[Marxism-Thaxis] Rosa Lichtenstein on "Wittgenstein and Marxism"
andie nachgeborenen * W's philosophy actually calls out for following up with such investigation. If you want to go beyond philosophy, you have to go _somewhere_ -- maybe to political economy and political sociology, like Marx, maybe to Ideologiekritik like Adorno and the early Frankfurters (Adorno also did flat out scientific sociology or social psychology, see The Authoritarian Personality), maybe to genealogical critic and psychology like Nietzsche, maybe to mystical pragmatism like Heidegger or scientific-sociological pragmatism like Dewey -- there are a lot of possibilities. But some people, and W was one of them, are like Moses at the Jordan, they point the way to the land of Canaan but cannot cross the river. Quine was another: he wanted to "naturalize epistemology, but that meant actually doing cognitive psychology, and he wasn't suited for or able to do that. CB: If we are to get some rational kernels out of these philosophers, andie's discussion here seems worth going into further. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Rosa Lichtenstein on "Wittgenstein and Marxism"
--- Ralph Dumain <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > All this is rather superficial, however. I think > Ernest Gellner nailed the > essentially conservative nature of Wittgenstein's > philosophy. Oh, agreed. W thought that philosophy done right "leaves everything as it is." That is a quote or at least a translation of one. But just because he thought that is what philosophy could do doesn't mean he couldn't had radical politics. > > Wittgenstein's conception of philosophy is hardly a > notch above Carnap's > dismissal of metaphysics as "bad poetry" or > Neurath's > metaphysicophobia. This is totally different. Carnap and Neurath did not see philosophy as conservative but as radical, they wanted to put on a scientific basis in the service of a modernist project of social reconstruction of a rational society -- see Carnap's autobiography in the Schlipp Library of Living Philosophers volume. (A fascinating document in many ways, has a hilarious and scathing portrait of the Univ. of Chicago Phil Dept in general and Mortimer Adler in particular.) Given an initially plausibly notion of cognitive content (the verification theory of meaning) and a scientific model of what counts as knowledge, it's hard to know what to make of traditional metaphysics. It's not scientific knowledge, whatever it is. And it's not, for the most part, good poetry. Besides, like people since Kant 9a big influence on the LPs), the LP were annoyed that metaphysics wasn't making progress in the sense that sciences seemed to, so it wasn't crazy or conservative of them to try to shitcan it. The notion of philosophy as > language on holiday or as > bewitchment by language is infantile. Well, when you out it that way, but there's more to it. Such a view > is itself a metaphysical > abstraction and bewitchment by language, divorced > from history or any > extralinguistic investigation of human cognition. > Compared to Adorno's > socio-historical conception of philosophy, > Wittgenstein is a piss-ant. W's philosophy actually calls out for following up with such investigation. If you want to go beyond philosophy, you have to go _somewhere_ -- maybe to political economy and political sociology, like Marx, maybe to Ideologiekritik like Adorno and the early Frankfurters (Adorno also did flat out scientific sociology or social psychology, see The Authoritarian Personality), maybe to genealogical critic and psychology like Nietzsche, maybe to mystical pragmatism like Heidegger or scientific-sociological pragmatism like Dewey -- there are a lot of possibilities. But some people, and W was one of them, are like Moses at the Jordan, they point the way to the land of Canaan but cannot cross the river. Quine was another: he wanted to "naturalize epistemology, but that meant actually doing cognitive psychology, and he wasn't suited for or able to do that. > > Nor does Wittgenstein have anything in common with > Marx, whom you > consistently misrepresent. For Marx, philosophy was > not a linguistic > disease, I never said he said it was. He says it's ideology, a mystification arising from the conditions of social life that reflects and promotes the ruling interests in certain ways, making the social seem natural, the changeable permanent, the existing order inevitable, and it does so by virtue of overgeneralizing and inverting certain truths. This is not W at all, but a sociological analysis of why philosophy is pointless. nor did he limit himself to Feuerbach's > framework, Given what I just said, obviously I agree with this too. M;'s theory is novel and powerfully original. though > Feuerbach did take the decisive historical step of > analyzing idealism as > inverted consciousness. For Marx philosophy as > practiced his milieu was > the "dream history" of Germany, not to be summarily > dismissed but to be > analyzed in its structure and related to its social > genesis. Agreed. > > The task of doing this for our time is infinitely > more complicated, for the > interrelationships of science, mathematics, logic, > philosophical systems > and their connection to alienated, inverted > consciousness and social being > are not simple and obvious, at least not until one > develops a framework in > which to place them, and even then there remains the > long, hard labor of > the negative. Now you are waxing Adornian. Marx was not really interested in this. I think he thought that philosophy wasn't worth the bother as a target, given his aims. > But Rosa knows nothing of this, No comment, haven't read the posts. > __ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Rosa Lichtenstein on "Wittgenstein and Marxism"
All this is rather superficial, however. I think Ernest Gellner nailed the essentially conservative nature of Wittgenstein's philosophy. Wittgenstein's conception of philosophy is hardly a notch above Carnap's dismissal of metaphysics as "bad poetry" or Neurath's metaphysicophobia. The notion of philosophy as language on holiday or as bewitchment by language is infantile. Such a view is itself a metaphysical abstraction and bewitchment by language, divorced from history or any extralinguistic investigation of human cognition. Compared to Adorno's socio-historical conception of philosophy, Wittgenstein is a piss-ant. Nor does Wittgenstein have anything in common with Marx, whom you consistently misrepresent. For Marx, philosophy was not a linguistic disease, nor did he limit himself to Feuerbach's framework, though Feuerbach did take the decisive historical step of analyzing idealism as inverted consciousness. For Marx philosophy as practiced his milieu was the "dream history" of Germany, not to be summarily dismissed but to be analyzed in its structure and related to its social genesis. The task of doing this for our time is infinitely more complicated, for the interrelationships of science, mathematics, logic, philosophical systems and their connection to alienated, inverted consciousness and social being are not simple and obvious, at least not until one develops a framework in which to place them, and even then there remains the long, hard labor of the negative. But Rosa knows nothing of this, for 'she' is obsessed with the childish forms of dialectical materialism to date and knows nothing of the Frankfurt School, for instance, which 'she' summarily dismisses for its lack of engagement in class struggle, preferring instead to weld 'her' sectarian politics mechanically to the banalities of analytic philosophy, in concert against the tired old diamat shibboleths. Trotskyism + Wittgenstein: a formula for insanity. At 08:34 PM 8/14/2006 -0700, andie nachgeborenen wrote: The last thing W wanted ro be was a major philosopher. The point of his whole later work was to "shew (Brit sp.) the fly the way out of the fly bottle," and reveal that philosophy was a sort of mistake. Of course, if he felt that way he might just have stopped doing philosophy and done something else, as did Marx, who had a Feuerbachian contempt for philosophy. But W seemed to be unable to do that. It was an itch he could not help scratching, must to his unhappiness and frustration. I wonder if Malcolm is right, though, that no "major philosopher" between Marx and W adopted a form of class politics. Russell was a vigorous and outspoken socialist -- anti-Bolshevik after his 1920 visit to Russia, but pretty hot pink. And while Russel is no major social philosopher, he's a heavyweight in philosophy of math, language, and metaphusics and epistemology. W was no bigshot social philosopher either. So was Ayer, though may not count as a "major philosopher." And at various times on thsi list we have discussed the Marxist-tinged radicalism of the early Vienna circle. Only Neurath (not a "major philosopher," but an important one) called himself a Marxist, but Carnap was pretty red, even later in life when he came to the US, and certainly in Vienna; he may not be as "major" as Russell or W, but he's a player. If I thought more, I could probably generate more examples. And the class politics of all these figures aws not "very weak." --- Charles Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rosa.l/Wittgenstein.htm > > > > "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 1930's -- 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, and Monk (1990), pp.343-54.]" > > > > CB: If philosophy is mostly 2500 years of claptrap > for the bosses, why is it > to Wittgenstein's credit that he is a major > philosopher ? ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Rosa Lichtenstein on "Wittgenstein and Marxism"
The last thing W wanted ro be was a major philosopher. The point of his whole later work was to "shew (Brit sp.) the fly the way out of the fly bottle," and reveal that philosophy was a sort of mistake. Of course, if he felt that way he might just have stopped doing philosophy and done something else, as did Marx, who had a Feuerbachian contempt for philosophy. But W seemed to be unable to do that. It was an itch he could not help scratching, must to his unhappiness and frustration. I wonder if Malcolm is right, though, that no "major philosopher" between Marx and W adopted a form of class politics. Russell was a vigorous and outspoken socialist -- anti-Bolshevik after his 1920 visit to Russia, but pretty hot pink. And while Russel is no major social philosopher, he's a heavyweight in philosophy of math, language, and metaphusics and epistemology. W was no bigshot social philosopher either. So was Ayer, though may not count as a "major philosopher." And at various times on thsi list we have discussed the Marxist-tinged radicalism of the early Vienna circle. Only Neurath (not a "major philosopher," but an important one) called himself a Marxist, but Carnap was pretty red, even later in life when he came to the US, and certainly in Vienna; he may not be as "major" as Russell or W, but he's a player. If I thought more, I could probably generate more examples. And the class politics of all these figures aws not "very weak." --- Charles Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rosa.l/Wittgenstein.htm > > > > "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 1930's -- 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, and Monk (1990), pp.343-54.]" > > > > CB: If philosophy is mostly 2500 years of claptrap > for the bosses, why is it > to Wittgenstein's credit that he is a major > philosopher ? > > > ___ > Marxism-Thaxis mailing list > Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu > To change your options or unsubscribe go to: > http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis > __ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Rosa Lichtenstein on "Wittgenstein and Marxism"
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rosa.l/Wittgenstein.htm "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 1930's -- 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, and Monk (1990), pp.343-54.]" CB: If philosophy is mostly 2500 years of claptrap for the bosses, why is it to Wittgenstein's credit that he is a major philosopher ? ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Rosa Lichtenstein on "Wittgenstein and Marxism"
Jim Farmelant http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rosa.l/Wittgenstein.htm "However, Philosophers still in the grip of traditional ways of thinking often see this approach to theory as a dereliction of duty; according to them, Philosophy should form part of a general attempt to understand the world (and as far as dialecticians are concerned, it should form part of an endeavour to change the world by helping socialists understand nature and society all the better)." ^^ CB: For Engels, philosophy as a queen above all the sciences pretty much winds up with Hegel, Feuerbach and Marx and Engels. What's left is formal logic and dialectics. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Rosa Lichtenstein on "Wittgenstein and Marxism"
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rosa.l/Wittgenstein.htm ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
