Oskari Kuusela

This volume draws connections between Wittgenstein's philosophy and the work of Saul Kripke, especially his Naming and Necessity. Saul Kripke is regarded as one of the foremost representatives of contemporary analytic philosophy. His most important contributions include the strict distinction between metaphysical and epistemological questions, the introduction of the notions of contingent a priori truth and necessary a posteriori truth and original accounts of names, descriptions, identity, necessity and realism. The chapters in this book elucidate the relevant connections between Kripke's work and Wittgenstein, specifically concerning the standard meter, contingent apriori and rule-following. The contributions shed light on how Kripke's philosophical outlook was influenced by Wittgenstein, and how mainstream analytic philosophy and Wittgensteinian philosophy can fruitfully engage with one another. Kripke and Wittgenstein will be of interest to philosophers working on Wittgenstein, Kripke, and the history of analytic philosophy.

Comprising specially commissioned essays from some of the most significant contributors to the field, this volume provides a uniquely authoritative and thorough survey of the main lines of Wittgenstein scholarship over the past 50 years, tracing the history and current trends as well as anticipating the future shape of work on Wittgenstein. The first collection of its kind, this volume presents a range of perspectives on the different approaches to the philosophy of Wittgenstein Written by leading experts from America, Britain, and Europe Provides a much needed overview of the complex landscape of Wittgenstein exegesis and Wittgensteinian approaches to philosophy Assesses the current state, aims, and future of Wittgenstein scholarship An essential guide for both students and scholars

This article proposes an interpretation of Wittgenstein’s so-called picture theory of propositions that forgoes the attribution of unsayable truths or theses to the Tractatus. Consequently, the interpretation avoids describing the Tractatus as entangled in a paradox of nonsensical theses. Rather, I argue, the proper expression for Wittgenstein’s logical insights is a logical symbolism into whose structure they are encoded. This also applies to his account of propositions as pictures. Its purpose is to clarify the principles governing a correct logical language that makes perspicuous how symbols symbolize, and is expressive of what Wittgenstein calls ‘the correct logical conception’.

A main theme of this chapter is Ludwig Wittgenstein’s critical reception of Socrates in the 1930s, during which time Wittgenstein was developing a new philosophical methodology that he described as being antithetical to that of Socrates and best explained by way of this contrast. In particular, Wittgenstein is critical of an unexamined assumption relating to conceptual unity that seems to inform Socrates’ philosophical engagements, according to which one can always define a concept, or cases that fall under it, with reference to a feature or features common to all relevant cases. However, when accounting for Wittgenstein’s reception of Socrates, one needs to explain why the kind ofcritical remarks composed in the 1930s do not reoccur in Wittgenstein’s writings after this period, and why none of these critical remarks make it into his mature main work, the Philosophical Investigations. What made Wittgenstein change his mind about how to explain or introduce his later philosophy? My explanation is twofold: (i) Wittgenstein came to find his 1930s remarks on Socrates misleading for reasons connected with his rejection of philosophical theses and questions relating to the justification of philosophical methodology. (ii) Ultimately he came to recognize a possibility of reinterpreting Socrates’ method/s of employing definitions as consistent with his own methodology. Thus, rather than as an antithesis to Socratic philosophy, Wittgenstein’s later philosophy is better seen as giving it a new twist. Following this lead, I identify five important uses for definitions whose philosophical significance does not rest of the assumption of simple conceptual unity. Four of these are evidently present in Plato’s Socratic dialogues.

This volume of new essays explores the relationship between the thought of Wittgenstein and the key figures of phenomenology: Husserl, Heidegger, Levinas, Merleau-Ponty and Sartre. It is the first book to provide an overview of how Wittgenstein’s philosophy in its different phases, including his own so-called phenomenological phase, relates to the variety of phenomenological approaches developed in continental Europe. In so doing, the volume seeks to throw light on both sides of the comparison, and to clarify more broadly the relations between analytic and phenomenological philosophy. However, rather than treating the interpretation of either phenomenological philosophy or Wittgenstein as an already settled issue, several chapters in the volume examine and question received views regarding them, and develop alternatives to such views. "Wittgenstein and Phenomenology" will be of interest to scholars working in philosophical methodology and meta-philosophy, the philosophy of mind, philosophy of language and logic, and ethics.

This chapter discusses Edward Harcourt’s recent criticism of Cora Diamond’s account of Wittgensteinian moral philosophy, and the view she associates with Wittgenstein that ethics has no specific subject matter. I argue that Harcourt has misconstrued Diamond’s account, and that his own proposal for what a Wittgensteinian moral philosophy would be like is not consistent with what Wittgenstein says about morality. In particular, Wittgenstein’s suggestion in his later philosophy that goodness is not a quality or property of actions in addition to their other properties lends further support to Diamond’s account of ethics as devoid of subject matter that could be identified in terms of distinctively moral concepts. Through my discussion of this issue I hope to clarify and reinforce the challenge that Diamond’s account poses for traditional moral philosophy which sees as its goal the development of an abstract theory of moral goodness the purpose of which is to account for all instances of goodness in an ethical sense.

This Element outlines Wittgenstein's early and later philosophies of logic, and explains Wittgenstein's views regarding the methodological significance of logic for philosophy. Wittgenstein's early philosophy of logic is presented as a further development of Frege's and Russell's accounts of logic, and Wittgenstein later philosophy as a response to problems with his early views, including confusions about idealization and abstraction in logic. The later Wittgenstein's novel logical methods, such as the method of language-games, are outlined, and the new kind of logical naturalism developed in his later philosophy described. I conclude by discussing the later Wittgenstein on names.

Wittgenstein writes in the preface to the Philosophical Investigations: ‘I should not like my writing to spare other people the trouble of thinking. But if possible, to stimulate someone to thoughts of his own.’ In the following I argue that this indicates something essential about Wittgenstein’s approach. In order to remain true to his conception of philosophy without theses, he could not, for example, aim to instruct his reader about about grammar or put forward prescriptions about grammar, logic or language use. Thus, there is an essential connection between the aim of stimulating the reader to thoughts of their own, and philosophizing without theses. In order to clarify this I will discuss both Wittgenstein’s early and later account of philosophy without theses, his later rejection of philosophical foundations and the hierarchical organization of philosophy, such as assumed in his early philosophy, the notion of agreement in Wittgenstein’s later philosophy, and certain remarks from the Nachlass on the composition of his book, eventually published as the Philosophical Investigations.

Wittgenstein writes in the preface to the Philosophical Investigations: ‘I should not like my writing to spare other people the trouble of thinking. But if possible, to stimulate someone to thoughts of his own.’ In the following I argue that this indicates something essential about Wittgenstein’s approach. In order to remain true to his conception of philosophy without theses, he could not, for example, aim to instruct his reader about about grammar or put forward prescriptions about grammar, logic or language use. Thus, there is an essential connection between the aim of stimulating the reader to thoughts of their own, and philosophizing without theses. In order to clarify this I will discuss both Wittgenstein’s early and later account of philosophy without theses, his later rejection of philosophical foundations and the hierarchical organization of philosophy, such as assumed in his early philosophy, the notion of agreement in Wittgenstein’s later philosophy, and certain remarks from the Nachlass on the composition of his book, eventually published as the Philosophical Investigations.

This paper discusses the problem of the unity of moral good, concerning the kind of unity that moral good or the concept thereof constitutes. In particular, I am concerned with how Wittgenstein’s identification of various complex modes of conceptual unity, and his introduction of a methodology of clarification for dealing with such complex concepts, can help with the problem of unity, as it rises from the moral philosophical tradition. Relating to this I also address the disputed question, whether Wittgenstein regards good as a family-resemblance concept, and make an attempt to characterize family-resemblance concepts generally by way of their similarities and differences from certain other complex modes of conceptual unity. I argue that whilst Wittgenstein does regard good as a family-resemblance concept, in the Philosophical Investigations he seeks to make a more general methodological point. I conclude with a suggestion of how Wittgenstein’s methodological points can help us to put into a broader perspective famous criticisms of the moral philosophical tradition by Michael Stocker and Bernard Williams, and how Wittgenstein's methods more generally can help to address the problem of the unity of good. This illustrates one way in which Wittgensteinian methods can help resolve disputes in moral philosophy, where the main approaches, Aristotelian, Kantian and utilitarian theories, seem to be locked in a stalemate. As I argue, this situation has to do with their assumptions about the unity of moral good. The response isn’t to reject those theories, however, but to re-interpret them in a way consistent with the Wittgensteinian methodology.

This chapter discusses the methodological and epistemological significance of so-called intuitions in philosophy; that is, whether intuitions can be understood as evidence for or against philosophical claims or, if not, whether they might have some other kind of methodological significance. A closely connected issue which the chapter addresses, is whether our comprehension of logical, conceptual, or metaphysical possibilities and necessities can be explained by reference to intuitions or the capacity of intuition or, if not, how our capacity to understand such modalities should be explained. In response to the accounts of Ernest Sosa and George Bealer, the author distinguishes three senses in which one might talk about intuition or intuitions. On this basis, it is argued that intuitions in the first and second senses cannot do the philosophical work with which Sosa and Bealer task intuitions, whilst the philosophical significance of intuitions in the third sense is radically different from what Sosa and Bealer suggest, namely, consisting not in their evidential status—pace Sosa and Bealer—but in the fact that their scrutiny may reveal something important about how a given philosophical issue has arisen for us, in the first place.

This paper outlines a solution to what can be called “the problem of domination by reason”, “conceptual domination” or “clarificatorory injustice”, connected with how a philosopher may appear to be in a position to legitimately coerce, by means of arguments, an interlocutor who shares with her a concept or a conceptual system to accept a philosophical characterization of a concept or whatever the concept concerns. The proposed solution is based on a particular interpretation of what Wittgenstein means by agreement in his later philosophy, when he says that philosophy only states what anyone grants to it. Wittgenstein’s view and the proposed solution are characterized by their continued recognition of the value of logic and reason, truth and knowledge, as opposed to attempting to solve the problem by embracing relativism and questioning the value of the logic, reason, truth and knowledge. Relevant kind of disagreements licence no relativistic conclusions, because problems relating to them can be solved without going this far. Keywords: domination, relativism, Wittgenstein, method, agreement.