[C] [Wittrs] Re: When The New Wittgenstein Arrived
- From: Sean Wilson <whoooo26505@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 7 Dec 2009 19:44:43 -0800 (PST)
Stuart:
You are once again wrong about the Rhees' preface. He does nothing close
to what you are attributing to him. I'm going to summarize that here and
then launch a separate mail summarizing the "transition" issue. I don't want
readers to be misled by an ahistoric and factually-suspect critique. I'm also
not going to attend to this mail in great detail because I fear it will only
lead to "issue change" and 6 others that go nowhere. Ultimately, if you want to
grasp this issue yourself, you need to re-read Monk (Chapters 12-14, 16 &
20). I would even take notes and make an outline of the chapters. Only then can
you have any hope of seeing that you are reading things into Rhees that do not
support your thesis.
First, Rhees isn't saying anything that supports the position that the Blue and
Brown Books (B&BBs) represent a Wittgenstein that is intermediate to
the Tractatus and the Investigations. What he says is that there are approaches
in the Investigations that try to more comprehensively announce the new
views. Wittgenstein isn't attempting a comprehensive account of them in the
B&BBs. So, for example, B&BBs do not address the issue of "seeing
as" (venturing in to what Wittgenstein called "philosophy of psychology"). Nor
does the Brown Book (BrB) address the big philosophic questions, because it was
specifically written to EXCLUDE such declarations. It doesn't tell us what
philosophy's mission is in light of the new techniques; it just shows the new
technique. This is entirely consistent with Monk, who describes the work as if
it were attempted as a textbook. That, incidentally, is all the proof you need
to see that Wittgenstein never intended to
offer the BrB for publishing. As I told you before, a close reading of Rhees
doesn't dispute this. Rhees is saying that, because he started working on the
BrB again in 38, that what he was working on THEN might have had an eye toward
publishing. (But this argument would apply to any typescript he worked on, and
is confronted by all sorts of historical declarations to the contrary, which is
why Rhees says it so feebly --"might have," "an eye toward," "once").
Here's the bottom line. Every single theme that Rhees talks about being absent
in the B&BBs is present in the historical record at or before the time period
the books are written. So Wittgenstein is not in a transitory period with the
Tractatus at this time. That is pure nonsense. For example, Monk notes that
Wittgenstein had a clear conception of the correct method of doing philosophy
as early as the autum of 1930. "His lectures for the Michaelmas term began on
an apocalyptic note: 'The nimbus of philosophy has been lost,' he announced."
(298). [It continues on]. So, the fact that Rhees is saying that the BrB leaves
this stuff out does not mean that the BrB is transitory; it means that Stuart
doesn't understand why it is left out. Read Monk. He tells you.
The reason why the BrB is the way it is, is because Wittgenstein only wanted to
create an example of his technique, not a philosophic defense of it. The BrB
should be understood to be the first Wittgensteinian training manual to be
produced by the new thoughts. The Blue Book (BlB), in contrast, is only
deficient in the sense that it represents what he said to STUDENTS about the
new ideas. In this venue, one also would not attempt a comprehensive account.
He's exposing his students to the new ideas. He's not trying for a New
Testament in that forum.
My point, of course, is not that there are not nuances in Wittgenstein's new
thought that developed from 30-39 (the period we are talking about). My point
is that any nuances cannot be classified as being "in transition with the
Tractatus."
Here's where you are fundamentally mistaken. The point that is transitory is
the 1930 work that reflected the work during 1929-30 academic year (and the
summer before, I believe). That's the one he had to get Russell to vouch for.
That's Philosophic Remarks. It was completed in April of 1930. It's
"transitory" because it adopts several "strange" views: it is especially
Kantian, and it is, according to Monk, his most strident verificationist work
(at least, seemingly). He backed off and completely overhauled this segment of
thought, which we first see in Philosophic Grammar (1932), representing his
thoughts from late 1930 to 1932. The point where Wittgenstein's mind goes into
the "new way" is in late 1930, Monk says, not long after he had just written
Philosophic Remarks. He made comments to Drury to that effect (see Monk, 297).
(See point above about his Fall lectures that year)
(You will also note that the updated version of the Tractatus that was planned
to be written with Waisman's help was officially junked by Wittgenstein in late
1931. See Monk at 320).
Regards.
Dr. Sean Wilson, Esq.
Assistant Professor
Wright State University
Personal Website: http://seanwilson.org
SSRN papers: http://ssrn.com/author=596860
Discussion Group: http://seanwilson.org/wittgenstein.discussion.html
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