From: "jon roffe" <i_mimesis-AT-hotmail.com>
Subject: Re: we other pragmatists
Date: Sun, 19 Apr 1998 20:01:33 PDT


>Regarding Wittgenstein:  as a graduate student in the
>70s every upper division philosophy course that I
>took studied the same book "Philosophical Investigations."
>We read it from the first page and never made it to
>the end.  All of us were attempting to understand him
>with poor results.  Perhaps there is a school somewhere
>which reads him with more success.  But then why 
>does another book come out every few years with a
>new interpretation of his thesis.

It depends on what you expect to find in the Investigations - if you're 
looking for a philosophical textbook a la Kant, then you have every 
right to be dissapointed - but this is simply not what W. intends it to 
be. And all 'new interpretations of his thesis' suffer from the same 
gross misunderstanding: "If one tried to advance theses in philosophy, 
it would never be possible to debate them, because everyone would agree 
to them" (P.I #128).

Of course you might want to complain that this is the tripe that you're 
sick of.  Or you might actually want to try to understand why he wrote 
it.  

And I'd be willing to suggest similar things along the lines of 
Derrida's writings too.  In case you are interested in learning about 
this rather than just 'commenting', you might like to start with Henry 
Staten's excellent book, "Wittgenstein and Derrida" 1984, Nebraska 
Press.

Jon
"In philosophy, we do not draw conclusions"
Wittgenstein PI 599

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