[lit-ideas] Re: The Life and Death of Wittgenstein
- From: Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 16 May 2009 14:16:33 +0000 (GMT)
--- On Fri, 15/5/09, Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx <Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx> wrote:
> "Wittgenstein writes that death is not an event of
> life"
>
> Surely he cannot write that, since he is dead.
> "wrote" is the correct English.
>
> "Wittgenstein" became, as an Aristotelian hylemorphic
> unity, vacuous on 29
> April 1951 (as it was vacuous before 26 April 1889).
As a glance at the Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society would show, British
philosophers often deploy the convention of speaking of long past philosophers
as if they were still living - hence "Plato says...", "Kant says".
Surely this convention can be deployed harmlessly enough and might be defended
as giving the impression that all philosophers, past and present, may be
treated as participants in the same on-going conversation.
So, again, the "grammatical" objection to this strikes me as wrong-headed.
Donal
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