[Wittrs] Ray Monk: Top Ten Philosophy Books of the 20th Century
- From: Sean Wilson <whoooo26505@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: "wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 18 May 2011 11:09:47 -0700 (PDT)
... this is so funny. When I saw it, I thought Monk had been unfair not to
recognize Wittgenstein's works as 1 or 2. But I see, at the opening, he defends
the list on other grounds: Wittgenstein occupies nearly everything else! (You
know you are good when your personal and cultural musings end up being one of
the greatest books of the century).
I still say the 1 and 2 slot are not "right." But I at least could understand
one saying that neither of Tractatus and PI would be "number 1" in this sense.
Wittgenstein himself post-1930 (and sooner, I imagine) never considered any of
his works to be "final" or "without flaw" or "perfectly in shape." And so
perhaps a finished work in the mind of the author could be a criterion. Also,
note that Monk says that PI is HIS (Monk's) number-1. So the failure to offer
it a universal-1 shows he has some community-criteria in mind.
FWIW, I think one could make arguments for On Certainty and would have to give
serious thought even to various of Wittgenstein's published
manuscripts\typescripts.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2001/nov/01/bestbooks.philosophy
(I'm going to start forwarding more stuff in here from Ray Monk. He's just
excellent).
Regards and thanks.
Dr. Sean Wilson, Esq.
Assistant Professor
Wright State University
Personal Website: http://seanwilson.org
SSRN papers: http://tinyurl.com/3eatnrx
Wittgenstein Discussion: http://seanwilson.org/wiki/doku.php?id=wittrs ;
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