OF ALL THE innovations that sprang from the trenches of the first world war—the zip, the tea bag, the tank—the “Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus” must be among the most elegant and humane. When the ...

Philosophical Topics, Vol. 38, No. 1, Ethics (SPRING 2010), pp. 181-203 (23 pages) There are intriguing hints in the works of Stanley Cavell and Stephen Mulhall of a possible connection between ethics ...

Born into a wealthy Viennese family, Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein (1889–1951) was the glamour boy of English philosophy in the 20 th century, and in the new millennium his influence continues to ...

No person could reasonably claim to have the answer to the meaning of life. An even more daring claim is to know what meaning is at all. What is the meaning of these very words? Of language as a whole ...

Many people believe that Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) was the 20th century’s most important philosopher. It is somewhat ironic, then, that he is probably best known for waving a poker at fellow ...

Philosophy has always had to defend itself against the charge that it is empty verbiage, unscientific speculation. Philosophers themselves are often the harshest and most astute critics of their own ...

A BEARDED SWEDE in a three-piece suit stands at a lectern. Spotlit, Erik Bünger tells his listeners about an exchange between Ludwig Wittgenstein and Bertrand Russell in 1911. According to ...