Wittgenstein

I thought I was alone among those philosophically inclined in not holding Wittgenstein in highest esteem. I'm delighted to find that Ayer (one of the original Vienna Circle members and a progenitor of the logical positivist movement) isn't entirely enthralled with LW either, and for many of the same reasons. Besides being cryptic and disorganized, Wittgenstein is often opaque, ambivalent, and subject to much confusion and misinterpretation. Ayer in this short work uses the principle of charity in always giving LW the benefit of doubt. When polysemy occurs, which it often does with Wittgenstein, Ayer always chooses the most favorable interpretation. Even given this advantage, it is often the case that LW's arguments, even when understood in the most favorable light, are just simply counter intuitive, or they're illogical. or they make a categorical mistake (to borrow a phrase from Gilbert Ryle). That's not to say that Ayer is not a little cryptic himself (his writing skills are notoriously poor). Many of his propositions have to be reread in order to understand the context and meaning of his propositions. But this complaint aside, Ayer takes on LW on a number of fronts: Often it's just a matter of the examples LW uses; otherwise it is a frontal attack on private language, the way language works, how the mind functions, the problem with following a rule, the picture theory of language, etc. Ayer's discourse is civil, recognizing that Wittgenstein, despite all his faults, is enormously important for understanding the linguistic turn that all the humanities took in the 20th century. But the complexity of LW's arguments, which David Stern claims repeatedly are reductio ad absurdum, still go against our basic intuitions. It does, after all, make sense to talk about a private language in several senses (although I confess LW is using it in a special sense). Solipsism, moreover, is not a serious problem, unless one takes LW seriously, which is often hard to do. And the problem of the skeptic was handled well by Hume and doesn't need reinvention in order to succeed again. Ayer takes Wittengenstein's thought as it evolves: From the "Tractatus" to "Philosophical Investigations," including the Blue and Brown Books, "Philosophical Grammar" "Zettel," and "Philosophical Remarks" in between. I found Ayer's criticisms, which are now more from a pragmatic point of view than his former logico-positivist perspective, clearly on target. No serious student of LW ought to neglect Ayer's important insights. We may all conclude that Wittgenstein, for all his faults, was still instrumental in starting the language game that consumed much of the last century. Yet, his near deification is itself "out of context."

For the philosopher or the fan of philosophical gossip, A. J. Ayer (of logical positivism fame) offers a biography of the eccentric philosophical genius Ludwig Wittgenstein. The author begins with a chapter providing a complete biographical sketch of Wittgenstein, and does not spare us any of his eccentricities. The author traces the life of this individual from his early interest in aeronautics and mathematics to his study at Cambridge under Bertrand Russell to the development of his own thought. Ayer explains how Wittgenstein believed himself to have addressed all philosophical questions in his Tractatus (and mentions the debt W. owes to Schopenhauer, and thereby Kant), and then the period in which W. left philosophy and became a gardener, nearly a monk, and a school teacher. Ayer then deals with the later Wittgenstein, his thoughts on psychology, the foundations of mathematics, language games, and religion. Ayer concludes that Wittgenstein is to be ranked only behind Russell as the greatest philosopher of the twentieth century.Overall this book provides much of interest in the philosophical thought of Wittgenstein, and also gives many anecdotes of his nearly manic disposition and uncanny character. An important biography of a truly great philosopher.