Download or read book Wittgenstein s Vienna Revisited written by Allan Janik and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-04-17 with total page 438 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fin de siecle Vienna was once memorably described by Karl Kraus as a "proving ground for the destruction of the world." In the decades leading to the World War that brought down the Austro-Hungarian empire, the city was at once an operetta dream world masking social and political problems and tension, as well as a center for the far-reaching explorations and innovations in music, art, science, and philosophy that would help to define modernity. One of the most powerful critiques of the retreat into fantasy was that of the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, whose early career in Vienna has helped frame debates about ethical and aesthetic values in culture. In Wittgenstein's Vienna Revisited Allan Janik expands upon his work Wittgenstein's Vienna (co-authored with Stephen Toulmin) to amplify a number of significant points concerning the genesis of Wittgenstein's thought, the nature of Viennese culture, and criticism of contemporary culture. Although Wittgenstein is the central figure in this volume, Janik places considerable emphasis on other influential figures, both Viennese and non-Viennese, in order to break down some of the persistent stereotypes about the philosopher and his surrounding culture, especially the myths of "carefree" Vienna and Wittgenstein the positivist. The persistence of these myths, in Janik's view, stems in part from the inability of many historians to differentiate past from present in the evaluation of intellectual currents. Janik reviews a number of figures overlooked in assessing Wittgenstein: Otto Weininger, Kraus, Schoenberg, Nietzsche, Wagner, Ibsen, Offenbach, and Georg Trakl. All of these, Janik demonstrates, are absolutely necessary to understand what was at stake in the debates on aestheticism and the critique of a modern culture. Wittgenstein's efforts to recognize the limits of thought and language and thus to be fair to science, religion, and art account for his place of honor among critical modernists. These essays elucidate Wittgenstein's perspective on our culture.
Download or read book Wittgenstein s Vienna written by Allan Janik and published by Ivan R. Dee Publisher. This book was released on 1996 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a remarkable book about a man (perhaps the most important and original philosopher of our age), a society (the corrupt Austro-Hungarian Empire on the eve of dissolution), and a city (Vienna, with its fin-de si cle gaiety and corrosive melancholy). The central figure in this study of a crumbling society that gave birth to the modern world is Wittgenstein, the brilliant and gifted young thinker. With others, including Freud, Viktor Adler, and Arnold Schoenberg, he forged his ideas in a classical revolt against the stuffy, doomed, and moralistic lives of the old regime. As a portrait of Wittgenstein, the book is superbly realized; it is even better as a portrait of the age, with dazzling and unusual parallels to our own confused society. "Allan Janik and Stephen Toulmin have acted on a striking premise: an understanding of prewar Vienna, Wittgenstein's native city, will make it easier to comprehend both his work and our own problems....This is an independent work containing much that is challenging, new, and useful."--New York Times Book Review.
Download or read book Wittgenstein s Vienna Allan Janik and Stephen Toulmin 1 publ written by Allan S. Janik and published by . This book was released on 1973 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Rethinking Vienna 1900 written by Steven Beller and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2001 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fin-de-siècle Vienna remains a central event in the birth of the century's modern culture. Our understanding of what happened in those key decades in Central Europe at the turn of the century has been shaped in the last years by an historiography presided over by Carl Schorske's Fin de Siècle Vienna and the model of the relationship between politics and culture which emerged from his work and that of his followers. Recent scholarship, however, has begun to question the main paradigm of this school, i.e. the "failure of liberalism." This volume reflects not only a whole range of the critiques but also offers alternative ways of understanding the subject, most notably though the concept of "critical modernism" and the integration of previously neglected aspects such as the role of marginality, of the market and the larger Central and European context. As a result this volume offers novel ideas on a subject that is of unending fascination and never fails to captivate the Western imagination.
Download or read book Wittgenstein as Philosophical Tone Poet written by Béla Szabados and published by Rodopi. This book was released on 2014-06-10 with total page 221 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides the first in-depth exploration of the importance of music for Ludwig Wittgenstein’s life and work. Wittgenstein’s remarks on music are essential for understanding his philosophy: they are on the nature of musical understanding, the relation of music to language, the concepts of representation and expression, on melody, irony and aspect-perception, and, on the great composers belonging to the Austrian-German tradition. Biography and philosophy, this work suggests that Wittgenstein was a composer of philosophy who used the musical form as a blueprint for his own writing and thought. For Wittgenstein music is not alone, but connects and resonates with our cultural forms of life. His relation to composers, especially to Richard Wagner and Gustav Mahler, enables Wittgenstein to address the question of how to do philosophy and compose music in the breakdown of tradition. Unlike his conservative musical sensibility, Wittgenstein’s philosophy is open to musical experiments. Reflecting on his remarks on music makes it possible to compare the therapeutic aim of his philosophical activity with that of music, and thus notice affinities between Wittgenstein and John Cage. Béla Szabados has a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Calgary and is professor of philosophy at the University of Regina. His publications include Wittgenstein Reads Weininger (2004), Wittgenstein at the Movies (2011) and Wittgenstein on Race, Gender, and Cultural Identity: Philosophy as a Personal Endeavour (2010).
Download or read book Mysticism and Architecture written by Roger Paden and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2007 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mysticism and Architecture: Wittgenstein and the Palais Stonborough is a multi-disciplinary study of the Viennese palais that the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein helped design and build for his sister shortly after he abandoned philosophy for more practical activities and during the period that supposedly separates his 'early' from his 'late' philosophy. Weaving together discussions of a number of social, political, and cultural developments that helped to give fin-de-si_cle Vienna its character -- including the late modernization of Austrian society, industry, and economy; the construction of Vienna's Ringstrasse; the slow decay of the Hapsburg monarchy; and the failure of Austrian liberalism; as well as Tolstoy's religiously-based ethical views; Adolf Loos's critique of architectural ornament; Karl Kraus's analysis of Vienna's decadence; Kierkegaard's and Nestroy's views on the importance of indirect communication; Otto Weininger's theory of the nature and duty of genius; Camillo Sitte and Otto Wagner's dispute over good urban form; Schopenhauer's aesthetic theories and his 'Eastern' philosophy of life; and Russell and Frege's philosophical and logical theories -- the book presents a philosophical biography of Wittgenstein reminiscent of, but substantially different from, Janik and Toulmin's Wittgenstein's Vienna. This philosophical biography underpins a new interpretation of the house which argues that the house belongs to neither architectural Modernism, nor Postmodernism, but is instead caught between those two movements. This analysis of the house, in turn, grounds a new interpretation of Wittgenstein's philosophical works that emphasizes their mystical nature and practical purpose. Finally, this interpretation shows the unity of these works while simultaneously suggesting an underlying flaw; namely, that they arise from two fundamentally-opposed worldviews present in Vienna during Wittgenstein's youth, 'aesthetic modernism' and 'critical modernism.'
Download or read book Exact Thinking in Demented Times written by Karl Sigmund and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2017-12-05 with total page 491 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A dazzling group biography of the early twentieth-century thinkers who transformed the way the world thought about math and science Inspired by Albert Einstein's theory of relativity and Bertrand Russell and David Hilbert's pursuit of the fundamental rules of mathematics, some of the most brilliant minds of the generation came together in post-World War I Vienna to present the latest theories in mathematics, science, and philosophy and to build a strong foundation for scientific investigation. Composed of such luminaries as Kurt Gö and Rudolf Carnap, and stimulated by the works of Ludwig Wittgenstein and Karl Popper, the Vienna Circle left an indelible mark on science. Exact Thinking in Demented Times tells the often outrageous, sometimes tragic, and never boring stories of the men who transformed scientific thought. A revealing work of history, this landmark book pays tribute to those who dared to reinvent knowledge from the ground up.
Download or read book On the Trail to Wittgenstein s Hut written by Ivar Oxaal and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-09-08 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and the roots of his monumental Tractatus are explored in this imaginative work. Oxaal picks up on themes developed in an earlier work of his on Jews, Anti-Semitism and Culture in Vienna, adding to it special issues concerning Wittgenstein's experiences in Norway in 1913-14, where he worked on ideas that were completed during the war. Oxaal situates the great philosopher in time, place, and attitude, showing how his personal background came to bear on the writing of the Tractatus. Wittengenstein has often been criticized for traces of solipsism and even mysticism, and Oxaal also examines these issues in a volume that integrates ethnography, nationality, and cultural studies. Oxaal sheds new light on the theme of Wittgenstein's Jewishness, and develops a new appreciation of the Wittgenstein family and Wittgenstein's better-known years in Vienna. The author is unsparing in his observations about racism and pessimism in Berlin and Great Britian during the period in which Wittgenstein worked and studied at Cambridge. The writing of the Tractatus spanned the First World War. In the period immediately after its completion, Wittgenstein found himself in The Hague where he was in discussions and disputes with Bertrand Russell. Oxaal covers these problems sensitively and with an appreciation of ambiguities in the life of a great philosopher and the confusions caused by a post-war change in fortunes--personal and familial. This work of an eminent social scientist and historian may not be the final statement on Wittgenstein, but it most certainly must be considered in any serious assessments of an iconic figure of the twentieth century.
Download or read book Hitler s Favorite Jew written by Allan Janik and published by Simply Charly. This book was released on 2021-12-10 with total page 169 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Otto Weininger (1880-1903) is the most controversial figure to emerge from fin de siècle Vienna. The son of a Jewish goldsmith, he studied philosophy and psychology at the University of Vienna and spoke six languages by the time he was 21. After receiving his Ph.D. in 1902, he converted to Christianity and, in 1903, he published his book Sex and Character—a groundbreaking and highly provocative study that would come to influence Adolf Hitler, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and James Joyce, among others. As troubled as he was brilliant, Weininger took his own life on October 3, 1903, leaving behind a small number of works, an array of challenging ideas, and many unanswered questions. In Hitler’s Favorite Jew, Professor Allan Janik draws upon a half-century of research to explore the life and legacy of Otto Weininger, and to illuminate his outsized impact on some of the greatest thinkers and the greatest monster of the twentieth century. Janik explains how Weininger came to write his bizarre book featuring outrageous claims about women and Jews, and argues that, contrary to the received wisdom, Weininger’s true goal was progressive and humanistic. With its deep insights into both Weininger the man and Viennese intellectual life at the turn of the century, Hitler’s Favorite Jew offers a rich and multifaceted portrait that challenges our ideas about sexuality, the nature of anti-Semitism, and the puzzle of human identity.
Download or read book Ludwig Wittgenstein between Analytic Philosophy and Apophaticism written by Sotiris Mitralexis and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2015-10-13 with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume initiates an inquiry into the relationship between Ludwig Wittgenstein’s “analytic stance” towards philosophy and the inherently apophatic nature of his epistemology, a subject that has been repeatedly hinted at, but hitherto never thoroughly researched through this particular hermeneutical lens. In using the term “apophaticism,” the book is not merely referring to the theological “via negativa” or to tendencies towards mysticism, but rather to a comprehensive epistemological stance that “refuses to identify truth with its formulation and to identify the understanding of the signifier with the knowledge of its signified reality,” to use Christos Yannaras’ definition. The question of whether Ludwig Wittgenstein’s work can be approached as a particularly efflorescent case of the implementation of an implicitly (and at times explicitly) apophatic epistemology is herewith addressed. As such, this volume contends that such an approach would not merely provide elucidations on apophatic epistemologies, but rather shed potentially valuable hermeneutical light on Wittgenstein’s work, functioning as an epistemological thread running through it. Consequently, the focal points here consist of questions concerning knowledge and its disclosure, ineffability, non-discursivity, the function of language, the limits of one’s language as the limits of one’s world, and the language of religion, among others. In addition, the volume’s contribution to shedding more light on the apophatic aspects of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s philosophy is enhanced by its inclusion of a broad spectrum of different approaches, with contributors ranging from Wittgenstein scholars to Patristics scholars—and beyond.
Download or read book The House of Wittgenstein written by Alexander Waugh and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2009-02-24 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The House of Wittgenstein is the grand saga of a brilliant and tragic Viennese family whose members included a famous philosopher and the world's greatest one-handed classical pianist. The Wittgenstein family was one of the wealthiest, most talented, and most eccentric in European history, held together by a fanatical love of music yet torn apart by money, madness, conflicts of loyalty, and the upheaval of two world wars. Of the eight children, three committed suicide; Paul lost an arm in the war and yet stubbornly pursued a musical career; and Ludwig, the odd youngest son, is now regarded as one of the greatest philosophers of the twentieth century. Alexander Waugh, author of the acclaimed memoir Fathers and Sons and himself the offspring of a famous and eccentric family, tells their baroque tale with a novelistic richness to rival Thomas Mann’s Buddenbrooks.
Download or read book The Murder of Professor Schlick written by David Edmonds and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2020-10-13 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the author of Wittgenstein's Poker and Would You Kill the Fat Man?, the story of an extraordinary group of philosophers during a dark chapter in Europe's history On June 22, 1936, the philosopher Moritz Schlick was on his way to deliver a lecture at the University of Vienna when Johann Nelböck, a deranged former student of Schlick's, shot him dead on the university steps. Some Austrian newspapers defended the madman, while Nelböck himself argued in court that his onetime teacher had promoted a treacherous Jewish philosophy. David Edmonds traces the rise and fall of the Vienna Circle—an influential group of brilliant thinkers led by Schlick—and of a philosophical movement that sought to do away with metaphysics and pseudoscience in a city darkened by fascism, anti-Semitism, and unreason. The Vienna Circle's members included Otto Neurath, Rudolf Carnap, and the eccentric logician Kurt Gödel. On its fringes were two other philosophical titans of the twentieth century, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Karl Popper. The Circle championed the philosophy of logical empiricism, which held that only two types of propositions have cognitive meaning, those that can be verified through experience and those that are analytically true. For a time, it was the most fashionable movement in philosophy. Yet by the outbreak of World War II, Schlick's group had disbanded and almost all its members had fled. Edmonds reveals why the Austro-fascists and the Nazis saw their philosophy as such a threat. The Murder of Professor Schlick paints an unforgettable portrait of the Vienna Circle and its members while weaving an enthralling narrative set against the backdrop of economic catastrophe and rising extremism in Hitler's Europe.
Download or read book The Viennese Students of Civilization written by Erwin Dekker and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2016-02-19 with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fresh look at Austrian economists and the dynamic intellectual and political context in which they lived and worked.
Download or read book The Viennese Waltz written by Danielle Hood and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2022-06 with total page 213 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book shows how over the hundred years between the Vienna Congress and the dissolution of the Empire, the waltz altered from signifier of upper-class artifice—covering with glitz and glamour the poverty and war central to the time—to the link between the three classes, between man and nature, and between Viennese and “Other.”
Download or read book A Kingdom Not of This World written by Kevin Karnes and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2013-09-19 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book challenges prevalent understandings of elite artistic culture in fin-de-siècle Vienna by examining creative manifestations of utopian imaginings that ran counter and parallel to the cultural pessimism widely diagnosed in that society. It argues that the music and writings of Richard Wagner played a key role in inspiring such imagining, which either embraced and extended Wagner's own visions or countered them with visions that were wholly new.
Download or read book Wittgenstein The Philosopher and his Works written by Alois Pichler and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2013-05-02 with total page 465 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This wide-ranging collection of essays contains eighteen original articles by authors representing some of the most important recent work on Wittgenstein. It deals with questions pertaining to both the interpretation and application of Wittgenstein’s thought and the editing of his works. Regarding the latter, it also addresses issues concerning scholarly electronic publishing. The collection is accompanied by a comprehensive introduction which lays out the content and arguments of each contribution. Contributors: Knut Erik Tranøy, Lars Hertzberg, Georg Henrik von Wright, Marie McGinn, Cora Diamond, James Conant, David G. Stern, Eike von Savigny, P.M.S. Hacker, Hans-Johann Glock, Allan Janik, Kristóf Nyíri, Antonia Soulez, Brian McGuinness, Anthony Kenny, Joachim Schulte, Herbert Hrachovec, Cameron McEwen.
Download or read book Wittgenstein Reading written by Sascha Bru and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2013-10-29 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Wittgenstein's thought is reflected in his reading and reception of other authors. Wittgenstein Reading approaches the moment of literature as a vehicle of self-reflection for Wittgenstein. What sounds, on the surface, like criticism (e.g. of Shakespeare) can equally be understood as a simple registration of Wittgenstein's own reaction, hence a piece of self-diagnosis or self-analysis. The book brings a representative sample of authors, from Shakespeare, Goethe, or Dostoyevsky to some that have received far less attention in Wittgenstein scholarship like Kleist, Lessing, or Wilhelm Busch and Johann Nepomuk Nestroy. Furthermore, the volume offers means for the cultural contextualization of Wittgenstein's thoughts. Unique to this book is its internal design. The editors' introduction sets the scene with regards to both biography and theory, while each of the subsequent chapters takes a quotation from Wittgenstein on a particular author as its point of departure for developing a more specific theme relating to the writer in question. This format serves to avoid the well-trodden paths of discussions on the relationship between philosophy and literature, allowing for unconventional observations to be made. Furthermore, the volume offers means for the cultural contextualization of Wittgenstein's thoughts.
