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I'm also of the opinion that Wittgenstein is the most overrated philosopher of the 20th century (if not ever). I'm honestly not sure why he still has entire und

by dvt 7y ago

I'm also of the opinion that Wittgenstein is the most overrated philosopher of the 20th century (if not ever). I'm honestly not sure why he still has entire undergraduate courses dedicated to him (but Godel, Moore, Russell, etc., don't). Virtually none of his ideas made it into any serious philosophical works (sans a bit of philosophy of language). I have a feeling that his work panders to the "obtuseness of ideas" that so many academics crave. To put him on the same level as G.E. Moore (and his brilliant naturalistic fallacy) and Bertrand Russell (and his [and Whitehead's] brilliant Principia Mathematica) is deeply misguided.

freshhawk 7y ago
I can see why someone would think that, it is a reasonable point of view even if I disagree. I don't get how you can hold Moore and Russell up so highly and then completely discount what they thought of him. I feel they are much better judges of this question than I am.
- p1esk 7y ago
  What did they think of him?
  - sgt101 7y ago
    Russell loved him, I think literally. :0) Of this Moore does not speak.
kensai 7y ago
The Tractatus is interesting to read. Line by line as a program.
sgt101 7y ago
> brilliant Principia Mathematica Hang on : Über formal unentscheidbare Sätze der Principia Mathematica und verwandter Systeme I !!! You can be as brilliant as you like, but if you are fundamentally wrong (which Russell and Whitehead were) then you get knocked off your perch. Still, I guess that they were in good company. Bertrand Russell was a wonderful man, but I still smile when I think of the Principia and the essay he wrote nine years after Godel blew it up :"Why Mr. Hitler will not invade Russia" I think that reason that Wittgenstein is still taught is that there are ideas in there that have not been successfully extended or refuted, except sometimes by Wittgenstein, and even then... Debatably! Also his "approach" is still used by many people. If the GP thinks Wittgenstein is a vandal I wonder what he makes of Derrida and the other French lunatics; if you want to see where philosophy (and politics and literature) were crippled Paris in the 60's and Yale & Irvine in the 70's would be good places to start. One of it's legacies is the constant and ongoing attack on science - I blame Derrida for climate change denial!* * I know - this is an act of pure spite, but old people need their fun, and he's dead, and anyway, his friends would just deconstruct my sentence to show that in fact I'm not blaming anyone, blame is not a real concept, things cannot be denied, there is no climate and things can't change.
- dvt 7y ago
  > Bertrand Russell was a wonderful man, but I still smile when I think of the Principia and the essay he wrote nine years after Godel blew it up I purposefully put them both up there! Russell was wrong (and, on a personal level, his atheistic slant profoundly annoys me), but he had a coherent and laudable plan -- he was the logical positivists' spearhead. Godel, of course, blew that whole plan up, but it was a plan nonetheless. > If the GP thinks Wittgenstein is a vandal I wonder what he makes of Derrida and the other French lunatics; In line with the analytic tradition, I wasn't much exposed to the "French lunatics" (thankfully). Nietzsche was bad enough†. † I actually quite like some of Nietzsche, but the prose is atrocious.

by dvt 7y ago

freshhawk 7y ago

I can see why someone would think that, it is a reasonable point of view even if I disagree. I don't get how you can hold Moore and Russell up so highly and then completely discount what they thought of him. I feel they are much better judges of this question than I am.

p1esk 7y ago
What did they think of him?
- sgt101 7y ago
  Russell loved him, I think literally. :0) Of this Moore does not speak.

kensai 7y ago

The Tractatus is interesting to read. Line by line as a program.

sgt101 7y ago

> brilliant Principia Mathematica Hang on : Über formal unentscheidbare Sätze der Principia Mathematica und verwandter Systeme I !!! You can be as brilliant as you like, but if you are fundamentally wrong (which Russell and Whitehead were) then you get knocked off your perch. Still, I guess that they were in good company. Bertrand Russell was a wonderful man, but I still smile when I think of the Principia and the essay he wrote nine years after Godel blew it up :"Why Mr. Hitler will not invade Russia" I think that reason that Wittgenstein is still taught is that there are ideas in there that have not been successfully extended or refuted, except sometimes by Wittgenstein, and even then... Debatably! Also his "approach" is still used by many people. If the GP thinks Wittgenstein is a vandal I wonder what he makes of Derrida and the other French lunatics; if you want to see where philosophy (and politics and literature) were crippled Paris in the 60's and Yale & Irvine in the 70's would be good places to start. One of it's legacies is the constant and ongoing attack on science - I blame Derrida for climate change denial!* * I know - this is an act of pure spite, but old people need their fun, and he's dead, and anyway, his friends would just deconstruct my sentence to show that in fact I'm not blaming anyone, blame is not a real concept, things cannot be denied, there is no climate and things can't change.

dvt 7y ago
> Bertrand Russell was a wonderful man, but I still smile when I think of the Principia and the essay he wrote nine years after Godel blew it up I purposefully put them both up there! Russell was wrong (and, on a personal level, his atheistic slant profoundly annoys me), but he had a coherent and laudable plan -- he was the logical positivists' spearhead. Godel, of course, blew that whole plan up, but it was a plan nonetheless. > If the GP thinks Wittgenstein is a vandal I wonder what he makes of Derrida and the other French lunatics; In line with the analytic tradition, I wasn't much exposed to the "French lunatics" (thankfully). Nietzsche was bad enough†. † I actually quite like some of Nietzsche, but the prose is atrocious.