Description
Book SynopsisThis volume of newly written chapters on the history and interpretation of Wittgenstein''s Tractatus represents a significant step beyond the polemical debate between broad interpretive approaches that has recently characterized the field. Some of the contributors might count their approach as ''new'' or ''resolute'', while others are more ''traditional'', but all are here concerned primarily with understanding in detail the structure of argument that Wittgenstein presents within the Tractatus, rather than with its final self-renunciation, or with the character of the understanding that renunciation might leave behind. The volume makes a strong case that close investigation, both biographical and textual, into the composition of the Tractatus, and into the various influences on it, still has much to yield in revealing the complexity and fertility of Wittgenstein''s early thought. Amongst these influences Kant and Kierkegaard are considered alongside Wittgenstein''s immediate predecesso
Table of Contents1. Introduction ; 2. Wittgenstein's pre-Tractatus manuscripts: a new appraisal ; 3. Why does Wittgenstein say that ethics and aesthetics are one and the same? ; 4. Kierkegaard and the Tractatus ; 5. What is Frege's 'concept horse problem'? ; 6. Tractatus 5.4611: 'Signs for logical operations are punctuation marks' ; 7. Logical segmentation and generality in Wittgenstein's Tractatus ; 8. Does the Tractatus contain a private language argument? ; 9. Logic and solipsism ; 10. Was the author of the Tractatus a transcendental idealist? ; 11. Idealism in Wittgenstein: a further reply to Moore ; Index
