Last Writings on the Philosophy of Psychology 1

by Ludwig Wittgenstein, C.G. Luckhardt (Translator), G.H. Von Wright (Editor)

This bilingual volume—English and German on facing pages—brings together the writings Wittgenstein composed during his stay in Dublin between October 1948 and March 1949, one of his most fruitful periods. He later drew more than half of his remarks for Part II of Philosophical Investigations from this Dublin manuscript. A direct continuation of the writing that makes up the two volumes of Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology, this collection offers scholars a glimpse of Wittgenstein's preliminary thinking on one of his most important works.

G. H. von Wright and Heikki Nyman both teach at the University of Helsinki.

Genres: Philosophy, Psychology

304 pages, paper

First published January 8, 1991

About the author

Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein (Ph.D., Trinity College, Cambridge University, 1929) was an Austrian-British philosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language.

Described by Bertrand Russell as "the most perfect example I have ever known of genius as traditionally conceived, passionate, profound, intense, and dominating", he helped inspire two of the twentieth century's principal philosophical movements: the Vienna Circle and Oxford ordinary language philosophy. According to an end of the century poll, professional philosophers in Canada and the U.S. rank both his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and Philosophical Investigations among the top five most important books in twentieth-century philosophy, the latter standing out as "...the one crossover masterpiece in twentieth-century philosophy, appealing across diverse specializations and philosophical orientations". Wittgenstein's influence has been felt in nearly every field of the humanities and social sciences, yet there are widely diverging interpretations of his thought.

Reviews

[Erik Graff · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was read for an independent study with the Jesuit philosopher Dr. William Ellos, for whom I served as a teaching assistant at Loyola University Chicago.

[Cristian Rodriguez · Rating 3 out of 5]

Es un autor ya clásico, pero son escritos más bien tentativos. Muchas de las cosas más interesantes aparecen ya en la segunda sección de las Investigaciones Filosóficas. Este libro reviste interés puramente histórico o documental - lo que no quita que tenga páginas hermosas y/o desestabilizantes.

Eso si, la traducción no es buena. Hay muchas imprecisiones importantes, notas que oscurecen más que aclaran y muchos errores tipográficos.