Wittgenstein and Philosophical Research - Author's Introduction

Wittgenstein and Philosophical Research - Author's Introduction Ludwig Wittgenstein was born in Vienna on 26/4/1889, and died on 29/4/1951 in Cambridge. He has now proved to be one of the most outstanding philosophers of the twentieth century; he has shown the strength and originality of his ideas about a unique philosophical mind, and he likes to be called a genius by many, and the exceptionally attractive nature of his person and thought is evident in his memoirs written by his students and those who know him, as well as the additional prints that have been inspired by his works. All the memoirs emphasize that the man had exceptional mental insight, unfailing honor, and that he had high practical skills, and that he was an interesting and loyal friend, if demands increased, but philosophical reactions to his books, on the contrary, varied and revealed wide differences in the interpretation and evaluation of his books. Born into a wealthy industrial family with wide cultural interests, Wittgenstein first came to England in 1908 as a research student in the engineering department. During his work on the design of the jet propeller he became more and more interested in the mathematical problems that appeared to him, and in 1911 he moved to Cambridge to study the philosophy of mathematics with the philosopher Bertrand Russell. By the next world, Russell was convinced that Wittgenstein was so brilliant that he encouraged him to abandon aeronautics and devote himself to the study of philosophy. His first paper, presented to the Moral Science Club at Cambridge University in 1912, was "What is Philosophy?" and from the beginning showed Wittgenstein's understanding of the importance of understanding the nature of philosophical problems and thinking about appropriate methods for dealing with them. Wittgenstein continued to work on logic and the foundations of mathematics until World War I, and he did most of this work in Norway, where he fled after seeing that the most intellectual discussions taking place in Cambridge were only intelligent but superficial, and during this time he was able to make most of the discoveries related to logic and language, which formed his first book (Philosophical Logic 1992), the only major work published in his life. His second major work (Philosophical Research) was still in preparation for publication from 1937 45, but it was not published until after Wittgenstein's death in 1953. Each of these two books has its own unique style, and you are shocked by the difference between their styles at first glance. Although the main subject of the two books is language, his first work is very abstract, theoretical, controlled and dogmatic, and his second work is somewhat perceptible, descriptive and scattered, and his hidden philosophical goal appears only with difficulty, and although the two books of the same author have changed profoundly, his understanding of philosophy has changed. World War I prevented Wittgenstein from completing his work in Norway, and when he returned to Vienna he volunteered for the Austrian army, and although he was on field duty in Galatia and Italy, he continued his work on ideas of logic and language. After the end of the World War, and the completion of his great philosophical book, Wittgenstein became spiritually and psychologically exhausted, and felt that his work in philosophy was over. After much trouble, he gave up the wealth he had inherited from his father and began training as a teacher at a school. Although Gtgenstein believed he was finished with philosophy, he was keen to see the fruits of his intensive seven-year intellectual work published in a book, but the strange form, brevity, and ambiguity of the philosophical thesis meant that publishers would be reluctant to take the financial risk of publishing this book; even his greatest admirer, Bertrand Russell and Gottlob Frege, would have found it difficult to understand. Wittgenstein completed his training as a primary teacher in 1920, went to work at an elementary school in Lower Austria, and remained as a teacher until 1926. Wittgenstein had been trained in the methods of the Austrian school reform movement, which rejects traditional indoctrination and focuses on developing the child's curiosity and encouraging him to think freely, and the use of practical exercises that enable him to make his own discoveries, and this training was met with enthusiasm and innovation in the application of these principles, and provided what led to an apparent success, but the background and culture of Wittgenstein and his temperamental nature made farmers in deep doubt of his students. He eventually felt deeply alienated and a sense of failure on his part, and by 1926 abandoned teaching forever, returning to Vienna, where he first worked as a gardener, and later as an architect on one of the houses designed by Paul Engelman for Wittgenstein's sister (Mrs. Margaret Stoneburg). Although Wittgenstein did not present a new philosophical work during this period, he continued his contact with philosophers to discuss the ideas of his logical philosophical message with them, the Cambridge philosopher Frank Ramsay had conducted a detailed study of the letter, and travelled to Austria several times to work on the letter with Wittgenstein. He was represented by a professor of philosophy at the University of Vienna and a member of the Vienna episode "Moritz Schlick", who was greatly impressed by the letter of "Gtgenstein", and in 1927 convinced Schlick "Gtgenstein" to hold regular meetings with him and the rest of the members of the Vienna episode, such as "Friedrich Weizmann", "Rudolph Carnap" and "Hert Fegel", and these meetings were never successful, and it gradually became clear that the members of Vienna had read the letter to formulate a version of their philosophy of the situation. In fact, Wittgenstein did not participate with the members, neither in their attitude toward metaphysics and their limitation to science, nor in their view of philosophy and ethics, and Wittgenstein’s own method of philosophizing, which he saw as closer to the creative artist than to the world, showed that the possibilities of collaborating with him were limited. The fruitful debates were about logic and the foundations of mathematics, which signaled a complete return of Wittgenstein to philosophizing and the first changes and developments in his views, which he wrote down in his Philosophical Logical Letter. In 1929, Frank Ramsay convinced Wittgenstein that he should return to Cambridge and work together to develop some ideas concerning the foundations of mathematics, which were not included in the logical thesis. “This is because I have had to admit that there have been serious errors in what I wrote in that first book, and this has happened since I returned to philosophy sixteen years ago, and it has helped me to discern these errors to the extent that I cannot myself appreciate them that criticism of my ideas by Frank Ramsay, which I have discussed throughout his last two years.” These errors, which Wittgenstein believed to exist, lie not only in the details of his theories of logic and language, but also in the way of thinking expressed by the letter as a whole, although there is an undoubted continuity between his early and late work, namely the belief that "most of the assumptions and questions of philosophers arise because of their failure to understand the logic of our language." If the message is trying to put an end to thought through an abstract theorizing that draws clear, controlled boundaries that can be said, then the late Wittgenstein has been more and more interested in working out the details of the phenomenon of language in its everyday use; where concrete attitudes, complexity, and diversity, rather than trying to solve the confusion about the logic of our language – which is at the root of Wittgenstein’s philosophical problems – he developed a number of After receiving his Ph.D. in a logical-philosophical dissertation, he was appointed a lecturer at the university, and here he began a series of lectures that he used to develop his new ideas, which formed much of his now published work. Norman Malcolm, the first presenter of Wittgenstein's 1939 lectures, described what happened in these lectures as follows: Wittgenstein gave his lectures without preparation and without drafts, and he told me that the time he tried to give a lecture of his drafts disgusted with its outcome, and that the ideas he put forward were "rotten", or, as he put it to another friend, the words seemed dead when I began to read them. The method he used as the only preparation for his lectures was, as he told me, to stay for a few minutes before the seminar to recall the investigation we took in previous meetings, at the beginning of the lecture he provides a brief summary of this investigation, and then he starts here trying to present this investigation with new ideas. He told me that what made his improvisational method possible was continuous thinking and writing about all the problems in question, which is undoubtedly true, but what was presented in these lectures was largely new research. During the years following his appointment to Cambridge in 1939, Wittgenstein lectured on language, logic, the foundations of mathematics, and psychology, some of which is now published as Wittgenstein's own and his students' drafts. During this period Wittgenstein continuously wrote his ideas in manuscripts as a daily journal of his intellectual development, the most now published, and his students were also dictated by three collections of notes, published with the titles: "The Yellow Book 1933-1934", "The Blue Book 1933-1934", and "The Prophet's Book 1934-1935". Wittgenstein himself used all of this material in preparing a number of his printed papers, including his book Philosophical Research 1937-1945, and the Snippets 1945-1948. Wittgenstein retired in 1947 from his Cambridge chair, and went to live in an isolated cottage on the Galway coast, in western Ireland, where he continued his philosophical work. His ideas of these latter years did not lose their strength or originality; he produced important new work in the philosophy of psychology, knowledge, doubt and color, and although he was not able to work at times; he continued his intellectual production until the few days before his death. His pupil, George Henrik von Wright, wrote of his influence: He believed that his influence as a teacher would harm the development of free minds in his followers, and I fear that his belief is correct, and I understand in part why it is so, because of the depth and originality of his thought. Learning from “Getgenstein” without imitating his expressions and slogans, and even without imitating his tone, features, and gestures, is almost impossible. Teaching great men is simple and often spontaneous; they seem difficult and easy, but their students, second-graders, usually become insignificant. The historical significance of such great men is not revealed by their students themselves, but by subtle, indirect, and often unexpected influences. This assessment of the problematic influence of Gtgenstein is somewhat correct. Philosophers have clearly developed their own ideas along the lines drawn by Gtgenstein; such as Elizabeth Anscombe, von Wright, Peter Winch, Anthony Kenney, and John McDowell. This, apparently, echoes the sentiments of Wittgenstein himself; he says: Am I the only one who has not founded a school? or can a philosopher never do this? I have not done so because I do not really want to be imitated in any way by those who write articles published in philosophical journals [CV, p. 61]. Even in the philosophy of mind, which is perhaps the most influential area of his influence, there is a sense that something is lost when we transfer his ideas from their original soil. While Gtgenstein's writings were the source of many philosophical insights known to any student of philosophy, it was not only his ideas that were convincing, but also his unique intellectual style that appeared in his writings. In my next reading of a book of philosophical research I did not attempt to imitate this intellectual method, but only to convey, as far as possible, his characteristic method of diagnosing and confronting what Wittgenstein saw as philosophical misconceptions, and in this way to follow his line of thought I have tried to convey the characteristic harmony of his ideas in a distinctive and faithful manner. I don't think that Wittgenstein singles out philosophical lessons in his book; the idea that language can only be understood by looking at its actual use, the internal world's self-rejection of phenomena, the assertion that the human body constructs the human psyche, the substitution of the division of matter and mind by the division of the living and the non-living, and the assertion of some form of referral to a pre-cognitive relationship with society, is rooted in the immediate responses of the person to society. But what Wittgenstein understood was that these visions should not be based on a positive reporting philosophy, and therefore their treatment is all based on convincing us of the truth of these visions, and this is the face of their uniqueness and the extent to which they constitute a genuine philosophical contribution. This is the distinct treatment of the problems presented by Wittgenstein – not lessons to be learned – which I tried to uncover during my review of the text. [1] Malcolm, N., Ludwig Wittgenstein: A Memoir With a BiographicalSketch by George Henrik von Wright (Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press [1958], 1984).p. 23–24 [2] Malcolm, N., Ludwig Wittgenstein: A Memoir With a BiographicalSketch by George Henrik von Wright (Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press [1958], 1984).p. 17 - Mary Magin. — Source: Brahin Center website - Posted on 2016-10-29 (archived at the Internet Archive) https://braheen.com/publications/intros/فتجنشتاين-والبحوث-الفلسفية-مقدمة-المؤلفة