Thinking Things Twice

Lucilla Guidi ed., Wittgensteinian Exercises. Aesthetic and Ethical Transformations, Leiden: Fink-Brill, 2023

In this essay I discuss Wittgenstein’s view of the dissolution of philosophical problems. I argue that dissolution for the later Wittgenstein is never merely a matter of showing the nonsensicality or unworkability of a philosophical view, or that there is something wrong with philosophical problems as they have been posed. Instead, dissolution necessarily involves the introduction of an alternative view in the context of which the problems in question no longer arise. Hence, Wittgensteinian dissolutions involve as an essential component the transformation of ways of thinking. This has consequences for the interpretation of what Wittgenstein means by philosophizing without theses or theories. Philosophizing without theses or theories cannot be understood as a matter of only dissolving problems without offering any views in their place. Accordingly, not having theses or 1 Ludwig, Wittgenstein, Wittgenstein’s Nachlass: The Bergen Electronic Edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000, MS 131, 48, 1946; references by manuscript/typescript number according to the von Wright catalogue. / Ludwig, Wittgenstein, Culture and Value, Oxford: Blackwell, 1998, 55. 2 theories is not a matter of not having philosophical views. In conclusion I contrast the proposed interpretation with Rupert Read’s recent reading of Wittgenstein’s philosophy as liberation from philosophical views, and this kind of liberation, which involves no commitment to any views as more correct than others, as the ethical goal of Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations. I argue that, whilst liberation from the thrall of views is part of Wittgenstein’s philosophical approach, this cannot by itself explain the role of ethical considerations as an aspect of his philosophy.

Open Press TiU, 2021

This handbook is an open educational and open-ended resource for whomever is interested in philosophical thinking. Each of the chapters is open in the sense of freely available and accessible to everyone. You may be a student who wants to get some background on a specific philosophical sub-discipline. You may be a teacher who wants to assign introductory reading for students. You may be a layperson interested in reading an overview of philosophical thinking, written in a clear and accessible way. Each of you: feel free to browse, download, print and use the collection as you see fit. We believe that open access is the future and that academic philosophy as presented in this volume is of potential worth to many of you out there. In this open-ended handbook you find two kinds of chapters. First, there are chapters that provide a broad introduction into a specific philosophical sub-discipline, such as political philosophy, epistemology or metaphysics. As this collection covers most of the sub-disciplines currently taught at Western philosophy departments, you can legitimately claim that you have been introduced to Western ‘philosophy’ as a whole, understood rather canonically, after having read the entire handbook. Second, there are chapters that introduce slightly more specific topics or philosophical approaches. You will always be able to know the focus of each chapter by looking at its subtitle. The open-ended nature of this handbook, means that new chapters will be added in the future. We hope that philosophy will change and grow with time to become more diverse and inclusive and that this handbook will do so as well. We think of philosophy and its evolution as an organic process, as a tree that branches out in many different directions, adding new directions as it goes along. In this handbook, we organize the wide variety of topics that philosophers discuss into four main branches, which represent important subject areas that philosophers have covered.First, there is ‘thinking about societies’, which includes chapters that cover philosophical approaches to matters of obvious societal relevance. How should we organize our societies? How should we treat others? What exactly are cultures and what role do they play in a globalized world? This branch covers philosophical discussions, theories and views on what binds and divides us as societies and communities.Second, there is ‘thinking about humans’, which includes chapters that zoom in on people, the members that make up those societies. Is there something like human nature and what does that look like? How do human minds and bodies relate to each other? Are we free or not? This branch covers what one could broadly call ‘philosophical anthropology’: philosophical discussions, theories and views on what it means to be human.Third, there is ‘thinking about thinking’, which include chapters that focus on the ways in which humans can relate to the outside world. How can we come to know things about that world? What is truth exactly? What are the values and limits of scientific understanding? How do we reason and argue and how do we do so properly? This branch covers philosophical discussions, theories and views on how humans come to believe things about themselves and the worlds they live in. Fourth, there is ‘thinking about reality’, which includes chapters that investigate those worlds in more direct ways. Do things have an essence? What do we mean when we say that some things exist and others do not? How can language help us access the reality out there? This branch covers philosophical discussions, theories and views on the world we, as humans, find ourselves in. If you like what is on offer in this handbook, you can let us know on the website https://www.openpresstiu.org/ and register for updates, for example when new chapters are added. Consider each chapter as a first and stand-alone introduction to the exciting and thought-provoking world of a specific branch of philosophy. The same will be true of future chapters. Like the chapters already included, these future chapters will be accessible for readers without any specific prior knowledge. All you need is curiosity, an open mind and a willingness to think twice.

This paper claims that what philosophy primarily does is interpret our notions, offer ways of understanding these notions that are not scientific in nature but not contrary to science either. The paper draws a distinction between conceptual analysis, a highly constrained enterprise that is supposed to bring to light what was in the concept all along, and the interpretation of notions, a creative enterprise that offers ways of understanding notions that were not already prefigured by the content of these notions-philosophy consists in the latter, not the former. It explains how these interpretations are justified and what the difference is between better and worse interpretations. The remainder of the paper is organized around three headings: philosophy and science, philosophy and language, and philosophy and progress. It claims that in philosophy there is no real progress, but that philosophy does move forward because the notions at issue are endlessly interpretable.

2022

In spite of the unprecedented nowadays communication involving the philosophers worldwide, it appears that there is still no consensus about the definition of the philosophy. While quite practical extracts addressing that issue can be found in sources such as Wikipedia and the Free Dictionary, these are somewhat blurred by the differences in the tendencies of different authors to focus on some of themes, while neglecting the others. For example, some authors concentrate on the psychological aspects such as aesthetics and ethics while the others put more emphasis on the nature and the ultimate significance of the universe. Although one can at the intersects of these trends recognise that the philosophers converge to studying of most general and fundamental questions about our relation with the world, a formal widely adopted definition seems to be still missing.

Philosophia, vol. 42 (2014), pp. 271-288., 2014

Can philosophy still be fruitful, and what kind of philosophy can be such? In particular, what kind of philosophy can be legitimized in the face of sciences? The aim of this paper is to answer these questions, listing the characteristics philosophy should have to be fruitful and legitimized in the face of sciences. Since the characteristics in question demand that philosophy search for new knowledge and new rules of discovery, a philosophy with such characteristics may be called the ‘heuristic view’. According to the heuristic view, philosophy is an inquiry into the world which is continuous with the sciences. It differs from them only because it deals with questions which are beyond the present sciences, and in order to deal with them must try unexplored routes. By so doing, when successful, it may even give birth to new sciences. In listing the characteristics that philosophy should have, the paper systematically compares them with classical analytic philosophy, because the latter has been the dominant philosophical tradition in the last century.

Philosophical Studies, 2009

2024

Санкт-Петербург 2024 3.1. Late Ancient and Early Christian philosophy: The Patristic philosophy………………………………………………………... 36 3.2. The Apex of Medieval Philosophy: The Scholastic System of St. Thomas Aquinas…………………………………… 38 3.3. The Renaissance Interlude…………………………………... 55 3.4. Reformation…………………………………………………. 59 3.5. Political thought of Renaissance. Machiavelli………………. 63 3.6. Science………………………………………………………. 65 3.7. Philosophy of Modern Times. Advocates of the Method of Science: Bacon and Hobbes……………………………………… 67 3.8. Rationalism on the Continent: Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz………………………………………………………. 72 3.9. Glossary……………………………………………………. 96 3.10. Tests………………………………………………………... 97 TOPIC IV. The Enlightenment. German classical philosophy……………. 4.1. The Enlightenment…………………………………………... 4.2. The critical philosophy of Kant……………………………... 4.3. The Transcendental aesthetic………………………………... 4.4. The antinomies of pure reason………………………………. 4.5. Kant's moral philosophy……………………………………. 4.6. German idealism and materialism…………………………... 4.7. Marx and the young Hegelians……………………………… 4.8. The Utilitarian………………………………………………. 4.9. Mill's logic…………………………………………………... 4.10. Glossary……………………………………………………. 4.11. Tests………………………………………………………... TOPIC V. Modern Western philosophy …………………………………... 5.1. Schopenhauer………………………………………………... 4.11. TESTS 1. «Sensations without concepts are blind, and concepts without sensations are empty»: A. Descartes; B. Schelling; C. Kant; D. Helvetius. 2.The central problem of I. Kant's philosophy is-A. study of the driving forces of the development of history; B. analysis of the self-development of the absolute idea; C. finding universal and necessary foundations of knowledge and humanistic values; D. investigation of the ultimate foundations of being. 3. History becomes the object of philosophical analysis in philosophy: A. Marxism; B. Аntiquity; C. Renaissance. 4. Creator and systematizer of dialectics as a philosophical method of cognition in German philosophy: A. Descartes; B. Spinoza; C. Kant; D. Hegel. 5. According to Kant's theory, time and space: A. are the eternal real attributes of the substance; B. are a priori forms of sensuality; C. arise gradually, as the knowledge of the world improves; D. are the inherent properties of individual things 6. DOES NOT apply to the laws of dialectics: A. unity and struggle of opposites; B. the identities of matter and consciousness; C. mutual transfer of quantity and quality; D. negation of negation. 7. The basic laws of dialectics formulated: A. Hegel B. Kant C. Heraclitus D. Marx 8. Hegel believed that the basis of the world is A. absolute identity B. the absolute unconscious C. an absolute idea D. absolute deity 9. Marxism's philosophical roots were thus commonly explained as derived from three sources: