365
edits
Project:About Wittgenstein: Difference between revisions
no edit summary
No edit summary |
No edit summary |
||
| Line 35: | Line 35: | ||
Based on our expertise in the field of copyright, we at The Ludwig Wittgenstein Project decided to only publish those texts for which we had strong reasons to determine that the editor’s work can not be considered creative. The list of available texts meeting these criteria is constantly being updated. | Based on our expertise in the field of copyright, we at The Ludwig Wittgenstein Project decided to only publish those texts for which we had strong reasons to determine that the editor’s work can not be considered creative. The list of available texts meeting these criteria is constantly being updated. | ||
| Line 51: | Line 52: | ||
According to Rush Rhees, in 1929 Wittgenstein’s disciple Maurice O’Connor Drury (1907-1976) procured and read to his mentor passages from the English anthropologist Sir James George Frazer's (1854-1941) ''The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion'' (in the 12-volume edition of 1906-1915). A series of remarks in German were drawn by Wittgenstein from the reading in 1931; they were later revised and expanded, after 1936 and probably after 1948. Rhees edited the notes on Frazer for publication and they appeared in 1967 in the German journal ''Synthese''. The published text brings together extracts of Wittgenstein’s ''Nachlass'' Ms-110, Ts-211 and Ms-143. | According to Rush Rhees, in 1929 Wittgenstein’s disciple Maurice O’Connor Drury (1907-1976) procured and read to his mentor passages from the English anthropologist Sir James George Frazer's (1854-1941) ''The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion'' (in the 12-volume edition of 1906-1915). A series of remarks in German were drawn by Wittgenstein from the reading in 1931; they were later revised and expanded, after 1936 and probably after 1948. Rhees edited the notes on Frazer for publication and they appeared in 1967 in the German journal ''Synthese''. The published text brings together extracts of Wittgenstein’s ''Nachlass'' Ms-110, Ts-211 and Ms-143. | ||
In his ''Remarks on Frazer’s “The Golden Bough”'', Wittgenstein openly opposes the tendency in anthropology to rationalize apparently irrational practices and | In his ''Remarks on Frazer’s “The Golden Bough”'', Wittgenstein openly opposes the tendency in anthropology to rationalize apparently irrational practices and behaviours belonging to the sphere of magic and the sacred in non-western societies. To this type of reduction Wittgenstein opposes an account based on the cultural-relative validity of linguistic practices, significantly accusing Frazer of being “far more savage than most of his savages, for these savages will not be as far removed from an understanding of spiritual matters as an Englishman of the twentieth century”. The understanding of anthropological phenomena must therefore be relative to the context in which they take place, and in which, for example, a sacrificial or ritual practice is not traceable to the modern scientific explanation, because it arises in an entirely different form of life. Such forms of life can are manifest in the language games in which they are embodied, so that, quoting another famous statement from the book, “a whole mythology is deposited in our language”. | ||
In bringing an explicit content to contemporary anthropology, Wittgensteinian philosophy thus takes on here some epistemological questions, which will be called up on several occasions in the ''Philosophical Investigations'' and in ''On Certainty''. | In bringing an explicit content to contemporary anthropology, Wittgensteinian philosophy thus takes on here some epistemological questions, which will be called up on several occasions in the ''Philosophical Investigations'' and in ''On Certainty''. | ||
Go to "[[Bemerkungen über Frazers “The Golden Bough”|Bemerkungen über Frazers ''The Golden Bough'']]''"'' | Go to "[[Bemerkungen über Frazers “The Golden Bough”|Bemerkungen über Frazers ''The Golden Bough'']]''"'' | ||