Philosophy
I just found out that philosopher Anthony Quinton recently passed away (you've seen him before talk about Spinoza and Leibniz), so I thought today would be an appropriate occasion to show a little appreciation for his intellectual and pedagogical contributions.
In the following conversation with Bryan Magee, Professor Quinton attempts the very difficult task of explaining the importance of that all-too-elusive German thinker Ludwig Wittgenstein, the man who Bertrand Russell once referred to as "the most perfect example I have ever known of genius as traditionally conceived, passionate, profound, intense, and dominating."
Wittgenstein's life was tragic, and to a large extent, it is difficult to understand precisely how it affected his intellectual development, so we'll skip that for now (but feel free to follow the links to The Philosopher's Zone to get an idea).
You'd think that coming up with a brand new system of philosophy that would consign you to intellectual posterity would be enough. Not so for Wittgenstein. After revolutionizing the world of philosophy of language with his Tractatus Logicus-Philosophicus, and consequently giving up on philosophy for a number of years, he became dissatisfied with his early work and decided to do it again with his highly aphoristic publication Philosophical Investigations. The result is a work that simultaneously seems self-evident and bizarrely counter-intuitive.
Check out more of these fascinating conversations with Bryan Magee.
.
- Bullshit Or Not: Wittgenstein Edition
There's an old sketch film called Amazon Women on the Moon and one of the bits is a parody of the old Leonard Nimoy show, "In Search Of..." called, "Bullshit or Not?" with the tagline "Bullshit or not? You decide." It's a line I like so much that...
- Superheroes, Speech Acts, And Author's Intent
Man, I love the questions you folks come up with. I'll try to answer as many as I can this week. R. Porter asks, ?Here's a question I actually ask software engineers when I interview them for a job. *I* know the answer, but the point is to see...
- Geoffrey Warnock On Kant
Imagine if the conceptual basis of just about every single belief you ever had, not just as a layman but as a professional and conscientious intellectual, were suddenly shattered by the writings of a single man? That's exactly what happened to Immanuel...
- John Passmore On David Hume
When we try to make sense of our experience of the world, we almost inevitably presuppose certain concepts as either necessary and indispensable or as obviously true. Reasonable people, we tend to suppose, are those whose beliefs reflect the amount and...
- Martha Nussbaum On Aristotle
The power of his mind and his inquisitiveness went far beyond what most people are even capable of conceiving. The Greek philosopher Aristotle didn?t simply ask questions, the way regular scientists do, for instance, about how the natural world works...
Philosophy
Anthony Quinton on Wittgenstein
I just found out that philosopher Anthony Quinton recently passed away (you've seen him before talk about Spinoza and Leibniz), so I thought today would be an appropriate occasion to show a little appreciation for his intellectual and pedagogical contributions.In the following conversation with Bryan Magee, Professor Quinton attempts the very difficult task of explaining the importance of that all-too-elusive German thinker Ludwig Wittgenstein, the man who Bertrand Russell once referred to as "the most perfect example I have ever known of genius as traditionally conceived, passionate, profound, intense, and dominating."
Wittgenstein's life was tragic, and to a large extent, it is difficult to understand precisely how it affected his intellectual development, so we'll skip that for now (but feel free to follow the links to The Philosopher's Zone to get an idea).
You'd think that coming up with a brand new system of philosophy that would consign you to intellectual posterity would be enough. Not so for Wittgenstein. After revolutionizing the world of philosophy of language with his Tractatus Logicus-Philosophicus, and consequently giving up on philosophy for a number of years, he became dissatisfied with his early work and decided to do it again with his highly aphoristic publication Philosophical Investigations. The result is a work that simultaneously seems self-evident and bizarrely counter-intuitive.
Check out more of these fascinating conversations with Bryan Magee.
.
- Bullshit Or Not: Wittgenstein Edition
There's an old sketch film called Amazon Women on the Moon and one of the bits is a parody of the old Leonard Nimoy show, "In Search Of..." called, "Bullshit or Not?" with the tagline "Bullshit or not? You decide." It's a line I like so much that...
- Superheroes, Speech Acts, And Author's Intent
Man, I love the questions you folks come up with. I'll try to answer as many as I can this week. R. Porter asks, ?Here's a question I actually ask software engineers when I interview them for a job. *I* know the answer, but the point is to see...
- Geoffrey Warnock On Kant
Imagine if the conceptual basis of just about every single belief you ever had, not just as a layman but as a professional and conscientious intellectual, were suddenly shattered by the writings of a single man? That's exactly what happened to Immanuel...
- John Passmore On David Hume
When we try to make sense of our experience of the world, we almost inevitably presuppose certain concepts as either necessary and indispensable or as obviously true. Reasonable people, we tend to suppose, are those whose beliefs reflect the amount and...
- Martha Nussbaum On Aristotle
The power of his mind and his inquisitiveness went far beyond what most people are even capable of conceiving. The Greek philosopher Aristotle didn?t simply ask questions, the way regular scientists do, for instance, about how the natural world works...