[C] [Wittrs] Re: interesting book
- From: "J" <jpdemouy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 04 Dec 2009 03:23:45 -0000
S. Wilson asked
> ... could you elaborate, if you know, on what might be the difference in the
> benefits one would obtain from the Barry Smith book, versus, say,
> "Wittgenstein's Vienna" in terms of putting Wittgenstein's thoughts into
> cultural context? Or I am completely off base here with such a comparison?
>
> Yours wanting a little more info, if possible,
That's an excellent question and an apt choice of comparison.
Both works could be described as "intellectual history", but Janik and
Toulmin's would also be well described as "cultural history" while Smith's
would be better described as belonging to the "history of ideas" and "history
of philosophy".
Also, while the focus of _Wittgenstein's_Vienna_ is on a wide range of issues
over a narrow period, from Fin-de-Siecle to the First World War, Smith's book
is concerned with a narrower set of issues but with coverage from the mid-19th
century up to the Anschluss.
Finally, Smith's book deals with "Austria" in a sense that includes, e.g.
Polish philosophy, i.e. with the territory included in the Hapsburg's Empire,
while Janik and Toulmin are very much focused, as befits the title, on Vienna.
On the first point about classification: Janik and Toulmin are concerned with
the wider culture of Vienna, with art, music, social mores, and so on. This is
what I mean by "cultural history". The focus of Smith's work is much narrower,
with issues that overlap to a large extent between philosophy of science,
philosophy of mathematics, and psychology, and specifically with the influence
that Franz Brentano had in each of these fields through students like Freud,
Ehrenfels, Husserl, Twardowski, Steiner, and Masaryk.
Just that point, that one man taught the founder of Psycho-Analysis, the
founder of Gestalt psychology, the founder of Phenomenology, and the founder of
the Lvov-Warsaw School of logic (which gave us Tarski, among others), the
founder of Anthroposophy, and the founder of Czechoslovakia is remarkable
enough (more remarkable when one discovers he never received a professorship!)
but they are also illustrative of wider tendencies in Austrian thought, going
back further to Bolzano, and they show a distinct contrast with the post- and
neo-Kantian philosophy prevalent in Germany.
Focusing specifically on the connection with Wittgenstein, the purpose served
by Janik and Toulmin's work was to emphasize the ethical, religious, and
spiritual concerns so long neglected in readings of the Tractatus. But where
Smith sheds light is on more technical matters, e.g. the a priori, modality,
the relationship between logic and psychology, the analysis of intention and
intentionality, and the role of perception in knowledge, and on aspects of
Wittgenstein's middle, transitional period (_Philosophical_Remarks_ in
particular, but also _Remarks_on_Logical_Form_) as well as concerns of the
post-Investigations Wittgenstein, i.e. Part II of the PI,
_Remarks_on_the_Philosophy_of_Psychology_,
_Last_Writings_on_the_Philosophy_of_Psychology_, _Remarks_on_Colour_, and
_On_Certainty_.
I hope this helps.
JPDeMouy
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