Wittgenstein: Late

Five dialogues into the Investigations — meaning, rules, and forms of life

A course on the thought of Ludwig Wittgenstein.

Course outline

1. The Turn — The reversal: the crystalline system you learned as the truth begins to crack. Why Wittgenstein came back in 1929 — the Sraffa gesture, the picture that held him captive, and the new method that…
2. Meaning Is Use — The new picture of meaning: words as moves in language-games, "the meaning of a word is its use," and family resemblance — why 'game,' and language itself, have no single hidden essence.
3. Following a Rule — The rule-following paradox: no rule, by itself, determines its own applications — every course of action can be made to accord with it. The resolution: to grasp a rule is to be trained into a…
4. The Private Language Argument — Could there be a language only I could understand, naming my private sensations? The diary 'S' with no criterion of correctness, and the beetle in the box — why a private inner object drops out of…
5. Forms of Life and Philosophy as Therapy — The bedrock on which all meaning rests — shared forms of life — and the new conception of philosophy itself: not theory but therapy, a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence, showing the…

Part of the Simposeum course library.