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Wittgenstein in Exile

Wittgenstein in Exile

Wittgenstein in Exile

By James C. Klagge

"[A]fter more than half a century of scholarly effort, Wittgenstein is still not properly understood contends James Klagge in this impressive, fresh work. Combining rigorous historical scholarship, creative philosophical work and insightful cultural critique, Wittgenstein in Exile will be of lively interest to readers of Wittgenstein on all levels."—Philosophy in Review

"An important contribution to research on the philosophy of Wittgenstein...Klagge illuminates numerous themes and passages in Wittgenstein...provocative and stimulating."—Trenton A. Jerde, Cognitive Critique

"I mentioned Wittgenstein's approach to philosophy, and would like to recommend an enthralling and scholarly account of him that I've just read: James Klagge's Wittgenstein in Exile. Among other things, this book is a good companion to thinking about the nature of philosophy."—Anthony Gottlieb, 3:AM Magazine

Ludwig Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1922) and Philosophical Investigations (1953) are among the most influential philosophical books of the twentieth century, and also among the most perplexing. Wittgenstein warned again and again that he was not and would not be understood. Moreover, Wittgenstein’s work seems to have little relevance to the way philosophy is done today. In Wittgenstein in Exile, James Klagge proposes a new way of looking at Wittgenstein—as an exile--that helps make sense of this. Wittgenstein’s exile was not, despite his wanderings from Vienna to Cambridge to Norway to Ireland, strictly geographical; rather, Klagge argues, Wittgenstein was never at home in the twentieth century. He was in exile from an earlier era—Oswald Spengler’s culture of the early nineteenth century. Klagge draws on the full range of evidence, including Wittgenstein’s published work, the complete Nachlaß, correspondence, lectures, and conversations. He places Wittgenstein’s work in a broad context, along a trajectory of thought that includes Job, Goethe, and Dostoyevsky. Yet Klagge also writes from an analytic philosophical perspective, discussing such topics as essentialism, private experience, relativism, causation, and eliminativism. Once we see Wittgenstein’s exile, Klagge argues, we will gain a better appreciation of the difficulty of understanding Wittgenstein and his work.

Paperback
264 pages
MIT Press, 2014
6 x 0.4 x 9 inches
ISBN 9780262525909
Biography, Philosophy

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