scholarly journals “Ludwig Wittgenstein” – A BBC radio talk by Elizabeth Anscombe in May 1953

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 225-240
Author(s):  
Christian Erbacher ◽  
Anne Dos Santos Reis ◽  
Julia Jung
Keyword(s):  
Ludwig Wittgenstein ◽  
Ordinary Language ◽  
Ordinary Language Philosophy ◽  
Language Philosophy ◽  
Philosophical Investigations ◽  
Philosophical Background ◽  
Radio Broadcast ◽  
First Time ◽  
Radio Talk

Presented here is the transcript of a BBC radio broadcast by Elizabeth Anscombe that was recorded in May 1953 – the month when Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations appeared in England for the first time. In her radio talk, Anscombe provides some biographical and philosophical background for reading the Philosophical Investigations. She addresses the importance of the Tractatus and of the literary qualities of Wittgenstein’s writing. Anscombe warns that it would be fruitless to adopt slogans from Wittgenstein without insight. She also calls it a misunderstanding to think that Wittgenstein had championed something like the Ordinary Language Philosophy as it was practised at the time of the recording.

Revolutions of the Ordinary: Victorian Studies and the Turn to Ordinary Language

2019 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 449-461 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Wright
Keyword(s):  
Ludwig Wittgenstein ◽  
Ordinary Language ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Intellectual Life ◽  
Ordinary Language Philosophy ◽  
Language Philosophy ◽  
Stanley Cavell ◽  
Victorian Studies ◽  
As If

“To engage seriously with ordinary language philosophy,” Toril Moi tells us in the introduction to Revolution of the Ordinary: Literary Studies after Wittgenstein, Austin, and Cavell, “is a little like undergoing psychoanalysis. Wittgenstein assumes that we don't begin doing philosophy just for the sake of it, but because something is making us feel confused, as if we had lost our way.” As Moi begins her project of explaining to an audience of literary critics the insights of ordinary-language philosophy, represented primarily by the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein, J. L. Austin, and Stanley Cavell, and making a case for the value of their ideas for the practice we usually call close reading, this psychoanalytic metaphor makes a sudden turn to diagnosis, or to the initiation of a kind of therapeutic address that can feel coercive even in its charisma. You must recognize your sickness, Moi insists, before you can be receptive to the treatment. “Who wants to undergo philosophical therapy,” she goes on to ask, “if they feel that everything in their intellectual life is just fine as it is? Paradoxically, then, the best readers of the reputedly ‘conservative’ Wittgenstein might be those who genuinely feel the need for a change” (12). What kind of therapeutic project does Moi want to pursue in this book, which begins by distinguishing the best readers (the readiest patients) from those who think, conservatively, that everything is “just fine as it is”?

Hedda’s Words

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Toril Moi
Keyword(s):  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Ludwig Wittgenstein ◽  
Ordinary Language ◽  
Philosophical Tradition ◽  
Ordinary Language Philosophy ◽  
Close Attention ◽  
Language Philosophy ◽  
Stanley Cavell ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World

For ordinary language philosophy—the philosophical tradition after Ludwig Wittgenstein and J. L. Austin, as constituted and extended by Stanley Cavell—meaning arises in use. Utterances are actions and expressions. This philosophy, therefore, is closely attuned to the work of language in theater. This paper shows that ordinary language philosophy gives rise to a kind of literary criticism that considers reading an practice of acknowledgment, as en effort to understand exactly why the characters say precisely these words in precisely this situation. By paying close attention to Hedda’s interactions with three different linguistic worlds—the Tesman world, the Brack world, and the world she shared with Løvborg in the past—this chapter brings out the contrast between the conventionality and brutality of Hedda’s surroundings and Hedda’s ideals of courage and freedom, and shows that Hedda is more vulnerable, and more damaged, than previous readings have assumed.

Whose Dream Is It Anyway?

2014 ◽  
Vol 4 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 263-287
Author(s):  
Avner Baz
Keyword(s):  
Ordinary Language ◽  
External World ◽  
Theory Of Knowledge ◽  
Second Line ◽  
Ordinary Language Philosophy ◽  
First Line ◽  
Standard Type ◽  
Language Philosophy ◽  
Cartesian Skepticism

I start with two basic lines of response to Cartesian skepticism about the ‘external world’: in the first, which is characteristic of Analytic philosophers to this day, the focus is on the meaning of ‘know’—what it ‘refers’ to, its ‘semantics’ and its ‘pragmatics’; in the second, which characterizes Continental responses to Descartes, the focus is on the philosophizing or meditating subject, and its relation to its body and world. I argue that the first approach is hopeless: if the Cartesian worry that I could be dreaming right now so much as makes sense, the proposal that—under some theory of knowledge (or of ‘knowledge’)—my belief that I am sitting in front of the computer right now may still be (or truly count as) a piece of knowledge, would rightfully seem to the skeptic to be playing with words and missing the point. I then argue that the practice of Ordinary Language Philosophy, which has mostly been linked to the first line of response to Cartesian skepticism, may be seen as actually belonging with the second line of response; and I show how a form of what may be called “Existentialist Ordinary Language Philosophy” can be used to reveal the nonsensicality of the Cartesian skeptical worry. My argument takes its cue from Thompson Clarke’s insight—an insight that Clarke himself has not pursued far or accurately enough—that our concept of Dream is not a concept of the “standard type.”

INFLUENCE OF LINGUISTIC PHILOSOPHY ON ANALYTICAL JURISPRUDENCE THROUGH THE PERSPECTIVE OF H. L. A. HART

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (18) ◽  
pp. 315-330
Author(s):  
Luana Sion Li
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Legal Theory ◽  
Ordinary Language ◽  
Theoretical Development ◽  
Ordinary Language Philosophy ◽  
Language Philosophy ◽  
Legal Philosopher ◽  
Linguistic Philosophy ◽  
The Way

This article discusses the influence of emerging linguistic philosophy theories in the 20th century on the development of analytical jurisprudence through an examination of the way those theories influenced the legal philosopher H. L. A. Hart. Although Hart is significantly influenced by linguistic philosophy, his legal theory could not have been developed solely with it. This is evidenced by Hart’s disownment of the essay Ascription of Responsibility and Rights, his attempt to employ ideas from ordinary language philosophy in the context of law. Hart’s theoretical development shows that he was above all not a linguistic, but a legal philosopher; and that analytical jurisprudence, albeit influenced by linguistic philosophy, depends on aspects beyond it.

Ordinary Language Philosophy

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Avner Baz
Keyword(s):  
Ordinary Language ◽  
Pure Reason ◽  
Philosophical Method ◽  
Ordinary Language Philosophy ◽  
Critique Of Pure Reason ◽  
Language Philosophy ◽  
Method Of Cases

The article presents, clarifies, defends, and shows the contemporary relevance of ordinary language philosophy (OLP), as a general approach to the understanding and dissolution of at least very many traditional and contemporary philosophical difficulties. The first section broadly characterizes OLP, points out its anticipation in Immanuel Kant’s dissolution of metaphysical impasses in the ‘Transcendental Dialectic’ of the Critique of Pure Reason, and then shows its contemporary relevance by bringing its perspective to bear on the recent debates concerning the philosophical ‘method of cases’. The second section responds to a series of common objections to, and misunderstandings of, OLP.

scholarly journals On the Return to Metaphysics in Analytical Philosophy of Mind

2018 ◽  
pp. 130-142
Author(s):  
G. A. Zolotkov
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Analytic Philosophy ◽  
Ordinary Language ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Logical Positivism ◽  
Ordinary Language Philosophy ◽  
Analytical Philosophy ◽  
Language Philosophy ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Mind

The article examines the change of theoretical framework in analytic philosophy of mind. It is well known fact that nowadays philosophical problems of mind are frequently seen as incredibly difficult. It is noteworthy that the first programs of analytical philosophy of mind (that is, logical positivism and philosophy of ordinary language) were skeptical about difficulty of that realm of problems. One of the most notable features of both those programs was the strong antimetaphysical stance, those programs considered philosophy of mind unproblematic in its nature. However, the consequent evolution of philosophy of mind shows evaporating of that stance and gradual recovery of the more sympathetic view toward the mind problematic. Thus, there were two main frameworks in analytical philosophy of mind: 1) the framework of logical positivism and ordinary language philosophy dominated in the 1930s and the 1940s; 2) the framework that dominated since the 1950s and was featured by the critique of the first framework. Thus, the history of analytical philosophy of mind moves between two highly opposite understandings of the mind problematic. The article aims to found the causes of that move in the ideas of C. Hempel and G. Ryle, who were the most notable philosophers of mind in the 1930s and the 1940s.

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