Description: This is a one-credit reading group/seminar on a central figure in Twentieth Century philosophy, concentrating on his most central accomplishment, namely articulating a new conception of philosophy. More on that in a moment. This is a continuation of a series of reading groups regarding philosophical methods, especially in philosophy of language. Past topics have included Abstractions; Dichotomies; Language as Signs; Intention-Based Semantics; Certainty; Examples.

        Besides W's Philosophical Investigations, we will be using K.T. Fann's book, Wittgenstein's Conception of Philosophy. Fann begins by remarking on progress in philosophy and how it often involves investigation into the nature of the discipline. "Every 'revolution' in philosophy involves essentially a radical change in the conception of philosophy itself. If there has been a revolution in philosophy in recent years, it is largely due to Wittgenstein's perceptions into the nature of philosophy. According to G. E. Moore, Wittgenstein claimed that what he was doing was a 'new' subject, and not merely a stage in a 'continuous development'; that there was now in philosophy a 'kink' in the development of human thought comparable to that which occurred when Galileo and his contemporaries invented dynamics; that a 'new method' had been found, as had happened when chemistry was developed out of alchemy." (p. xi)

       We will use a combination of words from the horse's mouth, our own insights, and Fann's tourbook. Trying to summarize what we will learn before we learn it is a fool's errand, but let's try. Maybe we can look back at the end and have a good laugh.

       Here's a Before picture. Philosophers have often been divided into those who are systematic and those who are problems-oriented. Powell, for one, blathers on about being a problems-oriented philosopher, which seems to mean that he looks forward to starting over with a clean slate several times a semester. This is as opposed to those philosophers (Parmenides, Aristotle, Descartes, Kant, Hegel, Heidegger, that ilk) whose eyes are always on the big prize, who work toward a system which will unify all philosophical work. Further, All roads lead to home. Do your logic correctly, and the ethics will fall out after you turn the crank a few times, and then your aesthetics and politics if you keep turning. Or, for some who think there is no such thing as First Philosophy, start somewhere else, it doesn't matter--work on ontology in the right way, and then the epistemology will take shape, and then all the rest. Systematic philosophy is interested in the Big Abstractions, the generalities which can be laid down like a map that fits anywhere on the globe, the low-pressure systems which move counter-clockwise and the high pressure systems which rotate clockwise(in the northern hemisphere), whether they are over New Orleans or Hawaii or Saint Louis and which systems take no notice of whether the necklaces under them are free or expensive, are thrown through the air or placed ceremonially, are made of colored plastic or flowers or heavy gold chains. Systematic philosophers work toward an account of everything which is necessarily abstract in its chains of reasoning. One problem is of interest mainly for its place in the grand overall scheme of things, and that grand scheme is the real problem. All problems are parts of the real problem; all is one.

       The problems-oriented alternative to this--we are still in the Before picture--varies in its severity. Some philosophers are convinced that there is (or may be) an underlying unity but what we have to do first is work on pieces. Others work like plumbers or intellectual Roto-Rooter operators, one blockage at a time. For some it's a practical matter that they have to work on problems, but for others the problems are all there are. What problems? Well, a list of the problems would be a description of philosophy, and it might be a messy or a long list, and it might have an "etc." at the end, but still the list, for those severely problems-oriented, is the best account of what philosophy is. What's the meaning of life? What's language, really? Knowledge? Goodness? How is it possible to justify moral judgments or choices? What are the standards of a good argument? Can virtue be taught? How is it possible for a word to refer to an indefinitely large number of things? Why is there something rather than nothing? What is meaning? Is religious faith defensible? Are governments? What is art, really? truth? Being? etc. A problems-oriented approach takes these to be more or less separate or at least takes these as items to be worked on separately. It may very well be that clarifying the standards for a good argument will have implications for defending a role for government or religion, or help clarify what language is, but a problems-oriented philosopher is not expecting to find that ethics will suddenly prove to be the same as logic in the way that geometry and algebra can turn out, if we do our work correctly, to be the same. Instead, we keep our eye on the particular question, and work away to find an answer to it using whatever methods we can get into our hands or into our backhoe. The problems, then are varied, are not (so far as our work goes) just one big problem; the problems require more particular attention; they proceed at a lower level of abstraction; they are not so distant from examples.

       The After picture--oh, well, no, wait a moment. Characterizing Wittgenstein's philosophical work as a whole is dangerous. Therefore, the next paragraph is dangerous. Wittgenstein scholars like different things, inconsistent things, about his work. Scholars furthermore tend to emphasize their differences in understanding rather than the claims on which they agree. It's not often clear whether in fact they do agree, about anything. Wittgenstein's work in philosophy changed over the course of his life, though the extent to which it changed is a bitter issue among Wittgensteinians. Some claim that on all the essentials, he did not really change at all. Others see an almost complete about-face, a repudiation of his earlier work which is utterly complete. Rather than a remodel or a development, the relation of his later work to his earlier, this thinking goes, is more like burning the old Modernist house in Vienna to the ground before constructing a Baroque yurt out of folk-art crazyquilts in remote Norway.

       After: Wittgenstein did philosophy which partakes of both, with a twist. Early on he is a systematic philosopher of startling power, and this early work still has an active group of fundamentalist disciples. Later, he changed. He later works on one problem at a time, but the result is that problems are not solved so much as they are evaporated. It may need emphasized that we are talking about the problems here, not the answers but the questions or the issues to which those answers are supposed to be directed or which those answers allegedly resolve. Questioning the question, rather than trying to answer it, is the focus of his investigative work. The result is corrosive. Problems are revealed as being founded on mistakes, on oversimplified pictures or on over-extended metaphors or misleading grammatical analogies, on wilful or unwitting blindness to examples of the things which our accounts are allegedly about. W. says that work on a philosophical problem is like doing therapy on a neurosis. The result is an attack against philosophy as most philosophers think of it. Of course, attacking philosophy is still doing philosophy--like the universe, the space of philosophy is curved so that there is no outside.

Text and Materials:
       Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations (Part I finished in 1945; Part II written between 1947 and 1949). English edition of Philosophische Untersuchungen, first published in 1953 with German and English on facing pages, edited by G. E. M. Anscombe and Rush Rhees with the English translation by G.E.M. Anscombe. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

       K.T. Fann, Wittgenstein's Conception of Philosophy (London: Basil Blackwell, 1969; and Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971)--Powell is going to supply this as a photocopy for all by the second class.

       Kripke, Saul, Wittgenstein: On Rules and Private Language (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard U. P., 1982) Available at HSU Bookstore.

Requirements and grading: Consistent with guidelines for all regular courses in philosophy, you are expected to spend about two hours on reading and preparation and writing for each hour in class and you are expected to write (except in logic courses) an amount proportional to 20 pages for three credits. Some of the reading is slow going--we will endeavor to make assignments of appropriate length. As long as we are successful at that, students must do the readings before showing up for class. (And, of course, students must show up for class.) For a one credit course, the writing part of this expectation translates to about seven pages or 2000 words of graded written work. You may turn your essays into either of the teachers, but need to stick with one from beginning to end. Topics for short and medium-length essays will be suggested in class. You may write a half page and turn it in each week, or you may write as few as two essays of about 1000 words apiece. You must have three and a half pages turned in by the eighth class meeting, which is the 9th of October, and the rest by Monday of finals week. You must furthermore take care of rememberng to do this by yourself. Students will be asked to take turns at introducing readings and starting discussion--you are welcome to use these as occasions for writing.

Schedule: We will start at the beginning and go through the middle until we come to the end, and then stop.