The Great Riddle: Wittgenstein and Nonsense, Theology and Philosophy

ISBN-13: 9780198801627 / Angielski / Miękka / 2018 / 160 str.

Stephen Mulhall

Opis

Can we talk meaningfully about God? Grammatical Thomism affirms that religious language is nonsensical, because the reality of God is beyond our capacity for expression. 'Nonsense' is standardly taken to be a term of criticism in Wittgenstein's work, but Mulhall argues that we can exploit an analogy with riddles to take a more positive view.

Recenzje

Stephen Mulhall's recent book derived from his 2014 Stanton Lectures is a well written, carefully argued and sophisticated contribution which centrally rests upon a resolute reading of the early Wittgenstein. His project is to take the resolute reading combined with several other additional ways of reading Wittgenstein, such as Malcolm on analogy, to bring out hitherto unnoticed aspects of his work and offer a properly philosophically grounded articulation of grammatical Thomism. As the chapters progress there are steadily increasing layers of sophisticated Wittgenstein interpretation, such as that involving analogy, which build upon each other to claim that his later work has a perfectionist dimension which relates to the concerns of moral perfectionism and 'perfection' and 'transcendentals'.

O autorze

Stephen Mulhall is Professor of Philosophy and Fellow of New College, Oxford. He was previously a Prize Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford and a Reader in Philosophy at the University of Essex.