Jaakko Hintikka

[bretty]

Since we've been discussing alot of analytic philosophy lately I wanted to ask if anyone has had any contact with this persons work? I was interested in picking up his work on Wittgenstein, any thoughts?

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

I have to say that he is not the best commentator there is on W, excellent though he is on logic etc.

You are better off with Cora Diamond, Rupert Read, Juliet Floyd, Warren Goldfarb, James Conant....

I posted a link to Rupert Read's site (he is very sympathetic to Marxism, too); here it is again:

http://www.uea.ac.uk/~j339/

Also, check out Guy Robinson (to my mind the best Marxist commentator on W there is):

http://www.guyrobinson.net/

His book 'Philosophy and Mystification' I cannot praise too highly.

[Hit The North]

Rosa,

Thanks for the link to Guy Robinson, his stuff looks quite interesting.

Interestingly whilst browsing his site I came across a crystal clear definition of how I think about dialectics and how I imagine Marx thought about it. To whit:


I also want to give notice that when I use the word ‘dialectical’ in the
phrases, ‘dialectical relation’ or ‘dialectically connected’, I am giving it a very
simple minded and concrete sense that has little or no relation to the airy
philosophical realms where it is normally located. A dialectical connection
is, for me, simply one in which there is a mutual relation between two things
such that development in one will bring about a development in the other
which in its turn may reflect back and bring about a further development in
the first - and so on.

Is this a definition of dialectics which you can live with, I wonder?

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Guy uses that word in a very attenuated sense, one that I would not choose to copy, because it could cause confusion (and would suggest erroneously I was even mildly into Hegel).

I would not pick a fight with anyone who wanted to use it, though.

I am glad you like his essays; he has the knack of saying what I would want to say, but in about 1% of the space!

His analysis of the anthropomorphism in modern bourgeois science is spot on; I hit upon this idea independently of Guy about twenty years ago (having partly worked it out for myself, later partly deriving it from Christopher Caudwell and Paul Feyerabend, among others).

It underpins my critique of 'determinism'.