Logos (Dec 2012)
Does it make sense to talk about a “Third Wittgenstein” following 1946?
Abstract
According to Danièle Moyal-Sharrock and Avrum Stroll, there are compelling reasons for talking about a “third Wittgenstein” whose corpus would be made up of all the works written by the Viennese philosopher following 1946, including the second part of his Philosophical Investigations. The main reasons are the description of a new form of foundationalism in which foundational items and the items which rest upon them do not belong to the same category; the grammaticalization of experience; the dissolution of the mind-body problem, and the demystification of scepticism. In this paper, I will not only analyze these arguments, but I will also bear in mind the main differences between the so-called “first” and “second Wittgenstein” to conclude that it doesn’t make sense to talk about a “third Wittgenstein”.
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