DOCSLIB.ORG

Else M. Barth What Has Happened to the Science of Logic, to Logic As An

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Else M. Barth What Has Happened to the Science of Logic, to Logic As An Else M. Barth properties in the individual).' To say that Maritain's book, Petite logique, was influential is an understatement. By 1933 it had been reprinted ten times. At his death in 1973 it was made c1ear that his Introduction influence on the very highest echelons of the Catholic church had been direct and monumental, the then Pope c1aiming him as his own philosophical inspiration. However, some time after completing (with A.N. Whitehead) the Principia mathematica, Russell, the most widely influential of the logical revisionists in the first part of the century, had abandoned What has happened to the science of fundamental logica I research and had left logic, to logic as an academie discipline the scene to a younger man, the Austrian and pursuit? Though the diagnoses do not Ludwig Wittgenstein. It is known that this coincide, many agree that something has was preceded by Wittgenstein's gone seriously wrong. Some blame the philosophy of logical truth as 'tautologi­ technique and goal of formalization, or of eal'. algebraization and 'model theory'. Some And the logic-politics combination blame the take-over by mathematicians as disappeared - for a long time. Post hoc, such. Others blame the period of logica I ergo propter hoc? I believe the explanation positivism, or a background in Protestant is more involved. A full explanation also or Jewish religion. Quite a few regard it as has to cover other eminent politically a purely psychological question, blaming oriented logicians. For example, why did those who are drawn to logic as a profes­ the impact of the brilliant logical analyses sion as lacking in ordinary linguistic of German idealism by the author of proficiency, or in social and com­ Progress and Regress in Ph ilosophy , the municative skills, and hence in cultural German philosopher-mathematician consciousness. Leonard Nelson, dwindle after their It was not always so. John Stuart Mill author's death in 1927?2 Why have Ger­ was a logician and apolitical philosopher, man logicians after the last war not taken even a politician. Bertrand Russell, whose up his work? It seems there must have godfather Mill was, was a logician, a been internal contra-political influences political writer, and a (many-sided) politi­ on the science of logic in addition to the cal activist, in his younger years all three a-political Wittgenstein. at the same time. In 1923 his logic is An answer to these questions would widely recognized as philosophically seem to require a systematical analysis of important and as threatening to the the avowed political thought of more categorial basis of much of European 'technical' philosophers, such as logicians. philosophy induding social and political Such investigations are only beginning to thought. For in that year the renowned emerge. Alan Ryan's political life of French philosopher Jacques Maritain Russe1l appeared only in 1988, launches an attack on wh at he calls the 'Logic of Relation', which he ascribes to, I Jacques Maritain, Petite logique (logique /or­ and blames on, 'Mr. Russell in particular', melle), Paris, 1923. and which stands in opposition to the 2 Leonard Nelson, Progress and Regress in 'Logic of Inherence' (of an individual, in a Philosophy: From Hume and Kant to Hegel and postulated generic carrier of essential Fries (trans\. from Werke, vo\. 7, 1962), properties, and of those Oxford, 1970; and ot her writings. Else M . Barth XI preceded in 1987 by Victor Farias' study wise. Logic is of no avail anywhere.4 The of Martin Heidegger. 1989 brought the similarities with Wittgenstein are striking. debate on the philosophy and political Polities of race: As Monk explains, thought of Paul de Man and intensified Ludwig Wittgenstein immediately was the one on Heidegger, which has recently and always remained very much in sym­ been enriched with yet another two pathy with Otto Weininger's anti-Jew, books. Ray Monk's recent life of anti-female, anti-Iogic book from 1903, Wittgenstein transeends the interest in which - 'its epistemology obvious non­ Wittgenstein as a single individual, dis­ sense, its psychology primitive, and its c10sing aspects of the philosophical ethical prescriptions odious' (Monk)­ development in Europe th at can be seen became famous thanks to August to bear on the chasm between political Strindberg's laudation. 5 On tyranny, see culture and academie logic. One of these Monk (1990), p. 353ff. Weininger's anti­ is the 'Genius-or-death'-disposition. Semitism is complemented, though to my Monk emphasizes Wittgenstein's knowledge not by any expression of anti­ assaults on Russell's philosophy and how Semitism, by equally odious expressions the latter feit professionally discouraged of unsparing cruelty in Brouwer's untrans­ by them. RusselI, on the other hand, was lated book from 1905 (which he remained shocked by Wittgenstein's professional forever proud of), as weil as in his corre­ narrowness and a-political attitude to life. spondence, finally by his stance and 'Wittgenstein's work on logic did nothing, behaviour during the German occupation apparently, to improve the rigour of his of the Netherlands in WW II: recom­ thought on political questions,.3 mending a 'Declaration of Loyalty' to the Another turn in the philosophy of logic occupant, Nazi Germany, for which he in this century was caused by the Dutch was for some months expelled from his (anti-Iogicist and) mathematician L.E.J. Amsterdam position as professor after the Brouwer, to wh om the 'logic' of knowl­ war. In the same year E.W. Beth was edge assessment was a matter of one­ appointed to a new chair as Professor of person subjectivism. Whereas the conse­ Logic and the Philosophy of the Exact quences of his views for mathematical proof Sciences at the University of Amsterdam. theory were made the object of thorough Polities of gender: In 1903 the young debate, their logico-political meaning and Otto Weininger writes: 'Woman is noth­ influence have been glossed over. A num­ ing, she is mere/y matter ... she exists only ber of data indicate that Brouwer should ... as an object.' In 1905 the young Bertus be added to Wittgenstein in any explana­ Brouwer writes: 'Man ought to avoid and tion of the decline of logic as a profession to neglect Woman; but the woman ought of cultural and political relevance. The to live in the male, regarding herself as comparison has several dimensions: being nothing.' - 'The burning of widows Logical semiotics: Real truth is self-evi­ is a holy ritual; but barbarous Western dent, Brouwer wrote in 1905. Intersubjec­ governments forbid them as barbarous.' tive understanding requires a type of In 1907 Bertie RusselI runs for Parliament enforced training th at is to be regarded as in the interest of women's suffrage. To the a negative phenomenon, intellectual later dismay of Ludwig Wittgenstein. produets of persons belonging to certain The philosophy of Genius: See classes of the population are to be excluded from serious consideration, the 4 L.EJ. Brouwer, Leven, kunst en mystiek , parties in a controversy do not have Delft, 1905. See pp. 16, 27, 38, 42,97, and rights or obligations, linguistic or other- passim . 5 QUo Weininger, Geschlecht und Character, 3 Ray Monk, Ludwig Wittgenstein - The Duty Vienna, 1903; Eng\. trans\. Sex and Character, of Genius, London: Jonathan Cape, 1990, p. 72. 1906. Introduction XII Brouwer, op. cit., and later discussions of physician, or physicist, or mathematician, the book and its author. 'Wittgenstein's or as a philosopher, for instanee a pursuit of the ideal of true genius has had logician. Though any one of these alter­ large consequences in contemporary native choices of a profession for Dr. philosophy,' writes Stuart Hampshire, Faustus would probably have transcended reviewing Monk's book.6 Mann's descriptive powers, nothing in his It had been whispered before that famous picture of the European tragedy Wittgenstein approved of Otto Weininger, essentially hinges on Leverkühn's on both scores mentioned above, and also produets being musical compositions. The that later on he was much impressed by a philosopher Wittgenstein and the mathe­ talk by Brouwer. An analysis of the disap­ matician Brouwer both exemplify the pearance of political interest among attitude and standard th at is clearly logicians in terms of their philosophies, expressed by Mann's Or. Faustus: 'Wenn and of the connections between them, has ich vom Hören höre! sagte Adrian. Nach been lacking. Monk does everything that meiner Meinung genügt es völlig. wenn he can do to clarify matters as far as etwas einmal gehört worden ist, nämlich, Wittgenstein is concerned and the influen­ als der Komponist es erdachte. ,8 ces on and from Wittgenstein, taking Otto 'When I hear about hearing! ' said Weininger's statement 'Logic and ethics Adrian. 'In my opinion it is quite suf­ are fundamentally the same, they are no ficient when something has been heard more than duty to oneself as a caption once, namely at the moment when the for his own book. This is not the place to composer conceived it.' Confronted with complete his analysis and dispose of the this semiotics an affronted listener has lost question, but in an introduction to a book the game in advance. on logic and polities, given Monk's work What I should like to caB 'the and Brouwer's untranslated aphoristic philosophical Or. Faustus' is a cluster of early work (1905), something can and culturally induced attitudes with at least should be said. Monk is clearly ignorant these components: dédain towards inter­ of that book, and understandably so, for personal communication, be it verbal or in 1975 it was not (except for a couple of musical, and the position and demands of insignificant stanzas) translated and listeners; towards argumentation; towards included in Brouwer's Collected Work.7 polities; ego-centered semiotics; avid Yet that book is exceedingly illuminating, aspiration to an assessment of Self as and even more so when read in combina­ Genius.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • David Suchoff Family Resemblances: Ludwig Wittgenstein As a Jewish Philosopher the Admonition to Silence with Which Wittgenstein
    David Suchoff Family Resemblances: Ludwig Wittgenstein as a Jewish Philosopher The admonition to silence with which Wittgenstein ended the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1922) also marks the starting point for the emer- gence of his Jewish philosophical voice. Karl Kraus provides an instructive contrast: as a writer well known to Wittgenstein, Kraus’s outspoken and aggressive ridicule of “jüdeln” or “mauscheln” –the actual or alleged pronunciation of German with a Jewish or Yiddish accent – defined a “self-fashioning” of Jewish identity – from German and Hebrew in this case – that modeled false alternatives in philosophic terms.1 Kraus pre- sented Wittgenstein with an either-or choice between German and Jewish identity, while engaging in a witty but also unwitting illumination of the interplay between apparently exclusive alternatives that were linguistically influenced by the other’s voice. As Kraus became a touchstone for Ger- man Jewish writers from Franz Kafka to Walter Benjamin and Gershom Scholem, he also shed light on the situation that allowed Wittgenstein to develop his own non-essentialist notion of identity, as the term “family resemblance” emerged from his revaluation of the discourse around Judaism. This transition from The False Prison, as David Pears calls Wittgenstein’s move from the Tractatus to the Philosophical Investiga- tions, was also a transformation of the opposition between German and Jewish “identities,” and a recovery of the multiple differences from which such apparently stable entities continually draw in their interconnected forms of life.2 “I’ll teach you differences,” the line from King Lear that Wittgenstein mentioned to M. O’C. Drury as “not bad” as a “motto” for the Philo- sophical Investigations, in this way represents Wittgenstein’s assertion of a German Jewish philosophic position.
    [Show full text]
  • 1 Thomas Mann, World Author: Representation and Autonomy In
    Thomas Mann, World Author: Representation and Autonomy in the World Republic of Letters Tobias Boes, University of Notre Dame In her influential study The World Republic of Letters, Pascale Casanova draws a firm line between what she calls “national” and “international” writers. For national writers, “literary aesthetics (because they are connected with political questions) are necessarily neonaturalistic.” International writers, on the other hand, are described as “cosmopolitans and polyglots who, owing to their knowledge of the revolution that have taken place in the freest territories of the literary world, attempt to introduce new norms” (Casanova 110-11). There are a number of different criticisms that could be leveled at this distinction. Here, I want simply to point out the striking similarities between what Casanova alleges are universal sociological categories on the one hand, and a particular historicizing narrative about literary modernism on the other. Casanova insists, for instance, that the struggle for “autonomy,” which she defines as “literary emancipation in the face of political (and national) claims to authority” (39), represents the most distinctive characteristic of international writing. She thereby echoes claims that have been made about “modern” art since at least the late nineteenth century (for an overview of these debates, see Goldstone). Even her remapping of the struggle between “autonomous” and “dependent” modes of thought onto the terms “cosmopolitan” and “national” is echoed by recent trends within modernist scholarship (see for example Walkowitz). This homology is striking, especially since a very different kind of “international writer” (or, as I shall henceforth call them, “world author”) seems to have moved to the foreground in the present day.
    [Show full text]
  • Network Map of Knowledge And
    Humphry Davy George Grosz Patrick Galvin August Wilhelm von Hofmann Mervyn Gotsman Peter Blake Willa Cather Norman Vincent Peale Hans Holbein the Elder David Bomberg Hans Lewy Mark Ryden Juan Gris Ian Stevenson Charles Coleman (English painter) Mauritz de Haas David Drake Donald E. Westlake John Morton Blum Yehuda Amichai Stephen Smale Bernd and Hilla Becher Vitsentzos Kornaros Maxfield Parrish L. Sprague de Camp Derek Jarman Baron Carl von Rokitansky John LaFarge Richard Francis Burton Jamie Hewlett George Sterling Sergei Winogradsky Federico Halbherr Jean-Léon Gérôme William M. Bass Roy Lichtenstein Jacob Isaakszoon van Ruisdael Tony Cliff Julia Margaret Cameron Arnold Sommerfeld Adrian Willaert Olga Arsenievna Oleinik LeMoine Fitzgerald Christian Krohg Wilfred Thesiger Jean-Joseph Benjamin-Constant Eva Hesse `Abd Allah ibn `Abbas Him Mark Lai Clark Ashton Smith Clint Eastwood Therkel Mathiassen Bettie Page Frank DuMond Peter Whittle Salvador Espriu Gaetano Fichera William Cubley Jean Tinguely Amado Nervo Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay Ferdinand Hodler Françoise Sagan Dave Meltzer Anton Julius Carlson Bela Cikoš Sesija John Cleese Kan Nyunt Charlotte Lamb Benjamin Silliman Howard Hendricks Jim Russell (cartoonist) Kate Chopin Gary Becker Harvey Kurtzman Michel Tapié John C. Maxwell Stan Pitt Henry Lawson Gustave Boulanger Wayne Shorter Irshad Kamil Joseph Greenberg Dungeons & Dragons Serbian epic poetry Adrian Ludwig Richter Eliseu Visconti Albert Maignan Syed Nazeer Husain Hakushu Kitahara Lim Cheng Hoe David Brin Bernard Ogilvie Dodge Star Wars Karel Capek Hudson River School Alfred Hitchcock Vladimir Colin Robert Kroetsch Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai Stephen Sondheim Robert Ludlum Frank Frazetta Walter Tevis Sax Rohmer Rafael Sabatini Ralph Nader Manon Gropius Aristide Maillol Ed Roth Jonathan Dordick Abdur Razzaq (Professor) John W.
    [Show full text]
  • Modernism & Modernist Literature: Introduction
    MODERNISM & MODERNIST LITERATURE: INTRODUCTION & BACKGROUND INTRODUCTION Broadly speaking, ‘modernism’ might be said to have been characterised by a deliberate and often radical shift away from tradition, and consequently by the use of new and innovative forms of expression Thus, many styles in art and literature from the late 19th and early 20th centuries are markedly different from those that preceded them. The term ‘modernism’ generally covers the creative output of artists and thinkers who saw ‘traditional’ approaches to the arts, architecture, literature, religion, social organisation (and even life itself) had become outdated in light of the new economic, social and political circumstances of a by now fully industrialised society. Amid rapid social change and significant developments in science (including the social sciences), modernists found themselves alienated from what might be termed Victorian morality and convention. They duly set about searching for radical responses to the radical changes occurring around them, affirming mankind’s power to shape and influence his environment through experimentation, technology and scientific advancement, while identifying potential obstacles to ‘progress’ in all aspects of existence in order to replace them with updated new alternatives. All the enduring certainties of Enlightenment thinking, and the heretofore unquestioned existence of an all-seeing, all-powerful ‘Creator’ figure, were high on the modernists’ list of dogmas that were now to be challenged, or subverted, perhaps rejected altogether, or, at the very least, reflected upon from a fresh new ‘modernist’ perspective. Not that modernism categorically defied religion or eschewed all the beliefs and ideas associated with the Enlightenment; it would be more accurate to view modernism as a tendency to question, and strive for alternatives to, the convictions of the preceding age.
    [Show full text]
  • Martyrs of World War Two
    HEROES HANG WHEN TRAITORS TRIUMPH Martyrs Of World War Two MIKE WALSH BIOGRAPHY MIKE WALSH Mike Walsh is a veteran journalist, broadcaster and historian. A fugitive from renegade Europeans, leftists, palace journalists, he has shrugged off their wrath over 50 years of writing. His Irish-American father, Patrick had fought in four conflicts by the time he reached 40-years of age: The Irish peoples guerrilla war against the British Army‟s Black and Tans. These armed irregulars, dredged from England‟s prisons, were notorious for their viciousness. The Irish War of Independence and on to fight in the most ferocious hand-to-hand battles during the Spanish Civil War. Whilst on the frontlines he was a close associate of American war correspondent, Ernest Hemingway. Mike‟s father formed an enduring friendship with Ireland‟s celebrated playwright, Sean O‟Casey. Eventually his father served in the Royal Air Force during World War Two as an aircraft fitter / flier. Kathleen, Mike‟s well- educated mother also mentored his writing skills. A former novice nun she was a corresponding friend of Spain's Civil War revolutionary La Pasionaria. From the age of 26 the world-travelling Mike was consumed by a passion for truth and justice. Inevitably, this led him to the potpourri of lies, infamies, cover-ups and crimes committed by the Allies that militarily defeated the Workers Reich. By doing so they ensured the spread of Bolshevism, denial of freedom to nearly a score of Central European nations, the dismembering of the British Empire, and surrender to American imperialism. The Allied victory ensured that Bolshevism would fester for a further 45 years; this they call victory.
    [Show full text]
  • MC Faculty Recs
    Spend Some Down Time Reading: Mount Carmel High School Faculty Book Recommendations Recommended By: Title Author Fiction/Nonfiction Genre Comments A classic so it's free; Read the book before you see 1 Mrs. Pienton Call of the Wild Jack London Fiction Adventure the movie 2 Mrs. Pienton The Invisible Man H.G. Wells Fiction Sci-Fi This also is a classic with a new movie version Probably the most famous Latin-American Classic 3 Mr. Scheuring One Hundred Years of Solitude Gabriel Garcia Marquez Fiction Fantasy for Americans -- not really fantasy, but magical realist. Part horror, part gothic, part science. She finished 4 Mr. Scheuring Frankenstein Mary Shelley Fiction Horror this as a 20 year old! Not his best work, but it's short, and the first line 5 Mr. Scheuring The Metamorphosis Franz Kafka Fiction Classic literally states that the main character is now a bug. You'll be surprised how much you might identify 6 Mr. Scheuring Gilead Marilynne Robinson Fiction Philosophy/Religion with an elderly and ill preacher from Iowa Vivid 1st hand account of a Holocaust survivor. 7 Mr. Tabernacki Night Elie Wiesel Nonfiction Historical Short read, but powerful. Fascinating story, beautifully written, about the 8 Mr. John Haggerty The Overstory Richard Powers Fiction all its own connections of nine different individuals/families whose lives are intertwined with trees. One of my all time favorites. A short novel about an American couple who move to Mexico to reopen 9 Mr. John Haggerty Stones for Ibarra Harriett Doerr Fiction Realistic a coppe mine abandoned decades before by a relative.
    [Show full text]
  • From Tristan to Don Juan: Romance and Courtly Love in the Fiction Of
    View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by OpenGrey Repository From Tristan to Don Juan: Romance and courtly love in the fiction of three Spanish American authors. By Rosix E. Rincones Díaz A thesis submitted to the University of Birmingham For the degree of DOCTOR IN PHILOSOPHY Department of Hispanic Studies School of Languages, Cultures, Art History and Music College of Arts and Law University of Birmingham September 2011 University of Birmingham Research Archive e-theses repository This unpublished thesis/dissertation is copyright of the author and/or third parties. The intellectual property rights of the author or third parties in respect of this work are as defined by The Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 or as modified by any successor legislation. Any use made of information contained in this thesis/dissertation must be in accordance with that legislation and must be properly acknowledged. Further distribution or reproduction in any format is prohibited without the permission of the copyright holder. Content listings Abstract Acknowlegements Chapter One: Introduction 1 Chapter Two: García Márquez’s Florentino: A Reinvented Don Juan. 52 Chapter Three: Álvaro Mutis’s La Última Escala del Tramp Steamer as a development of the courtly romance: The poetry of inner exploration. 125 Chapter four: The two spaces of Pedro Páramo: From the decadent patriarchal order of Comala to the Ideology of Courtly love. 198 Conclusion 248 Bibliography 252 Abstract This thesis is centred on Gabriel García Márquez’s novel El amor en los tiempos del cólera, Álvaro Mutis’ novella La última escala del Tramp Steamer, and Juan Rulfo’s novel Pedro Páramo.
    [Show full text]
  • INTRODUCTION Marianne Stecher-Hansen
    INTRODUCTION Marianne Stecher-Hansen 8 Where does an intellectual inquiry begin? In the late 1990s, I taught a gradu- ate seminar at the University of Washington that dealt with Nordic literature and World War II. Is there such a thing as a Scandinavian war novel? We read literary works in the original Swedish, Norwegian, and Danish, such as Pär Lagerkvist’s Th e Dwarf (1944), Vilhelm Moberg’s Ride Th is Night (1941), Sigrid Hoel’s Meeting at the Milestone (1947), Knut Hamsun’s On Overgrown Paths (1948), and Isak Dinesen’s Th e Angelic Avengers (1946). Connections to hardcore war literature seemed remote. My interest in the period was sparked by Th orkild Hansen’s controversial documentary novel Processen mod Ham- sun (1978; Th e case against Hamsun), about the postwar trial of Norwegian Nobel Laureate Knut Hamsun (1859–1952), which was the subject of my research at that time (Stecher-Hansen, 1997; 1999). Th e graduate seminar led to a course development grant from the Center for West European Studies in 2001; since then, I have regularly taught a course on “War and Occupation in the Nordic Region” at the University of Washington that has attracted many students from the Department of Scandinavian Studies and the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies, particularly European Studies majors. Th e project that began as an intellectual inquiry with graduate students coincided neatly in the 1990s with the emergence of a second (and eventually third) generation of World War II scholars in the Nordic countries, a tide that swelled with the Historikerstreit (historians’ debate) on the European continent and a turn toward a “moral narrative” in revisionist approaches to World War II history.
    [Show full text]
  • 6 X 10.5 Long Title.P65
    Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-83843-6 - Seeing Wittgenstein Anew Edited by William Day and Victor J. Krebs Excerpt More information Introduction Seeing Aspects in Wittgenstein William Day and Victor J. Krebs To see and describe aspects in Wittgenstein (aspects of insight, of perspicuity, of profundity, etc.) is what any discussion of his writings, and in particular of the enigmatic Philosophical Investigations, attempts to do. It would be a cute pun, but a sad excuse for a book, if this vol- ume of new essays offered simply the promise of “seeing” and describ- ing “aspects” in Wittgenstein’s discussion of aspect-seeing. Having invited and then discussed the essays in the present volume with our contributors over a handful of years, we find that they offer more than that simple promise. At a minimum, they bring out a range of connections between Parts I and II of the Investigations that should interest Wittgensteinian scholars whose central concerns would oth- erwise seem untouched by the discussions of aspect-seeing in the Investigations and elsewhere. More than occasionally these essays open up novel paths across familiar fields of thought to anyone for whom, for example, the objectivity of interpretation, the fixity of the past, the acquisition of language, or the nature of human consciousness remain live issues. But a recurring discovery in the chapters that fol- low is that there is something to be found in his remarks on aspect- seeing that is crucial to, yet all but overlooked in, the reception of the later Wittgenstein. And since the fate of the reception of the later Wittgenstein remains tied to one’s reading of the Investigations, however broadened by the publication of subsequent volumes of his later writings, it matters that these essays also have something to con- tribute to that perennial, and perhaps most pressing, question in 1 © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-83843-6 - Seeing Wittgenstein Anew Edited by William Day and Victor J.
    [Show full text]
  • The History of Russell's Pythagorean Mysticism
    Reviews 175 THE HISTORY OF RUSSELeS PYTHAGOREAN MYSTICISM STEFAN ANDERSSON Theology and Religious Studies I University of Lund 5-223 62, Lund, Sweden [email protected] Ray Monk. Russell: Mathematics: Dreams and Nightmares. (The Great Philos­ ophers.) London: Phoenix, 1997. Paperbound. Pp. vi, 58. £2.00. CDN$4·99· ay Monk's short book on Russell is number seven in a series of books R called The Great Philosophers. Since there is neither a publisher's fore­ word nor an author's preface, the only suggestion concerning the content is the subtitle Mathematics: Dreams and Nightmares. For those familiar with Monk's earlier work on Wittgenstein and Russell and his understanding of the relationship between them, it will corne as no surprise that Monk has chosen this theme for his little book. His essay has two parts: 'The Pythagorean Dream" and "The Mathema­ tician's Nightmare". In the first part Monk describes the content, origin, and development of the Pythagorean dream up to Russell's discovery of his para­ dox. The second part is devoted to showing how the dream turned into a nightmare, mainly due to Wittgenstein's influence. Monk traces the origin of the dream back to an experience that Russell had at the age of eleven, when his older brother Frank gave him lessons in geometry. Russell described the experience as being "as dazzling as first love" and went on to say that from that moment until he finished Principia Mathe­ matica, written with his former teacher Alfred North Whitehead, "mathemat­ ics was my chief interest, and my chief source of happiness." What made geometry so attractive to Russell was that it purported to provide him and everyone else with knowledge that was so certain that no reasonable man could question its truth.
    [Show full text]
  • George Bernard Shaw in Context Edited by Brad Kent Frontmatter More Information
    Cambridge University Press 978-1-107-04745-7 - George Bernard Shaw in Context Edited by Brad Kent Frontmatter More information GEORGE BERNARD SHAW IN CONTEXT When Shaw died in 1950, the world lost one of its most well-known authors, a revolutionary who was as renowned for his personality as he was for his humour, humanity, and rebellious thinking. He remains a compelling figure who deserves attention not only for how influential he was in his time but also for how relevant he is to ours. This collection sets Shaw’s life and achievements in context, with forty-two chapters devoted to subjects that interested him and defined his work. Contributors explore a wide range of themes, moving from factors that were formative in Shaw’s life, to the artistic work that made him most famous and the institutions with which he worked, to the political and social issues that consumed much of his attention, and, finally, to his influence and reception. Presenting fresh material and arguments, this collection will point to new direc- tions of research for future scholars. brad kent is Associate Professor of British and Irish Literatures at Université Laval and was Visiting Professor at Trinity College Dublin in 2013–14. His recent publications include a critical edition of Shaw’s Mrs Warren’s Profession (2012), The Selected Essays of Sean O’Faolain (forthcoming), and essays in University of Toronto Quarterly, Modern Drama, ARIEL: A Review of International English Literatures, English Literature in Transition, Irish University Review, and The Oxford Handbook of Modern Irish Theatre. He is also the programme director of the Shaw Symposium, held annually at the Shaw Festival in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Canada.
    [Show full text]
  • Premio Nobel Per La Letteratura
    Premio Nobel per la letteratura Bibliografia A cura della Biblioteca Cantonale di Bellinzona Novembre 2017 Il 5 ottobre 2017 Kazuo Ishiguro ha vinto il Premio Nobel per la letteratura. E’ stata l’occasione per scoprire o ri-scoprire questo importante scrittore inglese di origine giapponese. Ma quali sono gli scrittori premiati in questi anni? Dal 1901 ogni anno un autore viene onorato con questo significativo premio. Proponiamo con questa bibliografia le opere di scrittori vincitori del Premio Nobel, presenti nel fondo della Biblioteca cantonale di Bellinzona, e nel caso in cui la biblioteca non possedesse alcun titolo di un autore, le opere presenti nel catalogo del Sistema bibliotecario ticinese. Gli autori sono elencati cronologicamente decrescente a partire dall’anno in cui hanno vinto il premio. Per ogni autore è indicato il link che rinvia al catalogo del Sistema bibliotecario ticinese. 2017 Kazuo Ishiguro 2016 Bob Dylan 2015 Svjatlana Aleksievič 2014 Patrick Modiano 2013 Alice Munro 2012 Mo Yan 2011 Tomas Tranströmer 2010 Mario Vargas Llosa 2009 Herta Müller 2008 Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio 2007 Doris Lessing 2006 Orhan Pamuk 2005 Harold Pinter 2004 Elfriede Jelinek 2003 John Maxwell Coetzee 2002 Imre Kertész 2001 Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul 2000 Gao Xingjian 1999 Günter Grass 1998 José Saramago 1997 Dario Fo 1996 Wisława Szymborska 1995 Séamus Heaney 1994 Kenzaburō Ōe 1993 Toni Morrison 1992 Derek Walcott 1991 Nadine Gordimer 1990 Octavio Paz 1989 Camilo José Cela 1988 Naguib Mahfouz 1987 Iosif Aleksandrovič Brodskij 1986 Wole
    [Show full text]