Wittgenstein's
Ladder : Poetic Language and the Strangeness of the Ordinary
by Marjorie Perloff
A poetry
critic explores the connections between the philosophy of Ludwig
Wittgenstein, a philosophy based on the significance of ordinary
language, and modern poetry, particularly the work of Gertrude
Stein and Samuel Beckett.
Marjorie Perloff,
among our foremost critics of twentieth-century poetry, argues
that Ludwig Wittgenstein provided writers with a radical new
aesthetic, a key to recognizing the inescapable strangeness of
ordinary language. Taking seriously Wittgenstein's remark that
"philosophy ought really to be written only as a form of
poetry," Perloff begins by discussing Wittgenstein the
"poet." What we learn is that the poetics of everyday
life is anything but banal.
Leading
a Human Life : Wittgenstein, Intentionality, and Romanticism by
Richard Thomas Eldridge
In this provocative new study, Richard Eldridge
presents a highly original and compelling account of
Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations, one of the
most enduring yet enigmatic works of the twentieth century. He
does so by reading the text as a dramatization of what is perhaps
life's central motivating struggle--the inescapable human need to
pursue an ideal of expressive freedom within the difficult terms
set by culture.
Eldridge sees Wittgenstein as a Romantic
protagonist, engaged in an ongoing internal dialogue over the
nature of intentional consciousness, ranging over ethics,
aesthetics, and philosophy of mind. The picture of the human mind
that emerges through this dialogue unsettles behaviorism,
cognitivism, and all other scientifically oriented orthodoxies.
Leading a human life becomes a creative act, akin to writing a
poem, of continuously seeking to overcome both complacency and
skepticism. Eldridge's careful reconstruction of the central
motive of Wittgenstein's work will influence all subsequent
scholarship on it.
Clear
and Queer Thinking : Wittgenstein's Development and His Relevance
to Modern Thought by Laurence Goldstein
Wittgenstein is generally regarded as a
difficult philosopher. People reading him sometimes see the glint
of a precious stone and are aware that there are diamonds to be
found if only they knew how to look. His prose can seem obscure,
yet Wittgenstein himself enjoins us to stay silent where we cannot
speak clearly, and he criticizes other philosophers for finding
queer what would seem wholly unmysterious if only they
would curb their compulsion to be misled. A main source of failure
to understand, in Wittgenstein s view, is that we do not
command a clear view of the use of our words.
Laurence Goldstein gives a straightforward and lively account of
some of the central themes of Wittgenstein s writings on
meaning, mind, and mathematics. He does this both by drawing on
Wittgenstein s work to show how his thinking developed over
time and by helping the reader gain some impression of what a
strange character Wittgenstein was for how he was is
intimately related to how and what he wrote.
Clear and Queer Thinking also brings Wittgenstein s
ideas to bear on a wide range of topics in linguistics, cognitive
science, psychology, and neuroscience and will therefore be of
interest not only to philosophers but also to linguists,
psychologists, and those working in the brain sciences.
