Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-mkpzs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-21T06:25:54.632Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
Series:   Elements in the Philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein

Wittgenstein on Realism and Idealism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 December 2023

David R. Cerbone
David R. Cerbone
Affiliation:
West Virginia University

Summary

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.
Get access

Keywords

Wittgensteinrealismidealismphilosophical methodquietism
Type
Element
Information
Series: Elements in the Philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein
Online ISBN: 9781108920766
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication: 01 February 2024

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Primary Sources

Secondary Sources

Anscombe, G. E. M. (1981) “The Question of Linguistic Idealism.” In From Parmenides to Wittgenstein. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Bartmann, Marius (2021) Wittgenstein’s Metametaphysics and the Realism-Idealism Debate. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bloor, David (1983) Wittgenstein: A Social Theory of Knowledge. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Bloor, David (1991) Knowledge and Social Imagery. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Bloor, David (1996) “The Question of Linguistic Idealism Revisited.” In The Cambridge Companion to Wittgenstein, edited by Sluga, H. and Stern, D.. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Boncompagni, Anna (2014) “On Trying to Say What ‘Goes Without Saying’: Wittgenstein on Certainty and Ineffability.” Journal of Theories and Research in Education 9 (1): 51–68.Google Scholar
Boncompagni, Anna (2015) “Elucidating Forms of Life: The Evolution of a Philosophical Tool.” Nordic Wittgenstein Review 4: 155–175.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boncompagni, Anna (2016) Wittgenstein and Pragmatism. London: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boncompagni, Anna (2022) Wittgenstein on Forms of Life. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Cavell, Stanley (1990) Conditions Handsome and Unhandsome. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Cavell, Stanley (1995) “Notes and Afterthoughts on the Opening of Wittgenstein’s Investigations.” Pages 125–186 in Philosophical Passages. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Cerbone, David R. (1994) “Don’t Look But Think: Imaginary Scenarios in Wittgenstein’s Later Philosophy.” Inquiry 37 (2): 159–183.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cerbone, David R. (2003) “The Limits of Conservatism: Wittgenstein on ‘Our Life’ and ‘Our Concepts’.” Pages 43–62 in The Grammar of Politics, edited by Heyes, C.. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Cerbone, David R. (2015) “Wittgenstein and Idealism.” Pages 311–332 in The Oxford Handbook to Wittgenstein, edited by McGinn, M. and Kuusela, O.. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Cerbone, David R. (2019a) “Ground, Background, and Rough Ground: Dreyfus, Wittgenstein, and Phenomenology.” Pages 62–79 in Normativity, Meaning, and the Promise of Phenomenology, edited by Burch, M., Marsh, J., and McMullin, I.. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Cerbone, David R. (2019b) “‘Life Is Very Complicated’: Remarks on a Recurring Adjective.” Pages 135–149 in Wittgensteinian (Adj.), edited by Wuppuluri, S. and da Costa, N.. New York: Springer.Google Scholar
Cerbone, David R. (2020) “Unruly Readers, Unruly Words: Wittgenstein and Language.” Pages 624–645 in The Cambridge History of Philosophy, 1945–2015, edited by Becker, K. and Thomson, I.. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Cockburn, David (2021) Wittgenstein, Conversation and Human Beings. London: Anthem Press.Google Scholar
Diamond, Cora (1991) The Realistic Spirit. Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press.Google Scholar
Friedlander, Eli (2001) Signs of Sense: Reading Wittgenstein’s Tractatus. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gellner, Ernest (1998) Language and Solitude: Wittgenstein, Malinowski, and the Hapsburg Dilemma. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goldfarb, Warren (1983) “I Want You to Bring Me a Slab: Remarks on the Opening Sections of the Philosophical Investigations.” Synthese 56 (3): 265–282.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ishiguro, Hidé (1969) “Use and Reference of Names.” Pages 20–50 in Studies in the Philosophy of Wittgenstein, edited by Winch, P.. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Lear, Jonathan (1982) “Leaving the World Alone.” The Journal of Philosophy 79 (7): 382–403.Google Scholar
Lear, Jonathan, and Stroud, Barry (1984) “The Disappearing ‘We’.” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society Supplemental Volumes 58: 219–258.Google Scholar
McDowell, John (1984) “Wittgenstein on Following a Rule.” Synthese 58 (March): 325–364.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McDowell, John (1996) Mind and World. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
McGuinness, Brian (1981) “The So-Called Realism of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus.” Pages 60–73 in Perspectives on the Philosophy of Wittgenstein, edited by Block, I.. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.Google Scholar
McManus, Denis (2006) The Enchantment of Words: Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
McManus, Denis (2012) Heidegger and the Measure of Truth. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Moore, Adrian William, and Sullivan, Peter (2003) “Ineffability and Nonsense.” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society Supplemental Volumes 77: 169–193 and 195–223.Google Scholar
Moore, G. E. (1959) Philosophical Studies. Paterson, NJ: Littlefield, Adams, and Company.Google Scholar
Mounce, Howard Owen (1997) “Philosophy, Solipsism and Thought.” The Philosophical Quarterly 47 (186): 1–18.Google Scholar
Moyal-Sharrock, Daniele, and Brenner, William (2005) Readings of Wittgenstein’s On Certainty. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nagel, Thomas (1989) The View from Nowhere. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Proops, Ian (2000) Logic and Language in Wittgenstein’s Tractatus. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Rhees, Rush (2008) Wittgenstein’s On Certainty: There – Like Our Life. Edited by Phillips, D. Z.. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar
Rhees, Rush (2015) “Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Conversations with Rush Rhees (1939–50): From the Notes of Rush Rhees.” Edited by Citron, G.. Mind 124 (403): 1–71.Google Scholar
Richter, Duncan (2022) Wittgenstein’s Tractatus: A Student’s Edition. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.Google Scholar
Ritter, Bernhard (2020) Kant and Post-Tractarian Wittgenstein: Transcendentalism, Idealism, Illusion. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Russell, Bertrand (1959) The Problems of Philosophy. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Stern, David (1995) Wittgenstein on Mind and Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Stern, David (2018) “Introduction.” Pages 1–24 in Wittgenstein in the 1930s: Between the Tractatus and the Investigations, edited by Stern, D.. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stroud, Barry (2002) Meaning, Understanding, and Practice: Philosophical Papers. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Sullivan, Peter (1996) “The ‘Truth’ in Solipsism, and Wittgenstein’s Rejection of the A Priori.” European Journal of Philosophy 4 (2): 195–220.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sullivan, Peter (2001) “A Version of the Picture Theory.” Pages 89–110 in Ludwig Wittgenstein: Tractatus logico-philosophicus, edited by Vossenkuhl, W.. Berlin: Akademie Verlag.Google Scholar
Williams, Bernard (1981) “Wittgenstein and Idealism.” Pages 144–163 in Moral Luck: Philosophical Papers 1973–1980. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar

Save element to Kindle

To save this element to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Wittgenstein on Realism and Idealism
Available formats
×

Save element to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Wittgenstein on Realism and Idealism
Available formats
×

Save element to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Wittgenstein on Realism and Idealism
Available formats
×