Book chapter
Wittgenstein Reads Russell
The Oxford Handbook of Wittgenstein
Oxford Handbooks in Philosophy, Oxford University Press
10/27/2011
DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199287505.003.0003
Abstract
Bertrand Russell and Ludwig Wittgenstein both left voluminous work notes and letters and they knew a great many people — statesmen, poets, academicians, lovers, and friends — who themselves wrote memoirs. Russell regarded Wittgenstein as a protégé and did much to establish a career for him. He secured the publications of Wittgenstein's oracular and unorthodox Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. He presided over the Viva which accepted Tractatus as a dissertation for Wittgenstein's Ph.D. degree (1929). Two theses have dominated the understanding of Russell's philosophy. First, in Principia Mathematica, Russell advanced a ramified type-theory of entities. Second, Russell's logical atomism is a form of reductive empiricistic epistemology. With the help of the volumes of manuscripts that Russell left, it now appears that both are false. In later years, Russell described his thoughts on the philosophy of logic and mathematics as a reluctant ‘retreat from Pythagoras’. Wittgenstein's Tractatus certainly did not intend to surrender logic to psychology, conventionalism, naturalism, or any empirical science.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- Wittgenstein Reads Russell
- Creators
- Gregory Landini - University of Iowa
- Contributors
- Oskari Kuusela (Editor) - University of East AngliaMarie McGinn (Editor) - Philosophy, University of York
- Resource Type
- Book chapter
- Publication Details
- The Oxford Handbook of Wittgenstein
- Publisher
- Oxford University Press
- Series
- Oxford Handbooks in Philosophy
- DOI
- 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199287505.003.0003
- Language
- English
- Date published
- 10/27/2011
- Academic Unit
- Philosophy
- Record Identifier
- 9984397193702771
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