Customer Reviews

Culture and Value: Revised Edition

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I really had no desire to write a "review" here -- until I read the other one on this page. Unless you are interested solely in the Wittgenstein who wrote on mathematics and logic, and if you are a reader who is primarily attracted to philosophy as it was practiced until the 20th century -- this is a book for you. Wittgenstein always has something interesting to say about religion, about being Jewish, about music -- well, the list could be lengthened almost indefinitely. I would recommend this book to anyone who desires a deeper knowledge of the past century's most acute philosophic mind. "Culture and Value" is one of my bedside books. (Heidegger resides in my basement.)

This is Wittgenstein's least interesting book, being only random notes dealing with art, music, religion and other areas of culture, taken from his notebooks over the course of his life. But W is never dull and it's a measure of the awe in which he is held that this book was even published. I can't imagine publishing such a book by anyone else,--certainly no philosopher.
Those interested in W should go to nearly any of the other 20,000 odd pages of his works (but NOT the Tractatus!)- but those with little acquaintance be forewarned, though W may seem a shallow tepid pool, if you jump in you may never stop swimming. You might wish to consult my other reviews such as that of Hofstadter's "I am a strange loop" for detailed comments on W and his revelations on language, thought and reality. Nearly all of W's writings are contained on a searchable CD issued by Blackwell and available for about $100 from Intelex while his vast and largely untranslated nachlass costs about $1000 on CD and another $1000 for the CD's with images of the 20,000 odd pages of the original manuscripts. However, like hundreds of other psychology books, they are also available via interlibrary loan or on p2p.
Although I've never seen anyone say so, W was a history making pioneer in cognitive and evolutionary psychology--the first person (and arguably one of the few to this day!) to see the structure of our innate intentional psychology. As a philosopher (armchair psychologist), all of his research was thought experiments and introspection. It is an easily defensible view that he is the greatest natural psychologist to date and nobody has ever matched his talent for describing the mind at work.
Nearly all the meatiest items from his papers have been culled for other works, and mostly the dregs remain for this book, but I have selected a few comments that seemed to me of general philosophical interest.
``There is no religious denomination in which the misuse of metaphysical expressions has been responsible for so much sin as it has in mathematics.``
``People say again and again that philosophy doesn't really progress, that we are still occupied with the same philosophical problems as were the Greeks. But the people who say this don't understand why is has to be so. It is because our language has remained the same and keeps seducing us into asking the same questions. As long as there continues to be a verb 'to be' that looks as if it functions in the same way as 'to eat' and 'to drink', as long as we still have the adjectives 'identical', 'true', 'false', 'possible', as long as we continue to talk of a river of time, of an expanse of space, etc., etc., people will keep stumbling over the same puzzling difficulties and find themselves staring at something which no explanation seems capable of clearing up. And what's more, this satisfies a longing for the transcendent, because, insofar as people think they can see `the limits of human understanding', they believe of course that they can see beyond these.``

``Philosophers often behave like little children who scribble some marks on a piece of paper at random and then ask the grown-up 'whats that?` It happened like this: the grown-up had drawn pictures for the child several times and said `this is a man', 'this is a house', etc. And then the child makes some marks too and asks `whats this then?'

'' A curious analogy could be based on the fact that even the hugest telescope has to have an eyepiece no bigger than the human eye.''

''The power of language has to make everything look the same, which is most glaringly evident in the dictionary and which makes the personification of time possible: something no less remarkable than would have been making divinities of the logical constants.``

``Philosophers say 'after death a timeless state will begin', or: 'at death a timeless state begins', and do not notice that they have used the words 'after', and 'it'and 'begins' in a temporal sense and that temporality is embedded in their grammar.``

''The queer resemblance between a philosphical investigation and (perhaps especially in mathematics) an aesthetic one. (E.g., what is bad about this garment, how should it be, etc.).

''Unshakeable faith (E.g., in a promise). Is it any less certain than being convinced of a mathematical truth? -But does that make the language games any more alike?''

``Nothing is more important for teaching us to understand the concepts we have than to construct fictitious ones.``

``It's only by thinking even more crazily than philosophers do that you can solve their problems.``

``Ambition is the death of thought.``