{"id":178640,"date":"2015-03-28T18:37:57","date_gmt":"2015-03-28T21:37:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/?p=178640"},"modified":"2015-04-30T15:43:58","modified_gmt":"2015-04-30T18:43:58","slug":"ideas-in-transition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/ideas-in-transition\/","title":{"rendered":"Ideas in transition"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"LOREDANO<\/span>There is usually no doubt about the fact that Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) was an author whose body of work has two very distinct phases.\u00a0 The \u201cfirst Wittgenstein\u201d is found in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus<\/em>, published in 1921, and the \u201csecond\u201d is represented by the Investiga\u00e7\u00f5es filos\u00f3ficas<\/em> (Philosophical Investigations) published posthumously in 1953.\u00a0 Despite the three decades that separate the two time periods, \u201cthe path from the Tractatus<\/em> to Philosophical Investigations, until the late 1990s, was treated much like the conversion of St. Paul to Christianity,\u201d says Jo\u00e3o Verg\u00edlio Gallerani Cuter, a professor in the Department of Philosophy, Literature and Human Sciences of the University of S\u00e3o Paulo (FFLCH-USP).\u00a0 It was as if the philosopher had suddenly, and without clear reason, begun to espouse a philosophy completely different from before.\u00a0 \u201cThis is untenable from a biographical standpoint and unsatisfactory from a conceptual standpoint,\u201d says Cuter.<\/p>\n

The approach began to change in the late 1990s when Wittgenstein\u2019s manuscripts from the period between his two most famous works began to be published.\u00a0 This is the material that constitutes the primary sources utilized in the thematic project, \u201cThe Middle Wittgenstein,\u201d which Cuter has coordinated at the FFLCH-USP since June 2012, and which is scheduled to be completed by May 31, 2015.\u00a0 One interesting aspect of the project is that it arises from discussions started at the very time the manuscripts were first published, in dialogue with studies carried out concurrently in other parts of Brazil and abroad.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe already have a good and varied number of studies regarding Wittgenstein\u2019s middle period spread over several regions in Brazil,\u201d says Bento Prado Neto, a professor in the Department of Philosophy and Methodology of Sciences at the Center for Education and Human Sciences at the Federal University of S\u00e3o Carlos (UFSCar), who assumed leadership of the project in its final phase, and who has been taking part in discussions with Cuter since the very beginning.\u00a0 The first step was the colloquium \u201cThe Middle Wittgenstein,\u201d which provided an opportunity for interactions with foreign researchers and researchers from other Brazilian states such as Andr\u00e9 Porto from the Federal University of Goi\u00e1s and Luiz Carlos Pereira from the State University of Rio de Janeiro and the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio), who co-organized the most recent editions of the colloquium.\u00a0 \u201cIt was a regularly scheduled colloquium and its conversion into the thematic project was the natural result of a long-established project, now with the advantage of an institutionalized structure,\u201d says Prado Neto.<\/p>\n

Looking in retrospect at the thematic project, the two researchers agree that its most important benefit was the possibility that aspects of the work of the \u201ctwo\u201d Wittgensteins could be explained on the basis of a systematic study of the middle texts.\u00a0 According to Prado Neto, there had traditionally been a \u201creasonable consensus regarding the meaning of the aphorisms of the Tractatus<\/em>\u201d as there was with regard to its allegiance and significance in the field of logic and the origin of the issues discussed (found in thinkers such as Gottlob Frege and Bertrand Russell), although there were interpretations about this basic consensus that were diametrically opposed.\u00a0 The disagreement is even more pronounced in the readings of the Philosophical Investigations.<\/em><\/p>\n

Prado Neto says that the interpretation of the middle writings allows us to establish a new basis on which to situate discussions about the different interpretative tendencies.\u00a0 With regard to the work of the researchers meeting at the colloquia and the thematic project born at the FFLCH, \u201cwe as a group of individuals from varied backgrounds were able to obtain a minimum level of agreement that allowed an extremely beneficial joint interpretation, regardless of the differences in approach,\u201d says Prado Neto.\u00a0 \u201cIn philosophy, a minimum of consensus never hinders the variety of interpretations; on the contrary, it characterizes the discussion.\u201d<\/p>\n

To Cuter, the texts from the middle period make it clear that the written rules about the phenomena in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus <\/em>need to be studied.\u00a0 According to him, in the early 1930s, Wittgenstein began to consider a change in the analysis of the phenomena advocated by the work, \u201cbut it was in the private realm that the language would find its basis.\u201d\u00a0 Around 1936, however, this began to collapse and the philosopher \u201cdeveloped a systematic criticism of his own thinking, arguing against the logical possibility of a private language,\u201d understanding \u201cprivate language\u201d in this context as that whose meaning would be logically inaccessible to any person other than the speaker.<\/p>\n

As we can see, even in his middle period, Wittgenstein is far from homogeneous.\u00a0 The Austrian philosopher who moved to England to study under Bertrand Russell in Cambridge donated a portion of the inheritance of his family, one of the wealthiest in Austria, to his sisters, at more or less the time the Tractatus <\/em>was published.\u00a0 He then began to teach children, renouncing philosophical activity.\u00a0 But in 1929 at age 40, he went back to Cambridge, where he would succeed G. E. Moore as chair of the philosophy department in 1937.\u00a0 He gave up the chair in 1947, four years before his death.<\/p>\n

The project, \u201cthe Middle Wittgenstein,\u201d was based on documents from the 1929-1933 period, which included nearly 3,000 handwritten pages in addition to notes of conversations held with the Vienna Circle, notes taken by his students during courses given from 1930 to 1933, notations made by Moore (that will be published in the United States in 2015), two conferences and portions of correspondence by Wittgenstein himself regarding the period.\u00a0 \u201cWittgenstein was a philosopher in the traditional sense of the word, and not a university philosopher concerned about solving specific problems in order to publish another article,\u201d Cuter says.\u00a0 He adds that nevertheless, there is \u201cno pretension to systemize his philosophy, unless one refers to the Tractatus<\/em>, and even then, only to a limited extent.\u201d<\/p>\n

All the material that constitutes the middle period expands along a continuum of radical questioning.\u00a0 The impact of Wittgenstein\u2019s thought \u2013 which led his teacher Russell to rethink his own conclusions in the field of the philosophy of logic \u2013 is largely due to what Cuter describes as \u201ca desire to address traditional philosophical problems as a whole.\u201d\u00a0 As the researcher explains, from the beginning to the end of his philosophical voyage, Wittgenstein always believed that philosophical problems rested on misunderstandings about the \u201cgrammar\u201d of the language.\u00a0 \u201cFor the first Wittgenstein, this \u2018grammar\u2019 should be pursued through an analysis that would lead us to the display of a set of basic assertions, from which any and all assertions of language could be built through verifunctional means.\u201d\u00a0 In this way, analysis of the assertions of the language could lead to three outcomes: a function of a common truth about the basic assertions, equipped with bipolarity and thus placed within the descriptive realm; a tautology or contradiction that says nothing; or the statement that the process of analyzing the presumed assertion leads us to a \u201cdead-end,\u2019 which would reveal that the presumed assertion from which we began was actually nonsensical.<\/p>\n

\u201cDuring his mature period, neither this single, predetermined path of analysis nor the notion of a \u2018universal\u2019 language expressing a field of meaning exists,\u201d says Cuter.\u00a0 \u201cThe only logical a priori <\/em>constraint is the necessarily public nature of the criteria we use to determine whether a sentence is correct or incorrect.\u201d\u00a0 This serves to determine the meaning and value of the truth of a language\u2019s sentences, as well as anything that involves the notion of \u201crule.\u201d\u00a0 What is important, from Wittgenstein\u2019s point of view, would be to preserve the distinction between the occasions when a rule would be followed and the occasions when it is only apparently followed.\u00a0 \u201cWhenever we call something a rule, we allow for the possibility that someone may think that he or she is following it when in reality, he or she is not.\u00a0 It is precisely this that would be excluded, as a matter of principle, from an allegedly strictly private domain that only I have the logical possibility of accessing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe scope of theTractatus<\/em> project involves the logical clarification of the language,\u201d Prado Neto says.\u00a0 \u201cBy remaining strictly focused on clarifying the logic \u2013 in other words, in explaining the \u201cgeneral form\u201d of the assertion, aside from its \u2018content\u2019\u00a0 \u2013 , the first work seems to reduce all of this to a philosophical reflection deserving of this name, and to eliminate themes such as time, space, phenomena, etc.\u201d\u00a0 Upon his return to Cambridge in 1929, Wittgenstein was to devote himself to the \u201capplication of the logic,\u201d or rather, to the logical analysis of the assertions of our language, and from there, the explanation of the language, which continued to be the fundamental work of the philosophy, could no longer remain indifferent to this content.\u00a0 \u201cThis revisiting of classical themes is one of the interesting aspects of the middle period, to the extent that it allows a little less simplistic confrontation of Wittgenstein\u2019s philosophy with tradition.\u201d<\/p>\n

Far from exhausting \u2013 if such a thing is even possible \u2013 the possibilities involved in studying and interpreting the Middle Wittgenstein, the researchers\u2019 project extends to establishing a unit that was already included among its initial objectives, with the participation, in addition to Brazilian researchers, of famous figures such as David Stern of the University of Iowa, and Mathieu Marion of the University of Quebec.\u00a0 One of the foreign researchers who took part in the colloquia organized by Cuter and Prado Neto from the very beginning, Frenchman Ludovic Soutif, moved to Brazil \u2013 he did his postdoc at USP and today is a professor at PUC-Rio.<\/p>\n

The international network of studies has led to four international colloquia, one of them at the University of Bordeaux, which received financial support from French agencies, as well as the publication of a special issue of the Canadian journal Philosophiques<\/em>.\u00a0 A yet-untitled book written by \u201ceight-hands\u201d \u2013 by Cuter, Prado Neto and Marcelo Carvalho of the Federal University of S\u00e3o Paulo (Unifesp), along with Mauro Engelmann, of the Federal University of Minas Gerais \u2013 with analysis regarding the Philosophische Bemerkungen<\/em> (philosophical observations) will soon be released by Editora Unifesp.\u00a0 A second volume that deals solely with chapters about the philosophy of mathematics in the same work is underway.\u00a0 According to Cuter, it is being written by young researchers who have excellent training in mathematics and could lead to further studies down the road.\u00a0 \u201cWe now have palpable results that were unthinkable when he began our work alone in Brazil, isolated from the rest of the world,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Project<\/strong>
\nThe Middle Wittgenstein (No. 2012\/50005-6<\/a>); Grant Mechanism <\/strong>Thematic Project; Principal investigator <\/strong>Bento Prado de Almeida Ferraz Neto (UFSCar); Investment <\/strong>R$100,403.46 (FAPESP).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Period between Wittgenstein’s two most famous works is studied","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[165],"tags":[226,233],"coauthors":[137],"class_list":["post-178640","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-humanities","tag-education","tag-philosophy"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178640","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/38"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=178640"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178640\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=178640"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=178640"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=178640"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=178640"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}