This paper introduces the Special Issue on 'post-truth'. The contributions to this special issue try between them to strike a right balance. To establish how new ‘post-truthism’ really is – or isn’t. To seek a point of reflection on whatever is new in our current socio-political straits. And to consider seriously how philosophy can help. Whether by wondering about the extent to which reason, or truth, may rightly, if one follows Wittgenstein, be viewed in certain respects as a constraint upon thought or opinion. Or indeed by wondering whether we still have a long way to go in approaching truth at all.
{"title":"Introduction: ‘Post-Truth’?","authors":"R. Read, Timur Ųcan","doi":"10.15845/NWR.V8I1.3508","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.15845/NWR.V8I1.3508","url":null,"abstract":"This paper introduces the Special Issue on 'post-truth'. The contributions to this special issue try between them to strike a right balance. To establish how new ‘post-truthism’ really is – or isn’t. To seek a point of reflection on whatever is new in our current socio-political straits. And to consider seriously how philosophy can help. Whether by wondering about the extent to which reason, or truth, may rightly, if one follows Wittgenstein, be viewed in certain respects as a constraint upon thought or opinion. Or indeed by wondering whether we still have a long way to go in approaching truth at all.","PeriodicalId":31828,"journal":{"name":"Nordic Wittgenstein Review","volume":"80 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-07-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85342940","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Finlayson argues that ‘post-truth’ is nothing new. In this response, I motivate a more modest position: that it is something new, to some extent, albeit neither radically new nor brand new. I motivate this position by examining the case of climate-change-denial, called by some post-truth before 'post-truth'. I examine here the (over-determined) nature of climate-denial. What precisely are its attractions?; How do they manage to outweigh its glaring, potentially-catastrophic downsides? I argue that the most crucial of all attractions of climate-denial is that it involves the denier in a kind of fantasised power over reality itself: namely, over the nature of our planetary system, and thus of life itself. Climate-denial pretends to give the denier a power greater than that of nature, including in nature's 'rebellion' against humanity, what James Lovelock calls Gaia's incipient and coming 'fever'. Climate-denial seems to give the denier freedom from truth itself, in the case of the most consequential truth at present bearing down upon humanity. The most crucial of all the attractions of climate-denial is then that it provides would-be libertarians an ultimate freedom. They reject the reality of human-triggered climate-change, in the end, because they are unwilling to be ‘bound’ by anything, not even truth itself. Climate-denial has been around for a while, but not for more than 30-35 years or so. I thus suggest that Finlayson is right to be sceptical of the claim that post-truth is radically new and extremely recent, but I suggest that it is relativelynew and has been with us for only about a generation or at most two. Keywords: climate-change, climate-denial, libertarianism, Nietzsche, Wittgenstein
{"title":"What Is New in Our Time","authors":"R. Read","doi":"10.15845/NWR.V8I0.3507","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.15845/NWR.V8I0.3507","url":null,"abstract":"Finlayson argues that ‘post-truth’ is nothing new. In this response, I motivate a more modest position: that it is something new, to some extent, albeit neither radically new nor brand new. \u0000I motivate this position by examining the case of climate-change-denial, called by some post-truth before 'post-truth'. \u0000I examine here the (over-determined) nature of climate-denial. What precisely are its attractions?; How do they manage to outweigh its glaring, potentially-catastrophic downsides? I argue that the most crucial of all attractions of climate-denial is that it involves the denier in a kind of fantasised power over reality itself: namely, over the nature of our planetary system, and thus of life itself. Climate-denial pretends to give the denier a power greater than that of nature, including in nature's 'rebellion' against humanity, what James Lovelock calls Gaia's incipient and coming 'fever'. \u0000Climate-denial seems to give the denier freedom from truth itself, in the case of the most consequential truth at present bearing down upon humanity. The most crucial of all the attractions of climate-denial is then that it provides would-be libertarians an ultimate freedom. They reject the reality of human-triggered climate-change, in the end, because they are unwilling to be ‘bound’ by anything, not even truth itself. \u0000Climate-denial has been around for a while, but not for more than 30-35 years or so. I thus suggest that Finlayson is right to be sceptical of the claim that post-truth is radically new and extremely recent, but I suggest that it is relativelynew and has been with us for only about a generation or at most two. \u0000Keywords: climate-change, climate-denial, libertarianism, Nietzsche, Wittgenstein","PeriodicalId":31828,"journal":{"name":"Nordic Wittgenstein Review","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-07-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78137025","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The “post-truth” phenomenon is not primarily a cognitive problem, but a moral or existential problem, a problem of self-deception. But what does this mean? In order to clarify that, two things need to be discussed. First, if the conception of belief is rejected according to which a belief has sense in isolation from the roles it, and the holding of it, plays in our lives, then the problem of self-deception needs to be met as a problem of life. Second, a problem of life is not something that individuals get into all by themselves. In other words, ways of living can be self-deceptive. The task of the text is hence to discuss some of the ways in which truth, belief and self-deception unfold on this non-individual level, specifically on the political one. Keywords: post-truth, self-deception, belief, democracy, Simone Weil
{"title":"Life and Truth","authors":"H. Strandberg","doi":"10.15845/NWR.V8I0.3501","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.15845/NWR.V8I0.3501","url":null,"abstract":"The “post-truth” phenomenon is not primarily a cognitive problem, but a moral or existential problem, a problem of self-deception. But what does this mean? In order to clarify that, two things need to be discussed. First, if the conception of belief is rejected according to which a belief has sense in isolation from the roles it, and the holding of it, plays in our lives, then the problem of self-deception needs to be met as a problem of life. Second, a problem of life is not something that individuals get into all by themselves. In other words, ways of living can be self-deceptive. The task of the text is hence to discuss some of the ways in which truth, belief and self-deception unfold on this non-individual level, specifically on the political one. \u0000Keywords: post-truth, self-deception, belief, democracy, Simone Weil","PeriodicalId":31828,"journal":{"name":"Nordic Wittgenstein Review","volume":"191 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-07-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74326213","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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
{"title":"The Problem of Domination by Reason and Its Non-Relativistic Solution","authors":"Oskari Kuusela","doi":"10.15845/NWR.V8I0.3505","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.15845/NWR.V8I0.3505","url":null,"abstract":"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. \u0000Keywords: domination, relativism, Wittgenstein, method, agreement","PeriodicalId":31828,"journal":{"name":"Nordic Wittgenstein Review","volume":"31 6 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-07-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"82753043","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Recent political developments have made the notion of 'post-truth' ubiquitous. Along with associated terms such as 'fake news' and 'alternative facts', it appears with regularity in coverage of and commentary on Donald Trump, the Brexit vote, and the role – relative to these phenomena – of a half-despised, half-feared creature known as 'the public'. It has become commonplace to assert that we now inhabit, or are entering, a post-truth world. In this paper, I issue a sceptical challenge against the distinctiveness and utility of the notion of post-truth. I argue, first, that the term fails to capture anything that is both real and novel. Moreover, post-truth discourse often has a not-fully-explicit political force and function: to ‘irrationalise’ political disaffection and to signal loyalty to a ‘pre-post-truth’ political status quo. The central insight of the speech act theory of J. L. Austin and others – that saying is always also doing – is as indispensable for understanding the significance of much of what is labelled ‘post-truth’, I’ll argue, as it is for understanding the significance of that very act of labelling. Keywords: post-truth, speech acts, Trump, brexit, Austin
{"title":"What to Do with Post-Truth","authors":"L. Finlayson","doi":"10.15845/NWR.V8I0.3502","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.15845/NWR.V8I0.3502","url":null,"abstract":"Recent political developments have made the notion of 'post-truth' ubiquitous. Along with associated terms such as 'fake news' and 'alternative facts', it appears with regularity in coverage of and commentary on Donald Trump, the Brexit vote, and the role – relative to these phenomena – of a half-despised, half-feared creature known as 'the public'. It has become commonplace to assert that we now inhabit, or are entering, a post-truth world. \u0000 In this paper, I issue a sceptical challenge against the distinctiveness and utility of the notion of post-truth. I argue, first, that the term fails to capture anything that is both real and novel. Moreover, post-truth discourse often has a not-fully-explicit political force and function: to ‘irrationalise’ political disaffection and to signal loyalty to a ‘pre-post-truth’ political status quo. The central insight of the speech act theory of J. L. Austin and others – that saying is always also doing – is as indispensable for understanding the significance of much of what is labelled ‘post-truth’, I’ll argue, as it is for understanding the significance of that very act of labelling. \u0000Keywords: post-truth, speech acts, Trump, brexit, Austin","PeriodicalId":31828,"journal":{"name":"Nordic Wittgenstein Review","volume":"15 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-07-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"87911800","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In his paper "The Problem of Domination by Reason and its Non-Relativist Solution" Oskari Kuusela describes a problem about our conception of rationality, which he labels the problem of “domination by reason”. This problem has contributed to generate, Kuusela notes, a widespread dissatisfaction with reason, which has resulted in a tendency to discard ideals of rationality altogether. Kuusela, in his paper, provides a response to this dissatisfaction. He argues that Wittgenstein, if we read him correctly, exemplifies a conception of reason that doesn’t incur the problem he indicates. In my response, I suggest a possible extension of Kuusela’s reflections. Domination by reason, as I argue, may also take another form, different from the one recognized by Kuusela. This alternative form is interesting for two reasons. First, those concerned about rationality’s dominance have quite often in mind this latter problem. Second, it is not obvious that the alternative version of the problem can be solved by appealing to the conception of rationality Kuusela locates in Wittgenstein: it could even be argued that such a conception, on a certain construal, may contribute to reinforcing it. I suggest that, if we focus solely on the aspects of Wittgenstein’s method highlighted in Kuusela’s paper, then such methods may be taken to promote domination by reason (in the alternative sense I introduce). There are, however, other aspects of Wittgenstein’s philosophy - most notably, his conception of ethical language - which may help us to dispel this version of the problem. Keywords: Wittgenstein, rationality, modernity, clarification, James Baldwin
{"title":"Two Forms of Domination by Reason","authors":"Matteo Falomi","doi":"10.15845/NWR.V8I0.3503","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.15845/NWR.V8I0.3503","url":null,"abstract":"In his paper \"The Problem of Domination by Reason and its Non-Relativist Solution\" Oskari Kuusela describes a problem about our conception of rationality, which he labels the problem of “domination by reason”. This problem has contributed to generate, Kuusela notes, a widespread dissatisfaction with reason, which has resulted in a tendency to discard ideals of rationality altogether. Kuusela, in his paper, provides a response to this dissatisfaction. He argues that Wittgenstein, if we read him correctly, exemplifies a conception of reason that doesn’t incur the problem he indicates. In my response, I suggest a possible extension of Kuusela’s reflections. Domination by reason, as I argue, may also take another form, different from the one recognized by Kuusela. This alternative form is interesting for two reasons. First, those concerned about rationality’s dominance have quite often in mind this latter problem. Second, it is not obvious that the alternative version of the problem can be solved by appealing to the conception of rationality Kuusela locates in Wittgenstein: it could even be argued that such a conception, on a certain construal, may contribute to reinforcing it. I suggest that, if we focus solely on the aspects of Wittgenstein’s method highlighted in Kuusela’s paper, then such methods may be taken to promote domination by reason (in the alternative sense I introduce). There are, however, other aspects of Wittgenstein’s philosophy - most notably, his conception of ethical language - which may help us to dispel this version of the problem. \u0000Keywords: Wittgenstein, rationality, modernity, clarification, James Baldwin","PeriodicalId":31828,"journal":{"name":"Nordic Wittgenstein Review","volume":"314 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-06-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77782530","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In this paper, I introduce the idea of ‘radical relativity’ to elucidate an undervalued justificatory context for Wittgenstein’s affirmation of radical pluralism. I accept D.Z. Phillips’s definition of radical pluralism as the view that certain radical differences between people’s ordinary practices prevent the latter from being reduced to a necessary set of common interests, meanings, or truths. I argue that radical relativity provides this form of pluralism with the logical justification it requires in that it accounts for how pluralism became radical. More specifically, I argue that the contingent, non-causal, and yet non-arbitrary relation between ordinary concepts and the pluralistic world through which they emerge explains the reality of radical pluralism. Radical relativity is suggested in Wittgenstein’s three notions of ‘concept formation’, ‘agreement in reaction’, and ‘world pictures’, I argue, without endorsing traditional forms of relativism. Finally, I show that although D.Z. Phillips and Hilary Putnam promote notions of pluralism indebted to Wittgenstein, neither philosopher utilizes the radical relativity suggested in his work to justify his respective version of pluralism or Wittgenstein’s version of radical pluralism.
{"title":"On Wittgenstein, Radical Pluralism, and Radical Relativity","authors":"Randy Ramal","doi":"10.15845/NWR.V8I1.3461","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.15845/NWR.V8I1.3461","url":null,"abstract":"In this paper, I introduce the idea of ‘radical relativity’ to elucidate an undervalued justificatory context for Wittgenstein’s affirmation of radical pluralism. I accept D.Z. Phillips’s definition of radical pluralism as the view that certain radical differences between people’s ordinary practices prevent the latter from being reduced to a necessary set of common interests, meanings, or truths. I argue that radical relativity provides this form of pluralism with the logical justification it requires in that it accounts for how pluralism became radical. More specifically, I argue that the contingent, non-causal, and yet non-arbitrary relation between ordinary concepts and the pluralistic world through which they emerge explains the reality of radical pluralism. Radical relativity is suggested in Wittgenstein’s three notions of ‘concept formation’, ‘agreement in reaction’, and ‘world pictures’, I argue, without endorsing traditional forms of relativism. Finally, I show that although D.Z. Phillips and Hilary Putnam promote notions of pluralism indebted to Wittgenstein, neither philosopher utilizes the radical relativity suggested in his work to justify his respective version of pluralism or Wittgenstein’s version of radical pluralism.","PeriodicalId":31828,"journal":{"name":"Nordic Wittgenstein Review","volume":"24 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-03-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81135239","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The second part of Philosophical Investigations and other contemporary writings contain abundant material dedicated to the examination of visual perception, along the lines of similarities and differences manifested in the use of concepts such as “seeing as”, “seeing aspects”, “noticing the aspect”, “aspect blindness”, among other, related ones. However, the application of these concepts to phenomena such as face perception and word perception has not received proper attention in the literature. Our interest lies in identifying the features pertaining facial perception and recognition of its content in order to understand how and to what extent they contribute to shed light on perceptual (and experiential) relationships we have with language, in particular with its written form. In other words, we will try to show in what ways the “phenomenology of facial perception” or “physiognomy” helps to understand the “experience of meaning” and the “phenomenology of reading”. My interpretative hypothesis is that, in Wittgenstein’s view, the features shared by face and word perception are more profound than a mere analogy, and that, in the case of words, these features can explain specific semantic (perhaps, semantic-pragmatic) phenomena that should be included in an appropriate reconstruction of the varieties of use in natural languages.
{"title":"\"The Familiar Physiognomy of a Word\": Wittgenstein on Seeing Faces and Words","authors":"Carolina Scotto","doi":"10.15845/NWR.V8I1.3487","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.15845/NWR.V8I1.3487","url":null,"abstract":"The second part of Philosophical Investigations and other contemporary writings contain abundant material dedicated to the examination of visual perception, along the lines of similarities and differences manifested in the use of concepts such as “seeing as”, “seeing aspects”, “noticing the aspect”, “aspect blindness”, among other, related ones. However, the application of these concepts to phenomena such as face perception and word perception has not received proper attention in the literature. Our interest lies in identifying the features pertaining facial perception and recognition of its content in order to understand how and to what extent they contribute to shed light on perceptual (and experiential) relationships we have with language, in particular with its written form. In other words, we will try to show in what ways the “phenomenology of facial perception” or “physiognomy” helps to understand the “experience of meaning” and the “phenomenology of reading”. My interpretative hypothesis is that, in Wittgenstein’s view, the features shared by face and word perception are more profound than a mere analogy, and that, in the case of words, these features can explain specific semantic (perhaps, semantic-pragmatic) phenomena that should be included in an appropriate reconstruction of the varieties of use in natural languages. ","PeriodicalId":31828,"journal":{"name":"Nordic Wittgenstein Review","volume":"30 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-03-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"72658770","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This paper introduces and publishes two letters from 1934 written by Wittgenstein to Sraffa. The first of these confirms that on the one hand Wittgenstein and Sraffa had communicative difficulties. On the other hand Wittgenstein acknowledged the strength of Sraffa’s thinking and he was aware of being positively influenced by it. The second longer letter is part of a debate between Wittgenstein and Sraffa that had been ongoing in the few weeks preceding the letter. In the letter, Wittgenstein tried to clarify and review in part his thinking on the points he discussed during the debate.
{"title":"Wittgenstein to Sraffa: Two Newly-discovered Letters from February and March 1934","authors":"M. Iaco","doi":"10.15845/NWR.V8I1.3532","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.15845/NWR.V8I1.3532","url":null,"abstract":"This paper introduces and publishes two letters from 1934 written by Wittgenstein to Sraffa. The first of these confirms that on the one hand Wittgenstein and Sraffa had communicative difficulties. On the other hand Wittgenstein acknowledged the strength of Sraffa’s thinking and he was aware of being positively influenced by it. The second longer letter is part of a debate between Wittgenstein and Sraffa that had been ongoing in the few weeks preceding the letter. In the letter, Wittgenstein tried to clarify and review in part his thinking on the points he discussed during the debate.","PeriodicalId":31828,"journal":{"name":"Nordic Wittgenstein Review","volume":"199 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-03-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"72518679","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
As the recent edition of the Wittgenstein’s Whewell’s Court Lectures shows, Wittgenstein mentioned Hume several times in the series of lectures on belief. Towards the end of the Thirties, in fact, he came across Hume’s Abstract of the Treatise, a pamphlet that Piero Sraffa and John Maynard Keynes had ‘discovered’ at the end of 1933, re-edited in 1937 and finally published in March 1938 – Sraffa, with whom Wittgenstein had an intense intercourse in 1938-1941, donated him a copy. A lexical analysis of excerpts of Wittgenstein’s ET 1940 lectures strongly suggests that he read the Abstract in March-May 1940, and shows that some of the issues he discussed in his lectures at that time revolve around the peculiar definition that Hume gave in that text of the feeling of belief.
{"title":"Sraffa, Hume, and Wittgenstein’s Lectures On Belief","authors":"Lucia Morra","doi":"10.15845/NWR.V8I1.3510","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.15845/NWR.V8I1.3510","url":null,"abstract":"As the recent edition of the Wittgenstein’s Whewell’s Court Lectures shows, Wittgenstein mentioned Hume several times in the series of lectures on belief. Towards the end of the Thirties, in fact, he came across Hume’s Abstract of the Treatise, a pamphlet that Piero Sraffa and John Maynard Keynes had ‘discovered’ at the end of 1933, re-edited in 1937 and finally published in March 1938 – Sraffa, with whom Wittgenstein had an intense intercourse in 1938-1941, donated him a copy. A lexical analysis of excerpts of Wittgenstein’s ET 1940 lectures strongly suggests that he read the Abstract in March-May 1940, and shows that some of the issues he discussed in his lectures at that time revolve around the peculiar definition that Hume gave in that text of the feeling of belief.","PeriodicalId":31828,"journal":{"name":"Nordic Wittgenstein Review","volume":"126 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-03-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89853577","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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