Ästhetik - Wittgenstein, Theory and the Arts

Throughout this volume, the standard abbreviations for Wittgensteins works will be used. They are as follows:

The editors are grateful to John Hyman for his comments upon the introduction, and Rahul Hamid for his editorial work. Thanks also to Tony Bruce at Routledge for his support for this project and to Muna Khogali for helping us to stay on course. Finally, the editors wish to thank Bridget Sisk and Sarah Wilcox for their moral support.

Charles Altieri (1976) Wittgenstein on Consciousness and Language: A Challenge to Derridean Literary Theory, Modern Language Notes 91(6): 1397423. The Johns Hopkins University Press. Reprinted with permission.

Richard Allen is Associate Professor of Cinema Studies at New York University. He is author of Projecting Illusion (Cambridge University Press, 1995) and co-editor of Film Theory and Philosophy (Clarendon, 1997) and Hitchcock: Centenary Essays (BFI, 1999).

Charles Altieri teaches in the English Department at the University of California, Berkeley, where he is also the Director of its Consortium for the Arts. His most recent books are Subjective Agency (Blackwell, 1994) and Postmodernisms Now (Pennsylvania State University, 1998).

P.M.S. Hacker is Fellow of St Johns College, Oxford. He is author of numerous books, among which are Insight and Illusion: Themes in the Philosophy of Wittgenstein (Oxford University Press, 1972; revised edition, 1986); Appearance and Reality (Blackwell, 1986); An Analytical Commentary on Wittgensteins Philosophical Investigations in four volumes (volumes 1 and 2 together with G.P. Baker) (Blackwell, 198096). His most recent book is Wittgensteins Place in Twentieth-century Analytic Philosophy (Blackwell, 1996).

Oswald Hnfling is Visiting Research Professor at the Open University. He is the author of numerous articles on Wittgenstein and his books include Wittgensteins Later Philosophy (Macmillan, 1989) and Philosophy and Ordinary Language (Routledge, 2000).

John Hyman is Fellow and Praelector in Philosophy at Queens College, Oxford. He is author of The Imitation of Nature (Blackwell, 1989) and editor of Investigating Psychology (Routledge, 1991).

Graham McFee is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Brighton. His major research interests, in addition to the philosophy of Wittgenstein, are in aesthetics, and in the philosophy of understanding. His principal publications include Understanding Dance (Routledge, 1992) and Free Will (Acumen, 2000).

Louis A. Sass is Professor of Clinical Psychology at Rutgers University, where he also serves on the graduate faculty in comparative literature and is an affiliate of the Center for Cognitive Science. He is author of two books: Madness and Modernism: Insanity in the Light of Modern Art, Literature, and Thought (Harvard University Press, 1992), and The Paradoxes of Delusion: Wittgenstein, Schreber; and the Schizophrenic Mind (Cornell University Press, 1994); he also co-edited Hermeneutics and Psychological Theory.

Severin Schroeder is Lecturer in Philosophy at Lady Margaret Hall and Christ Church, Oxford. He is the author of several articles on Wittgenstein, a monograph on Kripkes Naming and Necessity (ber namensphilosophische Intuitionen , Hnsel-Hohenhausen, 1992), and a book on Wittgensteins private language argument ( Das Privatsprachen-Argument, Schningh, 1998). He has edited Wittgenstein & Contemporary Philosophy of Mind (Palgrave, 2001).

Ben R. Tilghman is Professor Emeritus at Kansas State University where he taught from 1967 to 1994. Previously he taught at Reed College, Western State College of Colorado, and the University of Wyoming. His publications include The Expression of Emotion in the Visual Arts (Martinus Nijhoff, 1970), Language and Aesthetics (University Press of Kansas, 1973), But is it Art? (Blackwell, 1984), Wittgenstein, Ethics and Aesthetics (State University of New York Press, 1991), and Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion (Blackwell, 1994).

Malcolm Turvey is former Managing Editor of the journal October , and has just joined the faculty of Sarah Lawrence College to teach film history. He has published articles on Wittgenstein, film theory and avant-garde film.

Richard Allen and Malcolm Turvey

To date, Wittgensteins later philosophy has had little if any lasting influence on humanistic disciplines that study the arts. The highly original conception of philosophy he pioneered in his later writings, and his realization of this conception in investigating the manifold uses of language in the stream of human life, are almost entirely unknown to scholars in fields such as film studies, literary studies, history of art and cultural studies. And while there are a few exceptions to this situation, they tend to foster misunderstandings of Wittgenstein due to their over-hasty assimilation of his work to philosophical trends that are currently prevalent in the humanities (most notably, various forms of scepticism). Meanwhile, although his later conception of philosophy is more familiar to Anglo-American aestheticians, it is not widely adhered to by them.

The primary goal of this volume of essays is to help in the task of rectifying this situation by making Wittgensteins later philosophy better known and understood to scholars in these disciplines. For although Wittgenstein himself did not spend much time on the sort of philosophical questions they raise, or address the broader implications of his later philosophy for the humanities in general, he nevertheless has much to teach scholars who study literature, the arts and culture. As in other domains of knowledge, the powerful methods he employed in his later writings can yield considerable riches when applied to questions and problems of a properly philosophical nature encountered by such scholars. As many of the essays in this volume demonstrate, these methods can extirpate the conceptual confusions to which scholars of the arts succumb, and enable a perspicuous grasp of the distinctive concepts they use in studying artistic phenomena.

Just as importantly, Wittgensteins later conception of philosophy, as well as his own investigations into the logical character of explanations of human behaviour precipitated by this conception, have far-reaching ramifications for the very practice of the humanities, for the way human beings as social, historical and cultural beings are studied. As one of Wittgensteins former students, the philosopher G.H. von Wright, has argued, they can provide the foundations for a veritable philosophy of the humanities, one that clarifies the forms of explanation that are logically appropriate to the subject matter of humanistic disciplines, thereby defining and defending the autonomy of humanistic understanding (von Wright 1993: 165).