Ludwig Wittgenstein has somehow captured the popular imagination as the modern Socrates, the master of enigmatic logic, the fascinating and attractive icon of modernism. But what die Wittgenstein really say?
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
12 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Useful introduction that will help me find more if I need it,
By A Customer
This review is from: Introducing Wittgenstein (Paperback)
I have no interest in spending a month figuring out exactly what Wittgenstein *really* meant and wrote, but I do need to be able to read a text that mentions "dasein" or "Wittgenstein's view of technology", for instance, without stumbling. This introduction was amusingly written and gave me enough of an outline that next time I come across Wittgensteinian references I'll know where to look for more detail if I need it.In general I quite like the comic style - so refreshing compared to many academic texts which seem to relish being as abtrusely and boringly presented as possible - sometimes I thought the illustrator was thinning out the paint a bit much. The same illustrations are mixed and remixed till I was thoroughly sick of that same old drawing of Wittgenstein's face.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A good place to begin...,
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This review is from: Introducing Wittgenstein (Paperback)
Wittgenstein the man, and Wittgenstein's philosophy has been the focus of modern thinker's for two generations. His enigmatic logic and original thoughts on the nature of language, for example, has influenced many disciplines across the spectrum, including anthropology, cultural studies and literary theory. Wittgenstein has also been called the quintessential icon of Modernism, the most original thinker since Plato, yet has been the most misunderstood philosopher in the history of ideas. If you want to understand his philosophy, where do you start? This study guide, written clearly by John Heaton, in my opinion, is a good place to begin.
Introducing Wittgenstein combines biographical information about the man and his thoughts. The only book to be published by Wittgenstein in his lifetime was his Tractatus Logico- Philosophicus, a mere seventy-page treatise that confounded and inspired the leading minds of his generation. The book begins with the line, "The world is all that is the case." ending with the line, "What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence." As Heaton proposes, "...the last sentence assumes that only factual propositions are meaningful, so the world consists only in facts...there is a distinction between what can be -said- and what can only be -shown- is being developed organically" (P. 30) The Tractatus was not intended to be an easy study. In fact in the Preface, Wittgenstein wrote, "Its purpose would be achieved if it gave pleasure to one person who read and understood it." Introducing Wittgenstein moves on from the Tractatus touching on the changes of the man's thought about the nature of language, logic, mathematics, religion, art and culture, up to the end of his life. Heaton makes a brave and successful attempt to illustrate the many at times complex ideas in Wittgenstein's later work, Philosophical Investigations, which most academics today believe is the more developed and refined expressions of his philosophy. This book does a fine job of explaining Wittgenstein's thought in a clear and accessible manner and tone; although superficial, touching only the surfaces, as it is an introduction, it is an appropriate place to begin.
17 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
too brief and not concise,
By A Customer
This review is from: Introducing Wittgenstein (Paperback)
most of the texts from this series are reliable introductions to the thinkers they discuss. this series is more in depth than the "beginners" series of comic introductions. this text falls short in that wittgenstein secondary texts are usually thicker than other texts in the series for a reason. wittgenstein is a complex thinker in which it takes time to explain no less outline. this text to too brief and too generalized to be effective and winds up confusing more than, in wittgensteinian terms, elucidating
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