Abstract
The puzzle about Ludwig Wittgenstein’s phenomenology which I would like to discuss is on the face of it merely historical. It concerns one of the most recent publications from his posthumous papers, his Philosophische Bemerkungen. 2 The source of this puzzle is that here for the first time the term Phänomenologie appears plainly and repeatedly in Wittgenstein’s own published writings. What is the meaning and importance of this fact, which does not yet seem to have attracted attention?3 Since it is too late to consult Wittgenstein himself, it has become impossible to answer this question with finality. But this melancholy fact is no good reason for shirking the issue.
From American Philosophical Quarterly 5 (1968), 244–56.
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Notes
Ed. by Rush Rhées ( Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1964 ).
Thus far the facts of the case seem to have attracted little attention. Gershon Weiler, The Australasian Journal of Philosophy, vol. 43 (1965), pp. 412–416 does not say anything about them. Eric Stenius in his review of the book in The Philosophical Quarterly, vol. 16 (1966), pp. 371–372, merely remarks briefly that Wittgenstein’s use of the word“phenomenological” in connection with his discussion of “phenomenological language” is vague. Stuart Hampshire makes no mention of the fact in New Statesman, vol. 71 (1966), pp. 163–164. And Norman Malcolm, in his review article in The Philosophical Review, vol. 74 (1967), pp. 220–229, simply lists “phenomenological language contrasted with physical language” as the fourth of some twenty topics taken up in the book, without discussing it.
The Phenomenological Movement (The Hague, Martinus Nijhoff, 1960; 2nd ed., 1965 ).
The Tractatus: Seeds of Some Misunderstandings.“ The Philosophical Review, vol. 72 (1963), pp. 213–220; also The Phenomenological Movement, op. cit., p. 761 ff.
Abbreviated as PB hereafter.
Ludwig Wittgenstein and der Wiener Kreis. Gespräche aufgezeichnet von Friedrich Waismann, ed. by B. F. McGuinness (Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1967 ), p. 45.
See my “Husserl’s and Peirce’s Phenomenologies,” pp. 27–50 above.
Announced in Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Man and His Philosophy, ed. by K. T. Fann ( New York, Dell Publishing Company, 1967 ), p. 405.
See Max Black, A Companion to Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus ( Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1964 ), p. 131.
Professor J. N. Findlay told me in conversation that when in 1939 he mentioned Husserl’s Logische Untersuchungen to Wittgenstein, he expressed some astonishment that he was still interested in this old text.
Vol. 9 (1929), pp. 162–171, abbreviated hereafter as SR.
Ludwig Wittgenstein und der Wiener Kreis, p. 10.
Ibid., p. 19.
Allgemeine Erkenntnislehre, 1st ed. (1918), pp. 119–124; 2nd ed. (1925), pp. 127–131. Gesammelte Aufsätze (1938), pp. 20–30; English (“Is There a FactualA Priori?”) in Readings in Philosophical Analysis, ed. by H. Feigl and W. Sellars (New York, 1949 ), pp. 277–285.
Wittgenstein’s Lectures in 1930–33,“ Mind, vol. 63 (1954), pp. 289–316, and vol.67 (1955), pp. 1–27; also in Philosophical Papers (1959), pp. 247–318.
Zettel, ed. by G. E. M. Anscombe and G. H. von Wright (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1967), p. iv.
The Philosophy of Wittgenstein (Englewoods Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1964), Chap. 6, “The Rejection of Logical Atomism.”
As far as Wittgenstein is concerned, the only reference to Kaufmann occurs at the end of the report of the Waismann conversation of January 2, 1930 (Waismann, op. cit., p. 84), in the form of a rejection (Ablehnung) of one of Kaufmann’s views about number, which was published only later in the year in Kaufmann’s Das Unendliche in der Mathematik und seine Ausschaltung. However, in this book Kaufmann refers repeatedly to the Tractatus, which he calls highly important (hochbedeutsam) (p. 26 n.).
See The Phenomenological Movement, op. cit., p. 762.
In The Philosophy of Rudolf Carnap, ed. by Paul Schilpp (La Salle, Open Court, 1963), pp. 25 ff.
See, e.g., John Passmore, A Hundred Years of Philosophy ( New York, Basic Books, revised edition, 1967 ), p. 433.
Se The Phenomenological Movement, op. cit., pp. 291, 747.
See now Philosophical Papers (New York, 1962), p. 262.
Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Man and His Philosophy, op. cit., p. 56.
Wittgenstein et Husserl,“ Jalons (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1966), pp. 188–207.
Husserl and Wittgenstein on Language“ in Phenomenology and Existentialism, ed. by E. N. Lee and M. Mandelbaum (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1967), pp. 207217. Gerd Brand even goes so far as to call him the phenomenologist par excellence in Die grundlegenden Texte von L. Wittgenstein, Suhrkamp, 1975.
Wittgenstein’s Phenomenology,“ Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, vol. 20 (1959), pp. 37–50.
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Spiegelberg, H. (1981). The Puzzle of Wittgenstein’s Phänomenologie (1929–?). In: The Context of the Phenomenological Movement. Phaenomenologica, vol 80. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-3270-3_15
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