| [Wittrs] interesting book [message #2563] |
Thu, 03 December 2009 13:56  |
 J
Messages: 87
Registered: December 2009 |
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I don't know if anyone here would be interested in this but I came across a
book which interested me as a student of Wittgenstein's thought whose
complete text is available online.
_Austrian_Philosophy:_The_Legacy_of_Fran_ Brentano_ by Barry Smith
http://ontology.buffalo.edu/smith/book/austrian_philosophy/
It is reviewed or summarized at several sites online, from various perspectives:
http://www.jstor.org/pss/2953761
http://sammelpunkt.philo.at:8080/1737/
http://mises.org/misesreview_detail.aspx?control=59
http://www.asiaing.com/austrian-philosophy-the-legacy-of-franz-brentano.html
http://www.friesian.com/austrian.htm
Why is it relevant? Apart from the obvious point, viz. Wittgenstein
was Austrian, the book documents the milieu (or one of the milieus) in
which Wittgenstein's thought developed.
The influence of Russell and Frege, of the Vienna Circle, of Schopenhauer, and of Tolstoy are more or less well understood but most of us, but it is sometimes
neglected that Wittgenstein, even while teaching at Cambridge, still
spent much of his life in Austria.
And he was acquainted with much of the discussion taking place there -
and not just the Circle. His writings shortly after his return to
philosophy, such as _Philosophical_Remarks_, are filled with references
to "Phenomenology",
but there are references again in late works like _Remarks_on_Colour_.
I would suggest that much of the Philosophical Psychology of the
post-Investigations work is more strongly influenced by confrontation
with the ideas of many of the figures discussed in this book
- figures whose ideas trace back to Brentano, such as the
Phenomenologists and Gestalt psychologists - than by the "usual
suspects" (Russell, Frege, Plato, Augustine, Descartes).
This book is not about Wittgenstein, though he gets a few mentions, but
it may help those of us who find ourselves asking, "To whom is this
addressed?" or "Why is he making this point?"
For those who've read _Wittgenstein's_Poker_, this elaborates on some of the shared background of Wittgenstein and Popper.
Finally, for those interested in the history of Analytic Philosophy
or in the divide between Analytic and "Continental" philosophy, this
book makes in the compelling case for very distinct philosophical
traditions in Austria (including the territory once covered by the
greater Austro-Hungarian Empire) and Germany.
I would add: rather than a divide between Anglophone and Continental philosophy, it is more helpful to think in terms of a divide between Austrian/English and German/French philosophy.
J. DeMouy
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| [Wittrs] Re: interesting book [message #2573 is a reply to message #2572] |
Thu, 03 December 2009 22:23  |
J
Messages: 87
Registered: December 2009 |
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S. Wilson asked
> ... could you elaborate, if you know, on what might be the difference in the benefits one would obtain from the Barry Smith book, versus, say, "Wittgenstein's Vienna" in terms of putting Wittgenstein's thoughts into cultural context? Or I am completely off base here with such a comparison?
>
> Yours wanting a little more info, if possible,
That's an excellent question and an apt choice of comparison.
Both works could be described as "intellectual history", but Janik and Toulmin's would also be well described as "cultural history" while Smith's would be better described as belonging to the "history of ideas" and "history of philosophy".
Also, while the focus of _Wittgenstein's_Vienna_ is on a wide range of issues over a narrow period, from Fin-de-Siecle to the First World War, Smith's book is concerned with a narrower set of issues but with coverage from the mid-19th century up to the Anschluss.
Finally, Smith's book deals with "Austria" in a sense that includes, e.g. Polish philosophy, i.e. with the territory included in the Hapsburg's Empire, while Janik and Toulmin are very much focused, as befits the title, on Vienna.
On the first point about classification: Janik and Toulmin are concerned with the wider culture of Vienna, with art, music, social mores, and so on. This is what I mean by "cultural history". The focus of Smith's work is much narrower, with issues that overlap to a large extent between philosophy of science, philosophy of mathematics, and psychology, and specifically with the influence that Franz Brentano had in each of these fields through students like Freud, Ehrenfels, Husserl, Twardowski, Steiner, and Masaryk.
Just that point, that one man taught the founder of Psycho-Analysis, the founder of Gestalt psychology, the founder of Phenomenology, and the founder of the Lvov-Warsaw School of logic (which gave us Tarski, among others), the founder of Anthroposophy, and the founder of Czechoslovakia is remarkable enough (more remarkable when one discovers he never received a professorship!) but they are also illustrative of wider tendencies in Austrian thought, going back further to Bolzano, and they show a distinct contrast with the post- and neo-Kantian philosophy prevalent in Germany.
Focusing specifically on the connection with Wittgenstein, the purpose served by Janik and Toulmin's work was to emphasize the ethical, religious, and spiritual concerns so long neglected in readings of the Tractatus. But where Smith sheds light is on more technical matters, e.g. the a priori, modality, the relationship between logic and psychology, the analysis of intention and intentionality, and the role of perception in knowledge, and on aspects of Wittgenstein's middle, transitional period (_Philosophical_Remarks_ in particular, but also _Remarks_on_Logical_Form_) as well as concerns of the post-Investigations Wittgenstein, i.e. Part II of the PI, _Remarks_on_the_Philosophy_of_Psychology_, _Last_Writings_on_the_Philosophy_of_Psychology_, _Remarks_on_Colour_, and _On_Certainty_.
I hope this helps.
JPDeMouy
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