Bela Szabados

This book provides the first in-depth exploration of the importance of music for Ludwig Wittgenstein’s life and work. Wittgenstein’s remarks on music are essential for understanding his philosophy: they are on the nature of musical understanding, the relation of music to language, the concepts of representation and expression, on melody, irony and aspect-perception, and, on the great composers belonging to the Austrian-German tradition. Biography and philosophy, this work suggests that Wittgenstein was a composer of philosophy who used the musical form as a blueprint for his own writing and thought. For Wittgenstein music is not alone, but connects and resonates with our cultural forms of life. His relation to composers, especially to Richard Wagner and Gustav Mahler, enables Wittgenstein to address the question of how to do philosophy and compose music in the breakdown of tradition. Unlike his conservative musical sensibility, Wittgenstein’s philosophy is open to musical experiments. Reflecting on his remarks on music makes it possible to compare the therapeutic aim of his philosophical activity with that of music, and thus notice affinities between Wittgenstein and John Cage. Béla Szabados has a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Calgary and is professor of philosophy at the University of Regina. His publications include Wittgenstein Reads Weininger (2004), Wittgenstein at the Movies (2011) and Wittgenstein on Race, Gender, and Cultural Identity: Philosophy as a Personal Endeavour (2010)

Hypocrisy and privacy are commonly thought to be completely different, yet it turns out to be surprisingly difficult to distinguish them. We consider various ways in which they might be differentiated, especially the attempt to do so on the basis of their moral standing. We argue, by case and through discussion, that there is more moral ambiguity about each concept than generally acknowledged. Finally, we offer some additional speculations about the similarities and differences between the two, with a view to aid moral discernment.

pour l'autre en nous et parmi nousAn apologia seeks to cover up the revolutionary moments in the course of history. The establishment of continuity is dear to its heart. It only gives importance to those elements of a work that have already generated an after-effect. It misses those points at which the transmission breaks down and thus misses those jags and crags that offer a handhold to someone who wishes to move beyond them.I am all the same convinced that these notes [in Culture and Value] can be properly understood and appreciated only against the background of Wittgenstein’ s philosophy and, furthermore, that they make a contribution to our understanding of that philosophy.

Caputo’s book is enigmatic. It is, on the one hand, a remorseless screed directed against those who proclaim to the world “the totalizing truth or logos that engulfs the other.” As such, it contains predictable characterizations of a variety of logocentric villains as historically disparate as Plato and the “Polish Pope, John Paul II,” in which their contributions to philosophical discourse are alternatively parodied and vilified as being hostile to that spirit of openness to the “toute autre,” spirit that which, we are told, animates the deconstructive enterprise. On the other hand, it is possible to discern within the book a certain structure that, however much it may belie Caputo’s expressed revulsion of closure, makes the book interesting and instructive. In this regard, three closely related themes present themselves. The first of these is particular and exegetical, comprising an attempt to explore in some detail the rather surprising claim that the point of view of Derrida’s work as an author is religious and that his recent writings especially contain elements of a religion “about which no one, not even his mother, understands anything.” The second, no less surprising, is the wider, more philosophically interesting thesis that Derridian deconstruction, and perhaps deconstruction itself, is to be situated within the framework of faith, the same passionate religious faith that animated the writings of St. Augustine, Meister Eckhart, and Kierkegaard. The third is the attempt to capitalize on the political mission of Derridian deconstruction which is characterized as the “delimitation of totalization in all its forms,” an objective that retains a faithful, though somewhat unclear, connection to Marx.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Jews and Gender: Responses to Otto WeiningerBéla SzabadosJews and Gender: Responses to Otto Weininger, edited by Nancy A. Harrowitz and Barbara Hyams; 341 pp. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1995, $54.95 cloth, $24.95 paper.“Every artist has been influenced by others and shows traces of that influence yet his significance for us is nothing but his personality. What he inherits from others can be nothing but eggshells,” said Wittgenstein, listing Weininger as a seminal influence on his work, “a seed out of which his plant grew.” Weininger’s influence fell on other leading cultural figures early this century such as Kraus, Kafka, Freud, Joyce, Lawrence, Canetti, Stein and others. This book aims to retrieve that influence and provide a broad interdisciplinary representation of new critical readings of Weininger’s legacy.The fact and extent of Weininger’s influence seems puzzling: his fame stems from his misogyny and anti-Semitism. In Sex and Character Weininger claims that: humans are bisexual, a mixture of male and female; woman is nothing but sexuality; individuals must choose between the masculine and feminine elements within themselves; sexual abstinence is a precondition of spirit and genius; there can be no justification for sex even for procreation within marriage; furthermore, “the Jew is saturated with femininity and has little sense of good and evil.” How could an author with such odd and odious views exert any influence at all?Yet Weininger was pivotal: his writing erases boundaries between discipline, genre, and nationality, revealing tensions and contradictions in Viennese and Western culture. So many ‘isms’ mark him as a patriarch of the tradition: [End Page 548] essentialism, transcendentalism, dualism, theism, and his belief in a rational self. Yet this is juxtaposed with postmodernist themes: deconstruction of sexual and gender dichotomies, rejection of essentialism concerning individuals, an emphasis on difference and the personal, the ethical primacy of practice over theory. His influence is felt in literature, philosophy, science, history, and because of Jehoshua Sobol’s play, The Soul of a Jew, in theatre.Jews and Gender divides into three parts. The first introduces readers to Weininger research and provides new bibliographic information. To begin with, the editors offer us the necessary background with a concise critical essay on the history of Weininger reception. This is followed by Jacques Le Rider revisiting Weininger scholarship subsequent to the publication of his own book, The Otto Weininger Case. The section ends with Hannelore Rodlauer’s efforts to piece together fragments from Weininger’s education. The second section, “In Context,” focuses on Weininger in the context of his contemporaries. Allan Janik starts off with his examination of the riddle of Weininger’s influence on Wittgenstein. Next, Nancy Harrowitz sketches and discusses affinities between Weininger and his nineteenth-century forerunner Lomboroso. Then Steven Beller explores the surprising question of whether Weininger was a liberal in an ethos when European liberalism exerted immense pressure on Jews to assimilate the whole set of social, religious, national, cultural values of a community. Sander Gilman in turn traces connections between Freud and Weininger on questions of race and gender. In her essay on “Characterology,” Katherine Arens situates Weininger in relation to Austrian “scientific” racism. In his contribution, John Hoberman reflects on Weininger’s critique of Jewish masculinity, locating its source in the stereotypes prevalent in those times.The third section of the volume looks at Weininger and his impact on modern literature. In “A Scientific Image of Woman,” Gisela Brude-Firnau discusses the way in which Weininger’s work can be seen as a contentious response to the women’s movement. Jeffrey Mehlman discerns Weininger in one of Apolinnaire’s major poems, “La Chanson du Malaimé,” where the anger against woman is quirkily actualized as a fury against the Jews. Gerald Stieg goes on to draw affinities between Kafka and Weininger. Then Marilyn Reizbaum, Natania Rosenfeld, and Elfriede Pöder explore in separate essays Weininger’s influence on James Joyce’s Ulysses by probing Bloom’s Jewish self-hatred, the figure of the womanly wandering Jew, and Molly as pure sexuality, respectively. Alberto Cavaglion proceeds to trace the appearance of Weininger’s thought in Italo Svevo’s novel The Confessions of Zeno...

While Wittgenstein commentators dismiss his remarks on women and femininity as trivial and unworthy of attention, I focus exactly on what they consider parenthetical and of no philosophical value. First, I document Wittgenstein’s attitudes toward women and femininity, and subject his remarks to critical analysis. Secondly, I retrieve and explore some aspects of Otto Weininger’s influence on Wittgenstein. Thirdly, by introducing considerations of chronology and circumstance, I argue that while the early Wittgenstein of the Tractatus endorsed Weininger’s views on women and sex, the mature Wittgenstein of the Investigations repudiated them without ceasing to adrnire his work or its spirit. Finally, I sketch crucial, unnoticed differences between Weininger and the mature Wittgenstein concerning femininity and philosophical method. The author’s intention is to contribute to the project of challenging the supposed divide between the understanding of philosophical thought, on the one hand, and socio-cultural contexts and biography on the other.

Is self-deception always immoral? That it is always immoral to deceive oneself seems to have been the ‘received’ view amongst philosophers. Such a view was vigorously supported by Bishop Butler in the eighteenth century. Recently, Herbert Fingarette has argued for a similar position. In this paper I wish to examine Butler's and Fingarette's arguments and contend that no morally sensitive and reasonable person can possibly accept them without thereby ceasing to be morally sensitive and reasonable.