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The Tractus had an impact, for sure. But, from my experience, more see his later works, published posthumously as Philosophical Investigations, as far more infl

The Tractus had an impact, for sure. But, from my experience, more see his later works, published posthumously as Philosophical Investigations, as far more influential. Wittgenstein is very fascinating because of this incredible turn in his work away from the intensely mathematical idea of philosophy towards one that was far more linguistic and anthropological. In arguments like the Private Language argument, Meaning as Use, Rule-following and forms of life, he advanced a philosophical position that disrupted a philosophical skepticism that formed the bed rock of philosophers like Descartes, and many that follow and that are still enthralled with the Cartesian picture. He advanced that a number of long standing philosophical questions were often non-sense, in the sense that they involved the misuse of language and grammar (in a Wittgenstein-ian sense aka, in the sense that one can explain the use and rules for the use of a word) into trails that cannot but lead to dead-ends. His arguments around pain, vision, and psychology, are also fascinating. Though some say it is a mischaracterization, I often find his writing from this era to be very therapeutic. He has a way of presenting arguments so that you can see through them.

mcshicks 5y ago
I was going to say I found Philisopical Investigations much more interesting than Tractus.
nmyk 5y ago
Just to add some color to your comment as I think the idea that philosophy can be therapeutic is counterintuitive for a lot of people: consider the loneliness of depression, a big part of which (at least for me) is the seemingly insolvable problem of being trapped in my own head. "No one else could possibly understand how I feel" seems to be true not even just for me, but for the human condition. We're not mind-readers. Nonsense, Wittgenstein seems to argue. If no one else could understand how you feel even in principle, then neither could you. If you can talk about it then people will understand, because we use the same words the same way. And when we don't, it's not because of some kind of epistemological solitary confinement - it's just a misunderstanding, and there are language games for resolving those too. You don't have to read philosophy to know that "no one else could possibly understand how I feel" is actually a common sentiment, though. The truly therapeutic part for me was the idea that even though there may be problems that can't be solved, they can sometimes be dissolved. (i.e. seeing the problem statement itself as nonsense)
- mabub24 5y ago
  I wholeheartedly agree. Wittgenstein's arguments are rather uplifting in the sense that they make very clear the commonalities of being human, that, with all of the incredible variations of culture, you can take steps for "bridging the gap" so to speak, and often that just means communicating and interacting with other people, learning a form of life to learn what animates the people that live it. The private language argument had a similar effect for me, but more-so in dissolving the insistence some people make over subjective vs. objective. Through the private language argument, you see that that opposition is really more about personal vs. public. Wittgenstein does not dissolve the personal; but the private language argument does dissolve the kind of fundamentally private subjectivity that people often reference or hold in that debate on subjective vs. objective.
mcguire 5y ago
Philosophy is fun. :-) Wittgenstein was, IIUC, one of the founders and leaders of analytic philosophy, which I personally had very little respect for since it essentially punted on the questions that philosophy has dealt with since it's creation; the "non-sense" you mention. Then, I ran across Angus Graham's writings on Zhuangzi (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/zhuangzi/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/zhuangzi/). Zhuangzi was a better analytic philosopher than any of the modern analytics that I've seen.

mcshicks 5y ago

I was going to say I found Philisopical Investigations much more interesting than Tractus.

nmyk 5y ago

Just to add some color to your comment as I think the idea that philosophy can be therapeutic is counterintuitive for a lot of people: consider the loneliness of depression, a big part of which (at least for me) is the seemingly insolvable problem of being trapped in my own head. "No one else could possibly understand how I feel" seems to be true not even just for me, but for the human condition. We're not mind-readers. Nonsense, Wittgenstein seems to argue. If no one else could understand how you feel even in principle, then neither could you. If you can talk about it then people will understand, because we use the same words the same way. And when we don't, it's not because of some kind of epistemological solitary confinement - it's just a misunderstanding, and there are language games for resolving those too. You don't have to read philosophy to know that "no one else could possibly understand how I feel" is actually a common sentiment, though. The truly therapeutic part for me was the idea that even though there may be problems that can't be solved, they can sometimes be dissolved. (i.e. seeing the problem statement itself as nonsense)

mabub24 5y ago
I wholeheartedly agree. Wittgenstein's arguments are rather uplifting in the sense that they make very clear the commonalities of being human, that, with all of the incredible variations of culture, you can take steps for "bridging the gap" so to speak, and often that just means communicating and interacting with other people, learning a form of life to learn what animates the people that live it. The private language argument had a similar effect for me, but more-so in dissolving the insistence some people make over subjective vs. objective. Through the private language argument, you see that that opposition is really more about personal vs. public. Wittgenstein does not dissolve the personal; but the private language argument does dissolve the kind of fundamentally private subjectivity that people often reference or hold in that debate on subjective vs. objective.

mcguire 5y ago

Philosophy is fun. :-) Wittgenstein was, IIUC, one of the founders and leaders of analytic philosophy, which I personally had very little respect for since it essentially punted on the questions that philosophy has dealt with since it's creation; the "non-sense" you mention. Then, I ran across Angus Graham's writings on Zhuangzi (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/zhuangzi/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/zhuangzi/). Zhuangzi was a better analytic philosopher than any of the modern analytics that I've seen.