wittgenstein and anti-philosophy

[black magick hustla]

there are a lot of wittgenstein threads, but i want to start one myself. i am reading the tractatus right now, a chapter per day so i can better digest it.

i really like it. some years ago i always wondered the worth of exposing metaphysics because i always thought this kind of things could be justified always provided good rhetorical skills, but when i was younger and dumber i never dwelled beyond that realization. i realized this even more in college when i started to BS my philosophy and english papers by trolling my teachers by saying ridicolous stuff like "the simpsons are the end of history"and getting As. before, i really liked philosophy because it seemed i could make grandiose and beautiful statements, while in mathematics one cannot.

wittgenstein however, actually answered why it is so easy to make up shit in the realm of philosophy. it is a question on the limits of language. if you start talkng about stuff that lies beyond our tangible reality, from existential stuff to grand proclamations of the end of history, you cannot counter these statements with facts or affairs. if you cannot picture it in your mind then it is gong to be difficult to argue for or against it. nobody can really make a tangible picture of dconsciousness, that is why you can write about it a bunch of useless shit about it and then sound convincing.

even when we talk to other people about our deepest anxieties its communication sometimes breaks down. we have to depend on metaphors to convey some of our examples, for example when we say life is "emtpy" we have to refer to a spatial metaphor, which is empty, simply because language represents the world we share with each other and therefore can speak about, we dont really share our deep, private anxieties, so when we talk about them we generally spout alot of logical nonsense simply because there arent precise words about what we feel. we have to allude to a bunch of spatial, tangible concepts. another example is saying there are "ideas in my head", our head isnt empty and ideas arent spatial, but there is no way to deal with these things clearly because we do cannot feel, touch, see, or hear others minds. when we talk about cats on mats, or planets orbiting, we can be crisp and clear, simply because we talk about that tangible world we share with each other.

am i getting wittgenstein? what do you people feel about him?

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

You need to remember that W is talking about the logical limits to language, not its physical, social or psychological limits. Under the influence of Pierro Sraffa, the Marxist economist, he later came to realise that the strictures he had imposed on language in the Tractatus were far too narrow, and so he adopted what he called an 'anthropological view' of language, much closer to that outlined by Marx himself.

The best book by far on the Tractatus is the following:

Roger White (2006), Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (Continuum Books).

This book is an introduction, and it beats out of sight any other book on the Tractatus so far published. It's written in easy to understand terms, and is less than 150 pages long.

Among many other things, White explains what 'logical limits' means.

The best over-all book on W is:

Anthony Kenny (2006), Wittgenstein (Penguin Books, 2nd ed.).

There is as yet, I'm afraid, no good book on W and Marx, but the best so far is:

Kitching, G., and Pleasants, N. (2002) (eds.), Marx And Wittgenstein. Knowledge, Morality And Politics (Routledge).

However, I have written an essay on W's left-leaning 'propensities':

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rosa.l/Wittgenstein.htm

[gilhyle]

Pierro Sraffa, the Marxist economist

small point...Pierro Sraffa the Ricardian economist

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Gil:


Pierro Sraffa the Ricardian economist

So you say, but other, wiser heads disagree.



Although I can't speak with confidence on what Sraffa said during his
lectures, a recent CJE (1996, 20, pp. 763-777) paper by David Andrews on
"...a Wittgensteinian interpretation of Sraffa" argues convincingly against
the view that Sraffa was a "neo-Ricardian". Andrews argues that Sraffa
adopted the standard commodity as a prelude to a critique of neo-classical
theory. The standard commodity could only be defined under the assumption
that the composition of output was held constant (the "snapshot" argument).
Any variation in returns to scale would lead to instantaneous variations in
the eigenvalues which determine the standard commodities weighting of
sectoral unit outputs in the economy thereby undermining the very notion of
an standard which could be invariant to changes in both the composition of
output and the ratio of wages to profits or to disequilibrium.

To put the cat amongst the pigeons, this deconstruction of the possibility
of an invariant standard of value operates not only as a critique of the
neoclassical theory of income distribution (if not the Fisher effect), but
also questions the possible foundation for any essentialist, long-period
notion of prices-of-production as centres of gravity. Andrews suggests that
this Sraffian critique (with obvious philosophical affinities with the
perspective of Wittgenstein in the Philosophical Investigations) is closer
to an anti-essentialist, dialectical Marxist view of the economic process
rather than a long-period Neo-Ricardian view.

http://archives.econ.utah.edu/archives/pkt/1997m03-e/msg00006.htm

Apart from a reference to 'dialectics', this seems a valid enough viewpoint.

Also check out the following, which says more or less the same:

Kitching, G., and Pleasants, N. (2002) (eds.), Marx And Wittgenstein. Knowledge, Morality And Politics (Routledge).

[gilhyle]

Well I disagree. But I wont divert the thread from Wittgenstein. Happy to debate sraffa another time - the point is the supposed influence of sraffa on W should not be assumed to be a marxist influence - that itself is a problematic claim. My purpose was to make Marmot aware of that - perhaps he knows it already. Your quote from someone debating whether Sraffa was a 'Marxist' and arguing that he 'is closer
to' the Marxist than the Ricardian method only reinforces the the point and even then on a very attenuated conception of marxism as a mere anti-essentialism opposing 'prices-of-production as centres of gravity' (whatever that may mean on a good day). My point is merely that W had no grounding of any substance in the Marxist tradition, his intellectual background was quite different.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Gil:


Happy to debate sraffa another time - the point is the supposed influence of sraffa on W should not be assumed to be a marxist influence - that itself is a problematic claim. My purpose was to make Marmot aware of that - perhaps he knows it already. Your quote from someone debating whether Sraffa was a 'Marxist' and arguing that he 'is closer

It's not 'problematic' when one knows Wittgenstein's biography, and the friends he kept in the 1930s. Here's what I have written on this:


In fact, not only were many of Wittgenstein's friends and pupils prominent Marxists -- e.g., Pierro Sraffa, Maurice Dobb, Nicholas Bakhtin, George Thomson, Maurice Cornforth, David Hayden-Guest, and Roy Pascall (cf., Monk (1990), pp.343, 348; Rhees (1984), pp.x, 48; and Sheehan (1993), pp.303, 343) --, but one of his foremost 'disciples' (Rush Rhees) at one point contemplated joining the RCP (i.e., the 1940's Trotskyist version, not that recent right-wing joke of the same name, now happily defunct), and asked Wittgenstein for advice on this. [Cf., Rhees (1984), pp.200-09.]

Rhees and Monk record the many sympathetic remarks Wittgenstein made about Marxism, about workers and about revolutionary activity. While these are not in themselves models of 'orthodoxy', they reveal how close Wittgenstein came to adopting a very weak form of class politics in the 1930s -- certainly closer than any other major philosopher had done since Marx himself; cf., Rhees (1984), pp.205-09. [Cf., also Norman Malcolm's Introduction to Rhees's book, pp.xvii-xviii, Monk (1990), pp.343-54, and Monk (2007).]

In fact, Monk reports a comment made by George Thomson on Wittgenstein's attitude to Marxism: "He was opposed to it in theory, but supported it in practice", and notes another friend who remembers Wittgenstein saying that he was "a communist, at heart" (Monk (1990), p.343). He concludes:


"There is no doubt that during the political upheavals of the mid-1930s Wittgenstein's sympathies were with the working class and the unemployed, and that his allegiance, broadly speaking, was with the left….

"Despite the fact that Wittgenstein was never at any time a Marxist, he was perceived as a sympathetic figure by the students who formed the core of the Cambridge Communist Party, many of whom ([David] Hayden-Guest, [John] Cornford, Maurice Cornforth, etc.) attended his lectures." [Monk (1990), pp.343, 348.]

In Rhees's book, Fania Pascall -- who was another Marxist friend of Wittgenstein's, married to Communist Party intellectual Roy Pascall, translator of The German Ideology into English --, reports that Wittgenstein had actually read Marx (cf., Rhees (1984), p.44), but, the source of this information appears to be John Moran [Cf., Moran (1972)]. Garth Hallett's otherwise comprehensive survey omits reference to this alleged fact. [Cf., Hallett (1977), pp.759-75.] But if, as we will see, he had read Lenin, and all his close friends were Marxists, it is a safe bet that he had also read Marx.

Rhees and Monk also note that when Wittgenstein visited Russia he met Sophia Yanovskaya, who was Professor of Mathematical Logic at Moscow University and one of the co-editors of Marx's Mathematical Manuscripts. [Cf., Yanovskaya (1983), in Marx (1983).] She apparently advised him to "read more Hegel" (which suggests he had already read some). [Monk (1990), p.351, and Rhees (1984), p.209.] In fact, Yanovskaya even went as far as to recommend Wittgenstein for the chair at Kazan University (Lenin's old college) and for a teaching post at Moscow University (Monk (1990), p. 351). These were hardly posts one would have offered to just anyone in Stalin's Russia in the mid-1930s, least of all to someone unsympathetic toward Communism.

[DM = Dialectical Materialism.]

Monk suggests that Yanovskaya formed the (false) impression that Wittgenstein was interested in DM (ibid.), but Drury (another of Wittgenstein's pupils) informs us that Wittgenstein had a low opinion of Lenin's philosophical work (but, exactly which part this refers to we do not know; but this does indicate that Wittgenstein had at least read Lenin since he never passed comments on second-hand reports of other writers' work), but the opposite view of his practical endeavours:


"Lenin's writings about philosophy are of course absurd, but at least he did want to get something done." [Drury, quoting Wittgenstein from recollection, in Rhees (1984), p.126.]

Fania Pascall also records Wittgenstein's friendship with Nicholas Bakhtin (ibid., p.14), and notes that at one time he expressed a desire to go and live in Russia, as we have seen (ibid., pp.26, 29, 44, 125-26, 198-200). In fact he actually visited Russia in September 1935 (cf., Monk (1990), pp. 347-53), when he met the above Professor Yanovskaya. Like many other Cambridge intellectuals at the time his desire to live in the USSR was motivated by his false belief that under Stalin it was a Workers' State. In this regard, of course, his intentions were more significant than his mistaken views. One only has to contrast Wittgenstein's opinion of Russia with that of, say, Bertrand Russell -- his former teacher -- to see how sympathetic in comparison Wittgenstein was to revolutionary Marxism, even if, like many others, he finally mistook the latter for Stalinism. [Cf., Drury's memoir in Rhees (1984), p.144, and Russell (1962).] John Maynard Keynes (another of Wittgenstein's friends) wrote the following in a letter to the Russian ambassador Maisky (who had in fact once been a Menshevik) about Wittgenstein's plans to live in Russia:


"I must leave it to him to tell you his reasons for wanting to go to Russia. He is not a member of the Communist Party, but has strong sympathies with the way of life which he believes the new regime in Russia stands for." [John Maynard Keynes to Maisky, quoted in Rhees (1984), p.199. Also quoted more fully in Monk (1990), p.349.]

In his biography of Wittgenstein, Ray Monk plays down Wittgenstein's proposed move, and, relying on Fania Pascall's view of Wittgenstein's motives, interprets it as a reflection of his attachment to a Tolstoyian view of the Russian peasantry and the 'dignity of manual labour'. While this clearly was a factor, it cannot explain Wittgenstein's positive remarks about the gains he believed workers had made because of the revolution -- but, given what happened to the Russian peasantry in Stalin's Russia in the 1930s, this is surely the least likely explanation! On this, Rhees is clearly a more reliable guide; he knew Wittgenstein better than almost anyone else.

[The full details of Wittgenstein's desire to live in Russia, and his visit, can be found in Monk (1990), pp.340-54.]

His closest friend before he met Rhees was Francis Skinner, who had wanted to volunteer to fight in Spain as part of the International Brigade (he was finally rejected on health grounds). Wittgenstein thought that Alan Turing (who was also one of his 'part time' pupils for a brief period in the 1930s) believed that he (Wittgenstein) was trying to introduce "Bolshevism" into Mathematics, because of his criticisms of the irrational fear of contradictions among mathematicians. [Cf., Monk (1990), pp.419-20; see also Hodges (1983), pp.152-54.]

As Wittgenstein himself said:


"Turing does not object to anything I say. He agrees with every word. He objects to the idea he thinks underlies it. He thinks we're undermining mathematics, introducing Bolshevism into mathematics. But not at all." [Wittgenstein (1976), p.76.]

On this, and Wittgenstein's 'radical Bolshevism', see Ray Monk's on-line essay, here.


"The changes Wittgenstein wished to see are...I believe, so radical that the name 'full-blooded Bolshevism' suggests itself as a natural way to describe the militant tendency of his remarks." [Monk (1995).]

See also Monk (2007).

Finally, but perhaps most importantly, Wittgenstein himself declared that his later Philosophy had been inspired by his regular conversations with Pierro Sraffa (Gramsci's friend). The extent of Sraffa's influence is still unclear (however, see below), but Wittgenstein himself admitted to Rhees that it was from Sraffa that he had gained an "anthropological" view of philosophical problems. [Cf., Monk (1990), pp.260-61. Cf., also Malcolm (1958), p.69, von Wright (ND), pp.28, 213, and Wittgenstein (1998), p.16.]

In the Preface to what was his most important and influential work, Wittgenstein had this to say:


"Even more than this…criticism I am indebted to that which a teacher of this university, Mr P. Sraffa, for many years unceasingly practiced on my thoughts. I am indebted to this stimulus for the most consequential ideas of this book." [Wittgenstein (1958), p.viii.]

This is quite remarkable: the author of what many believe to be the most original and innovative philosophical work of the 20th century -- and one that, if correct, brings to an end 2500 years of traditional Philosophy -- claims that his most "consequential" ideas were derived from a man who was an avowed Marxist!

Attempts to reconstruct Sraffa's influence on Wittgenstein are in their early stages, and they are not likely to progress much further unless some hard evidence turns up; to date, these attempts are based largely on supposition and inference. On this, see Sharpe (2002), Davis (2002) and Rossi-Landi (2002), pp.200-04.

Now, it is not being maintained here that Wittgenstein was a closet revolutionary, only that he has been rather badly misrepresented; a demonstrably erroneous view of his political leanings has been fostered by some of his 'disciples', who have (or have had) their own political agendas in mind.

References and links can be found here:

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rosa.l/Wittgenstein.htm

Gil:


My point is merely that W had no grounding of any substance in the Marxist tradition, his intellectual background was quite different.

I agree, but that does not mean that he was not influenced by Marxism, especially by Marx's ideas on language (where the parallels are quite striking). The following passages from Marx are very Wittgensteinian:


"One of the most difficult tasks confronting philosophers is to descend from the world of thought to the actual world. Language is the immediate actuality of thought. Just as philosophers have given thought an independent existence, so they were bound to make language into an independent realm. This is the secret of philosophical language, in which thoughts in the form of words have their own content. The problem of descending from the world of thoughts to the actual world is turned into the problem of descending from language to life.

"We have shown that thoughts and ideas acquire an independent existence in consequence of the personal circumstances and relations of individuals acquiring independent existence. We have shown that exclusive, systematic occupation with these thoughts on the part of ideologists and philosophers, and hence the systematisation of these thoughts, is a consequence of division of labour, and that, in particular, German philosophy is a consequence of German petty-bourgeois conditions. The philosophers have only to dissolve their language into the ordinary language, from which it is abstracted, in order to recognise it, as the distorted language of the actual world, and to realise that neither thoughts nor language in themselves form a realm of their own, that they are only manifestations of actual life." [Marx and Engels (1970), p.118. Bold emphasis added.]

"Individuals producing in Society -- hence socially determined individual production -- is, of course, the point of departure. The individual and isolated hunter and fisherman, with whom Smith and Ricardo begin, belongs among the unimaginative conceits of the eighteenth-century Robinsonades, which in no way express merely a reaction against over-sophistication and a return to a misunderstood natural life, as cultural historians imagine. As little as Rousseau's contrat social, which brings naturally independent, autonomous subjects into relation and connection by contract, rests on such naturalism. This is the semblance, the merely aesthetic semblance, of the Robinsonades, great and small. It is, rather, the anticipation of 'civil society', in preparation since the sixteenth century and making giant strides towards maturity in the eighteenth. In this society of free competition, the individual appears detached from the natural bonds etc. which in earlier historical periods make him the accessory of a definite and limited human conglomerate. Smith and Ricardo still stand with both feet on the shoulders of the eighteenth-century prophets, in whose imaginations this eighteenth-century individual -- the product on one side of the dissolution of the feudal forms of society, on the other side of the new forces of production developed since the sixteenth century -- appears as an ideal, whose existence they project into the past. Not as a historic result but as history's point of departure. As the Natural Individual appropriate to their notion of human nature, not arising historically, but posited by nature. This illusion has been common to each new epoch to this day. Steuart avoided this simple-mindedness because as an aristocrat and in antithesis to the eighteenth century, he had in some respects a more historical footing.

"The more deeply we go back into history, the more does the individual, and hence also the producing individual, appear as dependent, as belonging to a greater whole: in a still quite natural way in the family and in the family expanded into the clan [Stamm]; then later in the various forms of communal society arising out of the antitheses and fusions of the clan. Only in the eighteenth century, in 'civil society', do the various forms of social connectedness confront the individual as a mere means towards his private purposes, as external necessity. But the epoch which produces this standpoint, that of the isolated individual, is also precisely that of the hitherto most developed social (from this standpoint, general) relations. The human being is in the most literal sense a [I]Zo-on politikon not merely a gregarious animal, but an animal which can individuate itself only in the midst of society. Production by an isolated individual outside society -- a rare exception which may well occur when a civilized person in whom the social forces are already dynamically present is cast by accident into the wilderness -- is as much of an absurdity as is the development of language without individuals living together and talking to each other. There is no point in dwelling on this any longer. The point could go entirely unmentioned if this twaddle, which had sense and reason for the eighteenth-century characters, had not been earnestly pulled back into the centre of the most modern economics by Bastiat, Carey, Proudhon etc. Of course it is a convenience for Proudhon et al. to be able to give a historico-philosophic account of the source of an economic relation, of whose historic origins he is ignorant, by inventing the myth that Adam or Prometheus stumbled on the idea ready-made, and then it was adopted, etc. Nothing is more dry and boring than the fantasies of a locus communis. [Marx (1973), pp.83-85. Bold emphasis added.]

"The main point here is this: In all these forms -- in which landed property and agriculture form the basis of the economic order, and where the economic aim is hence the production of use values, i.e., the reproduction of the individual within the specific relation to the commune in which he is its basis -- there is to be found: (1) Appropriation not through labour, but presupposed to labour; appropriation of the natural conditions of labour, of the earth as the original instrument of labour as well as its workshop and repository of raw materials. The individual relates simply to the objective conditions of labour as being his; [relates] to them as the inorganic nature of his subjectivity, in which the latter realizes itself; the chief objective condition of labour does not itself appear as a product of labour, but is already there as nature; on one side the living individual, on the other the earth, as the objective condition of his reproduction; (2) but this relation to land and soil, to the earth, as the property of the labouring individual -- who thus appears from the outset not merely as labouring individual, in this abstraction, but who has an objective mode of existence in his ownership of the land, an existence presupposed to his activity, and not merely as a result of it, a presupposition of his activity just like his skin, his sense organs, which of course he also reproduces and develops etc. in the life process, but which are nevertheless presuppositions of this process of his reproduction -- is instantly mediated by the naturally arisen, spontaneous, more or less historically developed and modified presence of the individual as member of a commune -- his naturally arisen presence as member of a tribe etc. An isolated individual could no more have property in land and soil than he could speak. He could, of course, live off it as substance, as do the animals. The relation to the earth as property is always mediated through the occupation of the land and soil, peacefully or violently, by the tribe, the commune, in some more or less naturally arisen or already historically developed form. The individual can never appear here in the dot-like isolation...in which he appears as mere free worker. [Ibid., p.485. Bold emphasis added.]

And here is this another interesting parallel (this comes from an essay to which I am just putting the finishing touches):


"Meaning is a function of the sign and is therefore inconceivable...outside the sign as some particular, independently existing thing. It would be just as absurd to maintain such a notion as to take the meaning of the word 'horse' to be this particular, live animal I am pointing to. Why if that were so, then I could claim, for instance, that having eaten an apple, I have consumed not an apple but the meaning of the word 'apple'." [Voloshinov (1973), p.28. Bold added.]


"These words, it seems to me, give a particular picture of the essence of human language. It is this: the individual words in a language name objects -- sentences are combinations of such names. -- In this picture of language we find the roots of the following idea: Every word has a meaning. This meaning is correlated with the word. It is the object for which the word stands....

"It is important to note that the word 'meaning' is being used illicitly if it is used to signify the thing that 'corresponds' to the word. That is to confound the meaning of a name with the bearer of the name. When Mr. N. N. dies one says that the bearer of the name dies, not that the meaning dies." [Wittgenstein (1958), §1, p.2e, and §40, p.20e.]

There are others.

In view of the close connection between Wittgenstein and UK Bakhtians, and the close connection between Voloshinov and Bakhtin himself, this seems more than merely coincidental.

[bretty]

You need to remember that W is talking about the logical limits to language, not its physical, social or psychological limits. Under the influence of Pierro Sraffa, the Marxist economist, he later came to realise that the strictures he had imposed on language in the Tractatus were far too narrow, and so he adopted what he called an 'anthropological view' of language, much closer to that outlined by Marx himself.

The best book by far on the Tractatus is the following:

Roger White (2006), Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (Continuum Books).

This book is an introduction, and it beats out of sight any other book on the Tractatus so far published. It's written in easy to understand terms, and is less than 150 pages long.

Among many other things, White explains what 'logical limits' means.

The best over-all book on W is:

Anthony Kenny (2006), Wittgenstein (Penguin Books, 2nd ed.).

There is as yet, I'm afraid, no good book on W and Marx, but the best so far is:

Kitching, G., and Pleasants, N. (2002) (eds.), Marx And Wittgenstein. Knowledge, Morality And Politics (Routledge).

However, I have written an essay on W's left-leaning 'propensities':

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rosa.l/Wittgenstein.htm

I'll vouch for the continuum book. It helped me understand the Tractatus a little better. I'm no philosophy graduate but it helped.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Well, Roger White is still working on his path-breaking, non-introductory book on the Tractatus (he has been since the early 1970s!) -- I have a photo-copy of an earlier version of part of it and it's miles ahead of anything so far written.

It is to be hoped he gets his act together and publishes it one day!

His book on metaphor is also ground breaking.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Structure-Metaphor-Language-Philosophical-Theory/dp/0631168117/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1234312529&sr=1-1

[Hit The North]

However, I have written an essay on W's left-leaning 'propensities':

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rosa.l/Wittgenstein.htm (http://www.anonym.to/?http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rosa.l/Wittgenstein.htm) Well, I've just read your article and it is clear that there is no direct evidence - in the form of Wittgenstein's own writing (even in private correspondence) - that he was in the slightest bit left wing. At least, I can't find any provided by this article; just hearsay.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

BTB:


Well, I've just read your article and it is clear that there is no direct evidence - in the form of Wittgenstein's own writing (even in private correspondence) - that he was in the slightest bit left wing. At least, I can't find any provided by this article; just hearsay.

What you call 'hearsay' is in fact the testimony of those who knew him far better than you or I.

The fact that several friends described him as a 'communist', and the fact that the Stalinists were prepared to give him the chair of Philosophy at Lenin's old University (and not just any old university, something they would not have offered to an individual they did not regard as a lefty in their eyes), and the fact that the vast majority of his friends were communists, socialists or Trotskysits, suggests you are somewhat biased in your assessment.

And there are passages in his writings that display a left-leaning, if not a Marxist view of language -- I gave some examples above.

You can find more in that other book I referenced.

Moreover, his private diaries and much of his correspondence hasn't been published yet; so how you know this is something of a mystery:


even in private correspondence

For example, there is nothing in his published letters and writings to suggest he was gay, but the fact is, he was.

You can read more about the affinities between Marx and Wittgenstein in this paper by Rupert Read:

http://www.humboldt.edu/~essays/read.html

[gilhyle]

Gil:

In view of the close connection between Wittgenstein and UK Bakhtians, and the close connection between Voloshinov and Bakhtin himself, this seems more than merely coincidental.

Indeed but these people are all neo-Kantians, followers of Cassirir and Marburg Neo Kantianism........and W's own views have a vaguely Kantian/Schopenhauerian framework.....all non-Marxist, althoguh certainly in some ridiculously vague sense 'left-wing'

[Hit The North]

What you call 'hearsay' is in fact the testimony of those who knew him far better than you or I.What hypocrisy! In the debate on Marx's view of the dialectical nature (or not) of his work in Das Kapital, you are at pains to exclude his correspondence on the basis that it is not his published word; then, in order to make some completely spacious claim that the thoroughly bourgeois and cloistered Wittgenstein was a friend of the working class you are willing to give weight to the hearsay of a ragbag of lesser lefty academics "who knew him".

Even Einstein made public disclosure of his sympathies for socialism - but in Wittgenstein we find not one atom of Marxism or any other variant of progressive social concern.

Incidentally, how amusing that you think the dim and dismal approval of some Stalinist apparatchik is any proof of Wittgenstein's radicalism.

Next you'll be claiming that comrade Stalin was a good Marxist!

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

WindGil:


Indeed but these people are all neo-Kantians, followers of Cassirir and Marburg Neo Kantianism........and W's own views have a vaguely Kantian/Schopenhauerian framework.....all non-Marxist, althoguh certainly in some ridiculously vague sense 'left-wing'

Don't you mean Cassirer?

Sloppy on the details here too I see! :lol:

And, precisely which part of Wittgenstein's work is Kantian, or even vaguely Kantian?

And sure, Schopenhauer's 'The World as Will and Representation' was influential on Wittgenstein in his youth; but that was before the direction of his thinking was changed by his encounter with Marxist ideas.

Anyway, you have little room to talk; Hegel was heavily influenced by Kant, and Hegel's ruling-class ideas are in no way Marxist.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

BTB:


What hypocrisy! In the debate on Marx's view of the dialectical nature (or not) of his work in Das Kapital, you are at pains to exclude his correspondence on the basis that it is not his published word; then, in order to make some completely spacious claim that the thoroughly bourgeois and cloistered Wittgenstein was a friend of the working class you are willing to give weight to the hearsay of a ragbag of lesser lefty academics "who knew him".

If you can find something in Wittgenstein's published work (from his later period, or whenever) that says he wasn't influenced by Marxism, then I will retract.

The difference is that you want to quote ambivalent lettters that allegedly run counter to Marx's published words to the effect that he had waved goodbye to the sort of dialectics you dote upon.

So, you are the hypocrite, since you now want to reject as 'hearsay' the sort of evidence you wanted to use against me, and Marx's published words!


Even Einstein made public disclosure of his sympathies for socialism - but in Wittgenstein we find not one atom of Marxism or any other variant of progressive social concern.

Wittgenstein made no 'public' pronouncements on anything (if by that you mean written work), not even in Philosophy after he published the Tractatus.

So, on that score, you would have good grounds for saying he never did any work in philosophy.:lol:

However, the comments he made to friends, his desire to go to Russia (and we have letters of his that tell us of this, written in 1922, just after the revolution!), the fact that the Stalinists wanted to offer him a chair at Lenin's old university, the fact that the vast majority of his friends were communists, Trotskyists, or socialists, the fact that many of his pupils were or became prominent Marxists, the fact that he attributed (in writing) his most important later ideas to Sraffa, Gramsci's friend, all testify to his marxist leanings.


Incidentally, how amusing that you think the dim and dismal approval of some Stalinist apparatchik is any proof of Wittgenstein's radicalism.

Next you'll be claiming that comrade Stalin was a good Marxist!

Well, of course, the Stalinists in the former USSR certainly viewed him as a red, and whatever we might think of the UK Stalinists of the early to mid-1930s, they were still Marxists. Why, some of them even became Trotskyists (such as Jock Haston and Tony Cliff, even if he was in Palestine when he changed sides).

http://www.marxists.de/intsoctend/foot/tonycliff.htm

Are you going to condemn them all as non-Marxists?

So, to throw your jibe back at you: you'll be telling us Tony Cliff wasn't a Marxist next!:lol:

[CommieCat]

1. I'm not sure what you mean when you label Sraffa a Marxist economist; whether his economics was Marxist, or whether he was an economist who happened to be Marxist. In either case, sure, he was a radical Marxist in his younger days, and I have never read anything where he abandoned his sympathy to the left. Although one might recall that Sraffa was a fairly wealthy man, apparently taking Japanese government bonds the day after the Hiroshima/Nagasaki bombings & making a killing. Whether his economics was Marxist is another thing; he founded the Neo-Ricardian school, edited all of Ricardo's works even (with Maurice Dobbs). But I don't think you have to be a Marxist to have strong critiques against the Neo-Classical school.

2. Wittgenstein was certainly influenced by Marxist thought, whether directly by Sraffa (or any other Marxist), or because of his general approach to philosophy. Its also reported that he did remark that he was a 'communist at heart.' And Moscow (Leningrad/ Saint Petersburg) University was pretty unlikely to offer him a position there if not for his sympathy for the left. He also requested, via Keynes, an introduction to the Soviet Ambassador in London, traveled throughout Russia & was offered a position at a university in Kazakhstan where Tolstoy studied. Although he declined to live there, owing to the restrictive nature of the USSR...

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

CommieCat, yes I am aware of the things you say about Sraffa. [I merely said he was a Marxist, I did not say he was a Marxist economist, though.]

However, several years ago I read an interview he gave near the end of his life in which he claimed that he had not abandoned his Marxist ideas, and that his classic work was in fact based on orthodox Marxist principles. Now he might have been exaggerating, or simply rationalising, but he certainly believed he was a Marxist. Recall, Wittgenstein knew him in the 1930s when he was a Marxist, as was practically everyone else at Cambridge University then.

[I am busy trying to find that interview on-line; no luck so far!]

And thanks for the comments about Wittgenstein, but you will find that I have gone over this ground thoroughly in the link I posted earlier.

Here it is again:

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rosa.l/Wittgenstein.htm

That interview is referred to here, but no details are given:

http://74.125.77.132/search?q=cache:yvwWJnxeiVwJ:hetsa.fec.anu.edu.au/review/ejournal/pdf-back/8-RA-1.pdf+Interview+Sraffa&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=uk

[Hit The North]

Rosa:
If you can find something in Wittgenstein's published work (from his later period, or whenever) that says he wasn't influenced by Marxism, then I will retract. If that is the ground for your proof we could argue that everyone from Bismark to Biz Markie was influenced by Marxism given the lack of evidence to the contrary :lol:. Please be serious.

Anyway, it is your assertion therefore the burden of proof is on you. As we have seen the evidence is, at best, slim.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

BTB:


If that is the ground for your proof we could argue that everyone from Bismark to Biz Markie was influenced by Marxism given the lack of evidence to the contrary

Let me get this straight: according to you, Bismarck expressed a desire to live in the USSR just after the revolution, made comments to practically all his friends that indicated he was 'on the side of the workers' (quote), and was sympathetic to 'Lenin's aims and achievements' (quote), and regarded himself as a 'communist' (quote) did he? Then, also according to you, it must be true that the majority of Bismarck's friends were communists, Trotskyists and socialists, and that many of his pupils became Marxists, too. This means that you also have evidence that Bismarck attributed his most important ideas to a friend of Gramsci's.

You ought to write a biography of this guy -- it'll get you committed.:lol:


Please be serious.

Please be sane.


Anyway, it is your assertion therefore the burden of proof is on you. As we have seen the evidence is, at best, slim.

It's far greater then the anorexic 'evidence' you have to hand that Marx maintained a commitment to that loopy theory you dote upon, and which is your most important source of opiates.

[Hit The North]

Of course I don't believe in any of the above. The point is that the absence of a denial on the part of Bismark that he was a communist is no evidence that he was one. Same for Wittgenstein.


It's far greater then the anorexic 'evidence' you have to hand that Marx maintained a commitment to [the dialectic]
Really? How sweet that you think that second hand accounts of what Wittgenstein said or thought or did not say and think, is more compelling than Marx, in his own hand, without a gun to his head, writing that Kapital was the first attempt to apply the dialectical method to the problems of political economy.

Anyway, your lame attempt to claim Wittgenstein as some kind of mute champion of socialism is less interesting than actually demonstrating how Wittgenstein's work can be used to inform and strengthen Marxist theory or its revolutionary practice.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

BTB:


Of course I don't believe in any of the above. The point is that the absence of a denial on the part of Bismark that he was a communist is no evidence that he was one. Same for Wittgenstein

You may not believe it but, as with your failure to believe the absurd consequences of the 'dialectical theory of change' (which implies that cats are immortal and that carpenters turn into the tables they make!), that in no way affects the fact that this is indeed a consequence of what you said.


The point is that the absence of a denial on the part of Bismark that he was a communist is no evidence that he was one. Same for Wittgenstein

But the point here is that we have plenty of evidence. Here is just some of it:

1) Many his friends tell us he said he was a communist.

2) The majority of his friends were Communists, Trotskyists or socialists.

3) Wittgenstein put it in writing that he wanted to live in Russia (in 1922, soon after the revolution).

4) He declared his support for the gains of the October revolution, especially those benefiting workers.

5) He also said he was against class division.

6) He voiced his support for what Lenin was trying to do.

7) Many of his pupils became communists after having been taught by him. Some went on to fight (and die) in Spain for the International Brigade.

8) Alan Turing (the great mathematician) is on record saying that Wittgenstein wanted to "introduce Bolshevism" into mathematics.

9) He was offered the chair at Lenin's old university.

10) John Maynard Keynes is on record telling the Russian ambassador (in a letter) that Wittgenstein wanted to go to live in Russia since he was sympathetic to the gains made after 1917.

11) He acknowledged (in writing, in the Philosophical Investigations) that Pierro Sraffa, Gramsci's friend, supplied him with his most important ideas (in his post 1930s work), and

12) There are many passages in his later writings that show the influence of Voloshinov's work, and that of Marx, too.

None of this applies to Bismarck, so your analogy is as foolish as you now look.


Anyway, your lame attempt to claim Wittgenstein as some kind of mute champion of socialism is less interesting than actually demonstrating how Wittgenstein's work can be used to inform and strengthen Marxist theory or its revolutionary practice.

It may or it may not be lame, but it resembles an Olympic 100 metres champion compared to your pathetic attempts to dump mystical Hegelian ideas onto Marx, in defiance of the evidence.

Moreover, I have demonstrated how Wittgenstein's ideas can be used to repair the damage done to Marxist theory (by the importation of ruling-class 'dialectical' ideology) -- but you refuse to read it.

So, it is fitting that you should remain ignorant -- as a warning to others.


Really? How sweet that you think that second hand accounts of what Wittgenstein said or thought or did not say and think, is more compelling than Marx, in his own hand, without a gun to his head, writing that Kapital was the first attempt to apply the dialectical method to the problems of political economy.

But, once more, you ignore the fact that Marx himself, not me, added a summary of 'his method' (which I'd quote again, but you regard it as 'spam'), in which there is not one atom of Hegel to be found.

So, Marx's dialectic has no Hegel at all in it; no 'dialectical contradictions' (which term even you mystics cannot explain, and which notion implies cats are immortal!), no 'unity of opposites', no 'quantity passing over into quality', no 'negation of the negation', no 'totality', no 'universal change'...

So, according to Marx, the 'rational kernel' of Hegel's 'theory is either empty or non-existent.

But you want to appeal to unpublished, off-the-cuff remarks to controvert this published material.

And yet, when I do the same with material that does not controvert Wittgenstein's published comments (but is consistent with them), you throw your toys out of your pram.

Amazing what contortions you will inflict on your reasoning just to defend the most important source of your dialectical opiates, isn't it?

[Hit The North]

Moreover, I have demonstrated how Wittgenstein's ideas can be used to repair the damage done to Marxist theory (by the importation of ruling-class 'dialectical' ideology) -- but you refuse to read it. Where is this demonstration? Post a link and I'll read it.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

BTB:


Where is this demonstration? Post a link and I'll read it.

Most of the 1.6 million words at my site are heavily influenced by Wittgenstein, in fact, but this is especially so here:

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rosa.l/page%2012_01.htm

And a new Essay I am about to publish in the next week or so is even more relevant.

However, you will have to get that attention span of yours fixed, since these two Essays total over 200,000 words.

The last time you did this (in relation to my claim that Formal Logic can cope with change, and my posting, at your request, a link to Essay Four, which shows this), you just said 'I'm off to the pub'.

[black magick hustla]

wittgenstein is extremely valuable to deconstruct ruling class ideology. his championing of crystal clear arguments over philosophical obfuscation can be used by anyone.

[Hit The North]

Marmot, if Wittgenstein's own arguments are "crystal clear" why are there widely differing interpretations of his thought?

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

BTB:


Marmot, if Wittgenstein's own arguments are "crystal clear" why are there widely differing interpretations of his thought?

That's true of all great philosophers.

Frege is ever clearer than Wittgenstein, and his work is also subject to varying interpretations, too.

[Hit The North]

While we are on the subject of Wittgenstein's politics, what about this from (ahem) Wikipedia:

Although some commentators have assumed that Wittgenstein's political sympathies lay on the left (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left-wing_politics), and while he once described himself as a "communist at heart" and romanticized the life of labourers[35] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_Wittgenstein#cite_note-34) in many ways he was a reactionary and a totalitarian. He particularly admired the philosophy of the Austrian fascist, Otto Weininger (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_Weininger), whose philosophy praised a typically Aryan male superhero and condemned women and non-Aryans as irrational and emotional. Wittgenstein distributed copies of Weininger's theories to bemused colleagues at Cambridge[36] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_Wittgenstein#cite_note-35)Is this true?

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

BTB:


Is this true?

Wittgenstein came from one of the richest families in Europe, and in his youth he held, shall we say, non-progressive ideas.

But, as the 1920s wore on, he waved goodbye to many of them.

His support for what he took to be the Bolsheviks made him express opinions that would now make us shudder. Whether, he would have held on to them had he lived to see the horrors of the Stalinist regime we will never know, but since he said that he would stop supporting the former USSR if class division reappeared there, it is highly likely he would have revised his opinion.

His admiration for Weininger is certainly an aberration, but no more than Marx's admiration for Trémaux.

But how Weininger can be described as a 'fascist' is something of a mystery, since he died in 1903!

And, when you read this comment of Wittgenstein's you see why he thought highly of him:


"It isn't necessary or rather not possible to agree with him but the greatness lies in that with which we disagree. It is his enormous mistake which is great."

In other words, Weininger was a warning to the rest of us.

Now, in my Essay on Wittgenstein, I say this:


Rhees and Monk record the many sympathetic remarks Wittgenstein made about Marxism, about workers and about revolutionary activity. While these are not in themselves models of 'orthodoxy', they reveal how close Wittgenstein came to adopting a very weak form of class politics in the 1930s -- certainly closer than any other major philosopher had done since Marx himself; cf., Rhees (1984), pp.205-09. [Cf., also Norman Malcolm's Introduction to Rhees's book, pp.xvii-xviii, Monk (1990), pp.343-54, and Monk (2007).]

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rosa.l/Wittgenstein.htm

So, no one is arguing that as a Marxist, he was the best thing since Lenin, only that the widely held view that he was nothing but a reactionary and mystic (an echo of which one detects in that inaccurate Wiki article), is so wide of the mark, it's in the next star system.

There are, alas, many right-wing admirers of Wittgenstein, and it is in their interests to write Wiki articles, or ones like them.

It is also worth pointing out that some of these right-wingers are in charge of the release of his papers for publication, who for many years even tried to prevent all knowledge of his homosexuality from coming out.

[Led Zeppelin]

Why is it that a lot of otherwise brilliant philosophers (Sartre and Wittgenstein come to mind) had shitty politics?

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Because they were from a petty-bourgeois (or in W's case, from a thoroughly bourgeois) background.

The fact that W managed to throw many of them off is testimony to his resilience, though.

[Led Zeppelin]

Hmm, I'm sure that does play a part in it, but then again a lot of Marxist intellectuals who did have good politics shared the same petty-bourgeois background, so I don't think it's as simple as that.

Perhaps their pre-occupation with philosophy detracted from their study of political theory, and as a result of this their strength lay with philosophy and not politics?

It's an interesting phenomenon. I think post-Marx there has been no great philosopher who was also known for being a solid political thinker. It was always either the one or the other.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

LZ:


Hmm, I'm sure that does play a part in it, but then again a lot of Marxist intellectuals who did have good politics shared the same petty-bourgeois background, so I don't think it's as simple as that.

Sure, nothing in life is that simple, but when you also consider that there are plenty of far worse examples of crap politics among philosophers (think of Hegel and Heidegger, for example), Sartre and Wittgenstein are not so bad, after all.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

For all Wittgenstein fans, this is an excellent resource:

http://methodsofprojection.blogspot.com/

[bretty]

LZ:



Sure, nothing in life is that simple, but when you also consider that there are plenty of far worse examples of crap politics among philosophers (think of Hegel and Heidegger, for example), Sartre and Wittgenstein are not so bad, after all.

Agreed. When I think of bad political decisions Wittgenstein and Sartre never really come to mind. There are many with much greater convictions.