Feb 28, 2016 07:45 PM
(This post was last modified: Feb 28, 2016 07:45 PM by C C.)
Heidegger's Ghosts
http://www.the-american-interest.com/201...rs-ghosts/
Liberal democracy has triumphed over Soviet-style communism, authoritarian capitalism, and fascism. But another threat looms: Martin Heidegger. Heidegger has powerful adherents in societies as disparate as Russia and Iran. If liberal democracies are to reckon with his followers, they must wrestle with his thought....
Wittgenstein, bewitched
http://www.the-tls.co.uk/tls/public/article1671150.ece
EXCERPT: . . . Among all twentieth-century thinkers, Ludwig Wittgenstein stands out as the one whose life fascinates almost as much as his work does. Even the life of Martin Heidegger, with his controversial Nazi connections and his later attempt to live the authentic life of a peasant, looks dull and suburban by comparison. [...]
Wittgenstein’s influence on his students’ lives went beyond that of the usual committed teacher. He himself had doubts about the value of the academic life and conveyed these to his students, often persuading them to give up their studies to do something he saw as more worthwhile. Francis Skinner, a shy, intense young man who according to [Fania] Pascal was “the constant companion of Wittgenstein throughout most of the 1930s”, was a brilliant mathematician. Wittgenstein persuaded Skinner to give up mathematics and become an apprentice in a scientific instruments company. Skinner “would never be happy in academic life”, Wittgenstein told Pascal; she, on the other hand, wondered whether Wittgenstein had the right to interfere in the lives of his friends and students to such an extent. And yet despite his overbearing and judgemental personality, Wittgenstein inspired love, loyalty and devotion among his students and friends, philosophers and non-philosophers alike.
What, if anything, do these portraits tell us about Wittgenstein’s philosophy? It is normal in academic philosophy to separate a philosopher’s life sharply from his or her work. Where the lives of philosophers are thought to be philosophically relevant, this is usually because there is thought to be some connection between one part of their world view and another. So, to take a striking example from the twentieth century: the worry about Heidegger’s Nazism arises because his philosophy is thought to appeal to ideas like Volk (for example) which resonate with the Nazi ideology. By contrast, the anti-Semitic remarks in Frege’s personal correspondence are not relevant to understanding his ideas about logic and truth, since (unwholesome as they may be) they have no real connection with these ideas.
The situation with Wittgenstein is different. Here the question that fascinates people is not that of the relationship between his different views on various subjects – philosophical and non-philosophical – but the relationship between his philosophy and his life. In 2001 a volume of scholarly essays was published by Cambridge University Press on the very question of the relationship between philosophy and biography, with special reference to Wittgenstein. One theme which was explored in depth in Ray Monk’s classic biography, published in 1991, is how naturally Wittgenstein falls into the category of “genius”, how he aspired to this category himself, and how this influenced his philosophical development. Ramsey wrote in 1929 that “Mr Wittgenstein is a philosophic genius of a different order from any one else I know”; and according to Leavis, Wittgenstein’s arrogance was “a manifestation of the essential quality of genius”. This palpable impression of genius may go some way to explain how Wittgenstein’s charisma shaped the responses of those who knew him. The philosopher J. N. Findlay commented that “the personal impact of Wittgenstein is indispensable to the understanding of his influence . . . his personality, like his writing, made an immense aesthetic impact, so great indeed that one was tempted to confuse beauty with clarity and strangely luminous expression with perspicuous truth”.
But it seems to me that there is another, deeper way in which Wittgenstein’s life connects with his work, which has to do with the way he dramatized his personal struggle with philosophy in his later writings....
http://www.the-american-interest.com/201...rs-ghosts/
Liberal democracy has triumphed over Soviet-style communism, authoritarian capitalism, and fascism. But another threat looms: Martin Heidegger. Heidegger has powerful adherents in societies as disparate as Russia and Iran. If liberal democracies are to reckon with his followers, they must wrestle with his thought....
Wittgenstein, bewitched
http://www.the-tls.co.uk/tls/public/article1671150.ece
EXCERPT: . . . Among all twentieth-century thinkers, Ludwig Wittgenstein stands out as the one whose life fascinates almost as much as his work does. Even the life of Martin Heidegger, with his controversial Nazi connections and his later attempt to live the authentic life of a peasant, looks dull and suburban by comparison. [...]
Wittgenstein’s influence on his students’ lives went beyond that of the usual committed teacher. He himself had doubts about the value of the academic life and conveyed these to his students, often persuading them to give up their studies to do something he saw as more worthwhile. Francis Skinner, a shy, intense young man who according to [Fania] Pascal was “the constant companion of Wittgenstein throughout most of the 1930s”, was a brilliant mathematician. Wittgenstein persuaded Skinner to give up mathematics and become an apprentice in a scientific instruments company. Skinner “would never be happy in academic life”, Wittgenstein told Pascal; she, on the other hand, wondered whether Wittgenstein had the right to interfere in the lives of his friends and students to such an extent. And yet despite his overbearing and judgemental personality, Wittgenstein inspired love, loyalty and devotion among his students and friends, philosophers and non-philosophers alike.
What, if anything, do these portraits tell us about Wittgenstein’s philosophy? It is normal in academic philosophy to separate a philosopher’s life sharply from his or her work. Where the lives of philosophers are thought to be philosophically relevant, this is usually because there is thought to be some connection between one part of their world view and another. So, to take a striking example from the twentieth century: the worry about Heidegger’s Nazism arises because his philosophy is thought to appeal to ideas like Volk (for example) which resonate with the Nazi ideology. By contrast, the anti-Semitic remarks in Frege’s personal correspondence are not relevant to understanding his ideas about logic and truth, since (unwholesome as they may be) they have no real connection with these ideas.
The situation with Wittgenstein is different. Here the question that fascinates people is not that of the relationship between his different views on various subjects – philosophical and non-philosophical – but the relationship between his philosophy and his life. In 2001 a volume of scholarly essays was published by Cambridge University Press on the very question of the relationship between philosophy and biography, with special reference to Wittgenstein. One theme which was explored in depth in Ray Monk’s classic biography, published in 1991, is how naturally Wittgenstein falls into the category of “genius”, how he aspired to this category himself, and how this influenced his philosophical development. Ramsey wrote in 1929 that “Mr Wittgenstein is a philosophic genius of a different order from any one else I know”; and according to Leavis, Wittgenstein’s arrogance was “a manifestation of the essential quality of genius”. This palpable impression of genius may go some way to explain how Wittgenstein’s charisma shaped the responses of those who knew him. The philosopher J. N. Findlay commented that “the personal impact of Wittgenstein is indispensable to the understanding of his influence . . . his personality, like his writing, made an immense aesthetic impact, so great indeed that one was tempted to confuse beauty with clarity and strangely luminous expression with perspicuous truth”.
But it seems to me that there is another, deeper way in which Wittgenstein’s life connects with his work, which has to do with the way he dramatized his personal struggle with philosophy in his later writings....
