WITTGENSTEINS CONCEPTION OF PHILOSOPHY was first published in 1969 by Basil Blackwell Publishers, the official publisher of Wittgensteins works. It was intended to be a clear and concise introduction to Wittgensteins whole philosophy that corrects many basic misunderstandings of Wittgenstein at the time. After all these years, many scholars still regard it as the best introduction to Wittgenstein. We are reprinting this book and making it available electronically. In addition, we are appending here the authors last words on Wittgenstein: BEYOND MARX AND WITTGENSTEIN: A Confession of a Wittgensteinian Marxist Turned Taoist, a talk given in an international symposium on Marx and Wittgenstein held at Trinity College, Cambridge, UK, in 1999 and later published as the concluding chapter of the book: MARX AND WITTGENSTEIN: KNOWLEDGE, MORALITY AND POLITICS, edited by Gavin Kitchen and Nigel Pleasants, published by Routledge, 2002.
I put together this anthology in 1967 while I was writing my doctoral dissertation “Wittgenstein’s Conception of Philosophy”. It was first published by Dell Publishing Co. in 1969.. It contains all the important memoirs, reminiscences and comments by people who knew him, including his friends and students such as Bertrand Russel, G. E. Moore, John Wisdom, Rudolf Carnap, George H. Von Wright, Rush Rhee, Norman Malcolm, M. O’c. Drury, Gilbert Ryle, O. K. Bouwsma, Alice Ambrose, Paul Feyerabend, Morris Lazerowitz, etc. it also contains his contemporaries’ reactions to his philosophy. It’s a useful resource book even today. Since it has long been out of print, we are making it electronically available here.
One book that's been lurking in the back of my mind for a long time is a book about sex. You see, abort forty years ago while I was going through a painful divorce, I decided to teach a course called "Philosophy of Sex" at my university. My other favorite philosopher Wittgenstein once said to his student: " What is the use of studying philosophy if all that does for you is to enable you to talk with some plausibility about some abstruse questions of logic, etc., and if it does not improve your thinking about the important questions of everyday life?" Other than the food, is there anything more significant to everyday life than sex? Yet, philosophers rarely discuss sex as a philosophical topic. I tried to apply my philosophical skills to help myself think clearly about the male-female relationships while living them. Over the years I have formed my own philosophy of sex and seriously contemplated writing a philosophical book, following my course outline with the title, "Thinking About Sex". But such a book would be too didactic and boring. My recent writings convinced me that I write best when I let my thoughts range freely, and do not try to organize them into a set form. So there won't be a table of contents or chapter divisions in this book. What follows are my sexual reminiscences interjected with my philosophizing about them. The events described are real, and the persons involved are real, but with names changed. Some parts of it may sound to some people like pornography, but it is actually a philosophy book. A great contemporary philosopher Noam Chomsky said," The job of a philosopher is to tell the truth and to expose lies." That's what I am trying to do. Another great philosopher Karl Marx said," Philosophers hitherto have only interpreted the world in various ways, the point, however, is to change it." I am also trying to do that. This is not just a memoir, but I meant it to be a subversive track. I wish to subvert the status quo of our sexual mores. In fact, I meant this to be a Manifesto of Sexual Liberation!
This monograph attempts to clarify one significant but much neglected aspect of Peirce’s contribution to the Philosophy of Science. Peirce claimed that besides deduction and induction there was another type of reasoning which he called abduction. Abduction is the reasoning process by which new ideas, explanatory hypotheses, and scientific theories are engendered. It is the logic of discovery and the essence of Pierce’s pragmatism. Peirce returned repeatedly to the investigation of the logic of abduction during his long creative life. His writings on the subject are typically fragmentary and diverse. They fall roughly into two periods. In the early period Peirce treated inference, and hence abduction, as an evidencing process. The three kinds of inference were considered independent forms of reasoning. In the later period the concept of inference was widened to include methodological as well as evidencing process. The three types of reasoning became three stages of inquiry. The author has reconstructed a consistant account of Peirce’s theory of abduction. In Part I the attention is focused on the chronological development of Peirce’s early theory, so that the later theory may be understood more clearly in the light of the earlier views. Part II contains a systematic presentation of the later theory and a critical analysis of Peirce’s contribution to the study of the logic of discovery.
Composed more than twenty-five centuries ago, Laozi’s Dao De Jing is the first known philosophy book in human history and the only surviving record of pre-historical matriarchal thought. Extolling the feminine virtues and warning against the advent of science and technology, Laozi’s philosophy is the best antidote to the ills of modern life. It will provide inspiration to environmentalists, feminists, pacifists, and anyone questioning the status quo. A must-read for Daoist scholars, philosophy students, Chinese learners, and anyone interested in Daoism! This book consists of three parts. In the first part the author introduces the novel idea of reading Chinese characters in English. Unlike all other major written languages which are alphabetical, Chinese written language, known as the Han script, consists of ideograms that can be read by anyone in their own mother tongue. It has already been used for centuries as the common means of communication for Eastern peoples. The time is ripe for introducing a universal script for the computer age; this book is a part of the author’s effort to promote this idea by giving an example. The complete text of Dao De Jing is given and under each Chinese character is an English equivalent. So when you read this book, don’t treat it as a literal translation, but try to recognize the characters so that when you come to the end of the book you may be able to read the text without looking at the English. The second part gives the author’s English translation on the facing pages line by line so that you may compare it with the original. The third part contains commentaries explaining the author’s corrections of the text based on recently unearthed old texts. His radical interpretation of some key passages are also included. The book concludes with a fascinating account of the meetings and friendship between Confucius and Laozi.
J. L. Austin (1911-1960) exercised in Post-war Oxford an intellectual authority similar to that of Wittgenstein in Cambridge. Although he completed no books of his own and published only seven papers, Austin became through lectures and talks one of the acknowledged leaders in what is called ‘Oxford philosophy’ or ‘ordinary language philosophy’. Few would dispute that among analytic philosophers Austin stands out as a great and original philosophical genius. Three volumes of his writing, published after his death, have become classics in analytical philosophy: Philosophical Papers; Sense and Sensibilia; and How to Do Things with Words. First published in 1969, this book is a collection of critical essays on Austin’s philosophy written by well-known philosophers, many of whom knew Austin personally. A number of essays included were especially written for this volume, but the majority have appeared previously in various journals or books, not all easy to obtain.
Composed more than twenty-five centuries ago, Laozi's Dao De Jing is the first known philosophy book in human history and the only surviving record of pre-historical matriarchal thought. Extolling the feminine virtues and warning against the advent of science and technology, Laozi's philosophy is the best antidote to the ills of modern life. It will provide inspiration to environmentalists, feminists, pacifists, and anyone questioning the status quo. A must-read for Daoist scholars, philosophy students, Chinese learners, and anyone interested in Daoism! This book consists of three parts. In the first part the author introduces the novel idea of reading Chinese characters in English. Unlike all other major written languages which are alphabetical, Chinese written language, known as the Han script, consists of ideograms that can be read by anyone in their own mother tongue. It has already been used for centuries as the common means of communication for Eastern peoples. The time is ripe for introducing a universal script for the computer age; this book is a part of the author's effort to promote this idea by giving an example. The complete text of Dao De Jing is given and under each Chinese character is an English equivalent. So when you read this book, don't treat it as a literal translation, but try to recognize the characters so that when you come to the end of the book you may be able to read the text without looking at the English. The second part gives the author's English translation on the facing pages line by line so that you may compare it with the original. The third part contains commentaries explaining the author's corrections of the text based on recently unearthed old texts. His radical interpretation of some key passages are also included. The book concludes with a fascinating account of the meetings and friendship between Confucius and Laozi.
WITTGENSTEINS CONCEPTION OF PHILOSOPHY was first published in 1969 by Basil Blackwell Publishers, the official publisher of Wittgensteins works. It was intended to be a clear and concise introduction to Wittgensteins whole philosophy that corrects many basic misunderstandings of Wittgenstein at the time. After all these years, many scholars still regard it as the best introduction to Wittgenstein. We are reprinting this book and making it available electronically. In addition, we are appending here the authors last words on Wittgenstein: BEYOND MARX AND WITTGENSTEIN: A Confession of a Wittgensteinian Marxist Turned Taoist, a talk given in an international symposium on Marx and Wittgenstein held at Trinity College, Cambridge, UK, in 1999 and later published as the concluding chapter of the book: MARX AND WITTGENSTEIN: KNOWLEDGE, MORALITY AND POLITICS, edited by Gavin Kitchen and Nigel Pleasants, published by Routledge, 2002.
I put together this anthology in 1967 while I was writing my doctoral dissertation “Wittgenstein’s Conception of Philosophy”. It was first published by Dell Publishing Co. in 1969.. It contains all the important memoirs, reminiscences and comments by people who knew him, including his friends and students such as Bertrand Russel, G. E. Moore, John Wisdom, Rudolf Carnap, George H. Von Wright, Rush Rhee, Norman Malcolm, M. O’c. Drury, Gilbert Ryle, O. K. Bouwsma, Alice Ambrose, Paul Feyerabend, Morris Lazerowitz, etc. it also contains his contemporaries’ reactions to his philosophy. It’s a useful resource book even today. Since it has long been out of print, we are making it electronically available here.
This monograph attempts to clarify one significant but much neglected aspect of Peirce’s contribution to the Philosophy of Science. Peirce claimed that besides deduction and induction there was another type of reasoning which he called abduction. Abduction is the reasoning process by which new ideas, explanatory hypotheses, and scientific theories are engendered. It is the logic of discovery and the essence of Pierce’s pragmatism. Peirce returned repeatedly to the investigation of the logic of abduction during his long creative life. His writings on the subject are typically fragmentary and diverse. They fall roughly into two periods. In the early period Peirce treated inference, and hence abduction, as an evidencing process. The three kinds of inference were considered independent forms of reasoning. In the later period the concept of inference was widened to include methodological as well as evidencing process. The three types of reasoning became three stages of inquiry. The author has reconstructed a consistant account of Peirce’s theory of abduction. In Part I the attention is focused on the chronological development of Peirce’s early theory, so that the later theory may be understood more clearly in the light of the earlier views. Part II contains a systematic presentation of the later theory and a critical analysis of Peirce’s contribution to the study of the logic of discovery.
J. L. Austin (1911-1960) exercised in Post-war Oxford an intellectual authority similar to that of Wittgenstein in Cambridge. Although he completed no books of his own and published only seven papers, Austin became through lectures and talks one of the acknowledged leaders in what is called ‘Oxford philosophy’ or ‘ordinary language philosophy’. Few would dispute that among analytic philosophers Austin stands out as a great and original philosophical genius. Three volumes of his writing, published after his death, have become classics in analytical philosophy: Philosophical Papers; Sense and Sensibilia; and How to Do Things with Words. First published in 1969, this book is a collection of critical essays on Austin’s philosophy written by well-known philosophers, many of whom knew Austin personally. A number of essays included were especially written for this volume, but the majority have appeared previously in various journals or books, not all easy to obtain.
Composed more than twenty-five centuries ago, Laozi’s Dao De Jing is the first known philosophy book in human history and the only surviving record of pre-historical matriarchal thought. Extolling the feminine virtues and warning against the advent of science and technology, Laozi’s philosophy is the best antidote to the ills of modern life. It will provide inspiration to environmentalists, feminists, pacifists, and anyone questioning the status quo. A must-read for Daoist scholars, philosophy students, Chinese learners, and anyone interested in Daoism! This book consists of three parts. In the first part the author introduces the novel idea of reading Chinese characters in English. Unlike all other major written languages which are alphabetical, Chinese written language, known as the Han script, consists of ideograms that can be read by anyone in their own mother tongue. It has already been used for centuries as the common means of communication for Eastern peoples. The time is ripe for introducing a universal script for the computer age; this book is a part of the author’s effort to promote this idea by giving an example. The complete text of Dao De Jing is given and under each Chinese character is an English equivalent. So when you read this book, don’t treat it as a literal translation, but try to recognize the characters so that when you come to the end of the book you may be able to read the text without looking at the English. The second part gives the author’s English translation on the facing pages line by line so that you may compare it with the original. The third part contains commentaries explaining the author’s corrections of the text based on recently unearthed old texts. His radical interpretation of some key passages are also included. The book concludes with a fascinating account of the meetings and friendship between Confucius and Laozi.
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