Wittgenstein on Realism and Idealism (Elements in the Philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein)

This Element concerns Wittgenstein's evolving attitude toward the opposition between realism and idealism in philosophy. Despite the marked - and sometimes radical - changes Wittgenstein's thinking undergoes from the early to the middle to the later period, there is an underlying continuity in terms of his unwillingness at any point to endorse either position in a straightforward manner. Instead, Wittgenstein can be understood as rejecting both positions, while nonetheless seeing insights in each position worth retaining. The author traces these "neither-nor" and "both-and" strands of Wittgenstein's attitude toward realism and idealism to his - again, evolving - insistence on seeing language and thought as worldly phenomena. That thought and language are about the world and happen amidst the world they are about undermines the attempt to formulate any kind of general thesis concerning their interrelation. Cover 1 Title page 3 Copyright page 4 Wittgenstein on Realism and Idealism 5 Contents 6 Introduction 7 1 The Early Wittgenstein 17 1.1 Pictures and Picturing 19 1.2 From Solipsism to Realism 25 2 The Middle Wittgenstein 31 2.1 Language and World 32 2.2 Space and Spaces: Logic and Grammar 34 2.3 Realism and Idealism Reconsidered 39 3 The Later Wittgenstein 46 3.1 Against Essence: Variety and Indeterminacy 48 3.2 The Natural and the Magical 52 3.3 The Whole Hurly-Burly 56 3.4 The Persistence of Idealism 61 4 Coda: Remarks on On Certainty 66 References 72 Acknowledgments 77