittgenstein" expressed by several scholars. Goldfarb holds that Frege and Wittgenstein arrive at views that "have many similarities" but that they do it independently (187). Rather, in Wittgenstein "the basic framework and the basic stance are thoroughly inherited from Russell" (197). Macbeth argues that Frege and Wittgenstein have radically different conceptions of meaning: inferentialist and representative respectively. Ricketts argues that Wittgenstein's critique of Frege "is mounted from within his own distinctive approach to language and logic," so that "while Wittgenstein does not meet Frege on Frege's own terms, neither does he straightforwardly misunderstand Frege" (228). The content of Diamond's paper is more than hinted at by its long title.Proops aims at investigating "Wittgenstein's well-known, yet obscure, objection to the views of Frege and Russell on deductive inference and its justification," (283) an objection set out in Tractatus5.132: laws of inference are senseless, superfluous. Floyd intends to highlight the philosophy of arithmetic found in the Tractatus against a "tendency to pass over the Tractatus remarks on arithmetic in silence" (309). Ostrow points out that "it is not at once apparent" how the "Wittgensteinian liberation" is to be conceived (353), and his... (shrink)

Books Reviewed in this Article: Reason, Truth and History. By Hilary Putnam. Pp.xii, 222, Cambridge University Press, 1982, £15.00 , £4.95 . Fundamentals of philosophy. By David Stewart and H. Gene Blocker. Pp.xiii, 378, New York, Macmillan, 1982, £12.95. Modern Philosophy: An Introduction. By A.R. Lacey. Pp.vii, 246, London and Boston, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1982, £7.95 , £3.95 . Merleau‐Ponty's Philosophy. By Samuel B. Mallin. Pp.xi, 302, New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 1979, £14.20. Thought and Object: Essays (...) on Intentionality. Edited by Andrew Woodfield. Pp.xvi, 316, Oxford, Clarendon Pressl Oxford University Press, 1982, £16.00. Philosophical Ethics: An Introduction to Moral Philosophy. By Tom L. Beauchamp. Pp.xv, 396, New York & London, McGraw‐Hill, 1982, £14.25. The Limits of Obligation. By James S. Fishkin. Pp.viii, 184, New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 1982, £12.95. Religion and the One: Philosophies East and West. By Frederick Copleston. Pp.281, London, Search Press, 1982, £10.50. Religious Experience and Christian Faith. By F.W. Dillistone. Pp.viii, 120. London, SCM Press, 1982, £4.95. Exploring Inner Space: Scientists and Religious Experience. By David Hay. Pp.256, Harmondsworth, Penguin Books, 1982, £2.95. Judaism and Psychoanalysis. Edited by Mortimer Ostrow. Pp.ix, 305, New York, Ktav, 1982, $20.00. Ecclesial Reflection: An Anatomy of Theological Method. By Edward Farley. Pp.xix, 380, Philadelphia, Fortress Press, 1982, $29.95. The Pastoral Nature of the Ministry. By Frank Wright. Pp.89, London, SCM Press, 1980, £2.50. Power and Authority in the Catholic Church. By Charles Dahm in collaboration with Robert Ghelardi. Pp.xviii, 334, Notre Dame, University of Notre Dame Press, 1981, £12.35. Religion in Sociological Perspective. By Bryan Wilson. Pp.vii. 187, Oxford University Press, 1982, £8.50. Myth, Religion and Society: Structuralist Essays. By M. Detienne, L. Gernet, J.‐P. Vernant and P. Vidal‐Naquet. Pp.xviii, 306, Cambridge University Press, 1981, £20.00 , £6.95 . Seven Theories of Human Society. By Tom Campbell. Pp.244, Oxford, Clarendon Press: Oxford University Press, 1981, £10.00. The Aims of Education Restated. By John White. Pp.xi, 177, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1982, £8.95 , £4.95 . Love and Meaning in Religious Education: An Incarnational Approach to Teaching Christianity. By D.J. O'Leary and T. Sallnow. Pp.147, Oxford University Press, 1982, £3.50. Servant and Son: Jesus in Parable and Gospel. By J. Ramsey Michaels. Pp.xiii, 323, Atlanta, John Knox Press, 1981, £7.80. Parables for Now. By Edmund Flood. Pp.98, London, Darton, Longman and Todd, 1981, £2.50. More Parables for Now. By Edmund Flood. Pp.102, London, Darton, Longman and Todd, 1981, £2.50. Councils and Synods: With other Documents relating to the English Church, Vol.1 , A.D. 871–1204. Edited by D. Whitelock, M. Brett and C.N. Brooke. Pp.1 xxix, xii, 1151, Oxford University Press, 1981, £65.00. The Architectural History of Canterbury Cathedral. By Francis Woodman. Pp.xviii, 282, London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981, £35.00. The Correspondence of Erasmus, Volume VI. Translated by R.A.B. Mynors and D.F.S. Thomson, annotated by Peter G. Bietenholz. Pp.xxii, 448, Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 1982, £56.25. Erasme: Vie de Jean Vitrier et de John Colet. Edited by Andrd Godin. Pp.160, Angers, Editions Moreana, 1982, $7.00. Erasme, lecteur d'Origène. By André Godin. Pp.ix, 724, Geneva, Librairie Droz, 1982, no price given. Thomas More: history and providence. By Alistair Fox. Pp.xi, 271, Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1982, no price given. Thomas More: Essays on the Icon. Edited by D. Grace and B. Byron. Pp.129, Melbourne, Dove Communications, 1980, no price given. The Cambridge Connection and the Elizabethan Settlement of 1559. By W.S. Hudson. Pp.x, 158, Durham , Duke University Press, 1980, $14.75. Faith by Statute: Parliament and the Settlement of Religion, 1559. By Norman L. Jones. Pp.viii, 245 , London, Royal Historical Society, 1982, £17.52. Richard Hooker and the Politics of a Christian England. By Robert K. Faulkner. Pp.x, 190, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1981, £15.75. Icon and Conquest. By Bernadette Bucher. Pp.xvii, 220, Chicago, The University of Chicago Press, 1981, £9.95. The Wooden Churches of Eastern Europe: An Introductory Survey. By David Buxton. Pp.viii, 405, Cambridge University Press, 1982, £42.50. American Catholics: A History of the Roman Catholic Community in the United States. By James Hennessey. Pp.xii, 397, New York, Oxford University Press, 1981, £13.50. Peter Maurin: Prophet in the Twentieth Century. By Marc H. Ellis. Pp.191, Ramsey, New Jersey and Leominster, England, Paulist Press/Fowler Wright Books, 1981, £7.45. The Newman Movement: Roman Catholics in American Higher Education, 1883–1971. By John Whitney Evans. Pp.xvi, 248, Notre Dame, University of Notre Dame Press, 1980, $14.95. Priests and People in Pre‐Famine Ireland, 1780–1845. By S.J. Connolly. Pp.338, Dublin, Gill & Macmillan, 1982, £17.00. The Nonconformist Conscience: Chapel and Politics, 1870–1914. By D.W. Bebbington. Pp.x, 193, London, George Allen and Unwin, 1982, £10.00. Heinrich Pesch: sein Leben und seine Lehre. By Franz H. Mueller. Pp.220, Cologne, J.P. Bachem, 1980, no price given. Beyond Survival: Reflections on the Future of Judaism. By Dow Marmur. Pp.xix, 218, London, Darton, Longman and Todd, 1982, £7.95. (shrink)