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Philosophical Grammar
In 1933 Ludwig Wittgenstein revised a manuscript he had compiled from his 1930-1932 notebooks, but the work as a whole was not published until 1969, as Philosophische Grammatik. This first English translation clearly reveals the central place Philosophical Grammar occupies in Wittgenstein's thought and provides a link from his earlier philosophy to his later views.
495 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1973
About the author
Ludwig Wittgenstein
232 books2,586 followersLudwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein (Ph.D., Trinity College, Cambridge University, 1929) was an Austrian-British philosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language.
Described by Bertrand Russell as "the most perfect example I have ever known of genius as traditionally conceived, passionate, profound, intense, and dominating", he helped inspire two of the twentieth century's principal philosophical movements: the Vienna Circle and Oxford ordinary language philosophy. According to an end of the century poll, professional philosophers in Canada and the U.S. rank both his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and Philosophical Investigations among the top five most important books in twentieth-century philosophy, the latter standing out as "...the one crossover masterpiece in twentieth-century philosophy, appealing across diverse specializations and philosophical orientations". Wittgenstein's influence has been felt in nearly every field of the humanities and social sciences, yet there are widely diverging interpretations of his thought.
Described by Bertrand Russell as "the most perfect example I have ever known of genius as traditionally conceived, passionate, profound, intense, and dominating", he helped inspire two of the twentieth century's principal philosophical movements: the Vienna Circle and Oxford ordinary language philosophy. According to an end of the century poll, professional philosophers in Canada and the U.S. rank both his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and Philosophical Investigations among the top five most important books in twentieth-century philosophy, the latter standing out as "...the one crossover masterpiece in twentieth-century philosophy, appealing across diverse specializations and philosophical orientations". Wittgenstein's influence has been felt in nearly every field of the humanities and social sciences, yet there are widely diverging interpretations of his thought.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
June 23, 2017
Beyond pivotal in a nunber of ways, not the least of which being that I would have still not known this book even existed, had I not sneezed so violently my glasses fell clean off.
July 28, 2023
While this does share a lot of similarities, and quite a few sections, with Ludwig Wittgenstein's Philosophical Remarks,
Philosophical Grammar
is a much easier bookk to follow and much more concise in its argument. At least I think so, because I'm not too sure I fully understand what I've just read.
Like the modern Diogenes of Sinope that Wittgenstein often was, Philosophical Grammar is a kynical break with the philosophical tradition that has lead up to it. It's Wittgenstein developing on the ideas of a positivistic linguistic to to the logical end-point, where it's no longer about a precision of words and meaning, but how those signs are coupled together to form meaning, considering meaning to be more so a product how the signs are constructed rather than how the individual signs themselves are constructed.
In my reading of Wittgenstein, this is probably the closest he's been to having a truly profound point, rather than just being stuck in a weirdly solipsistic logical positivism. Don't get me wrong, there's still plenty of that. For example, Wittgenstein seem almost incapable of conceiving grammar as having a meaning that's unrelated to the individual signs that make up the grammar, just like calculus can't give a result that can't be reduced to he individual parts of the equation.
And while I understand this reasoning, and in a certain way respect Wittgenstein's project, I can't see how that's conducive to human understanding or human languages. What Wittgenstein is doing is ramming logic into the human experience until either one breaks. And unfortunately for Wittgenstein, it seems like the logic is what's going to give.
This becomes rather apparent in the appendix texts in this compilation, as those mainly deal with Wittgensteins takes on mathematics and the philosophy of mathematics.
The majority of these texts reads like someone who's reached the bottom of numbers and found nothing there. No matter how advanced or esoteric math has gotten, it's all predicated on assumptions that are only true in so far as they adhere to the internal logic build into mathematics themselves.
Also, one bit where I was truly taken aback by Wittgenstein's insight was in a short passage in the beginning of Philosophical Grammar, where Wittgenstein constructs and argument as to why language (and by extensions, grammar) is the primary object of his investigation. In that argument, which takes up less than a page, Wittgenstein makes one of the most brillant arguments for a psychological phenomenology that I've read anywhere.
Like the modern Diogenes of Sinope that Wittgenstein often was, Philosophical Grammar is a kynical break with the philosophical tradition that has lead up to it. It's Wittgenstein developing on the ideas of a positivistic linguistic to to the logical end-point, where it's no longer about a precision of words and meaning, but how those signs are coupled together to form meaning, considering meaning to be more so a product how the signs are constructed rather than how the individual signs themselves are constructed.
In my reading of Wittgenstein, this is probably the closest he's been to having a truly profound point, rather than just being stuck in a weirdly solipsistic logical positivism. Don't get me wrong, there's still plenty of that. For example, Wittgenstein seem almost incapable of conceiving grammar as having a meaning that's unrelated to the individual signs that make up the grammar, just like calculus can't give a result that can't be reduced to he individual parts of the equation.
And while I understand this reasoning, and in a certain way respect Wittgenstein's project, I can't see how that's conducive to human understanding or human languages. What Wittgenstein is doing is ramming logic into the human experience until either one breaks. And unfortunately for Wittgenstein, it seems like the logic is what's going to give.
This becomes rather apparent in the appendix texts in this compilation, as those mainly deal with Wittgensteins takes on mathematics and the philosophy of mathematics.
The majority of these texts reads like someone who's reached the bottom of numbers and found nothing there. No matter how advanced or esoteric math has gotten, it's all predicated on assumptions that are only true in so far as they adhere to the internal logic build into mathematics themselves.
Also, one bit where I was truly taken aback by Wittgenstein's insight was in a short passage in the beginning of Philosophical Grammar, where Wittgenstein constructs and argument as to why language (and by extensions, grammar) is the primary object of his investigation. In that argument, which takes up less than a page, Wittgenstein makes one of the most brillant arguments for a psychological phenomenology that I've read anywhere.
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May 8, 2024Gros livre de Wittgenstein difficile à comprendre (juste compris surtout des paragraphes de la première partie) où il présente avec des remarques éparses sa théorie des jeux de langage qui dit en gros que le sens et la vérité d'une proposition dépend du système "global" où elle se trouve. La phrase la plus claire du livre est quelque chose du genre "Une raison ou une cause ne se laisse donner qu'à l'intérieur d'un jeu.". Il y a d'abord une grosse partie sur les propositions en général puis une seconde sur les mathématiques (surtout arithmétique, géométrie, algèbre).
November 28, 2013
I read this while working as a teaching assistant at Loyola University Chicago for Dr. William Ellos, S.J., whose dissertation (from the Pontifical Institute in Rome) about Wittgenstein I was editing.
July 5, 2019
گرامر را در زندگی با زبان یاد میگیریم. پس نمی توان مثلا پرسید لحظه ی اول زبان را چگونه اموختیم. لحظه اول نداریم. زبان آغاز ندارد. آنچه هست در زبان هستن است.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews