Comment by codewright | Hacker News Reader

Comment by codewright | Hacker News Reader

It's a good list for cherry-picking a couple reading ideas, but the amateur comments about philosophy weren't well-received by this individual.

> I find that it’s thoroughly undervalued by philosophers

Doing okay so far...

>though, who see it as an arcane and eccentric work of little value

Not so sure about that...the timing for Wittgenstein's work might've been unfortunate, given that people were starting to become infatuated with existentialism around the same time. That was as more of a pop-culture phenomenon than an academic fad though.

>it’s a difficult thing to read

Okay again...

>Ironically for a book ignored by most philosophers, it contains the answers to a lot of their questions, and the method for answering all of them.

Hrm, no. A lot of the questions concerning philosophy and the method for answering all of them?

I sincerely doubt any work that could described in such terms would be as obscure as he proposes. This borders on the illogic of conspiracy theorists believing they've found some secret truth.

A bizarre flash of irrationality in an otherwise great post.

Thanks.

You question whether it's really seen as that eccentric: I've actually corresponded with a bunch of UK philosophers about Wittgenstein, all of whom regard his earlier work as vaguely interesting if subsequently outmoded (a more or less accurate assessment) and his later work as eccentric and mostly irrelevant to serious philosophy (a totally wrong-headed assessment). I'm happy to send you email extracts if you still doubt that.

I should note that I studied philosophy here in the UK (at Oxford), so perhaps I'm biased towards the UK. But I think this applies to the US too: Wittgenstein sort-of influenced the American tradition via Rorty and Kripke, but he's still not central to modern American academic philosophy. Kripke got him totally wrong anyway, and Wittgenstein's only a piece of Rorty's outlook.

As to your last comment - what you seem to be saying is that this is highly improbable based on 'well if it's that good why doesn't everyone believe that' considerations. To which I'd respond: (a) it's not a totally obscure work. In fact, it's regarded as the main late Wittgenstein work. But (b) late Wittgenstein is totally undervalued by the mainstream of academic philosophy, mostly because (I think) he renders it irrelevant; and (c) you're better off actually reading the thing and deciding for yourself. Otherwise you become a sort of 'efficient market theorist' w.r.t. academia/books. Not a position I'd want to hold, personally.

>As far as I know, Wittgenstein sort-of influenced the American tradition via Rorty, but he's still not central to modern American academic philosophy.

Ahhh, you're coming from the perspective of an analytic philosopher. The part about the UK I can't really incorporate except to take your word for it. I've assumed they were independent of the "continental" zeitgeist.

I don't come from the analytic family of philosophy. I could never really get past Frege. OTOH, I don't care for the hippies on the other side of the fence either.

I'd be happy to peruse material/readings if you have any. I'll add my email address to my profile now.

Thank you for replying!

Ah interesting - are you a philosopher? What family of philosophy do you tend to focus on?

I let philosophy consume my life for a few years to the detriment of everything else.

I'm a values/ethics/aesthetic/desert/metaphysics nihilist with a keen interest in epistemology. Most recent relevant read I've enjoyed of late has been Popper and his work on falsifiability.

I've been trying to work through Marx recently too, but I find reading him to be a lot like reading Ayn Rand.

Insufferable and they expect you to swallow the bitter pill of their ridiculous foundations they use to prop up the philosophy they work backwards from their personal preferences to justify. I'm going to continue for the sake of trying to extract some sense of analysis with respect to Capitalism, but it's slow-going.

"I let philosophy consume my life for a few years to the detriment of everything else." - sounds like you'd love Wittgenstein. Haha.

Marx is WAY more interesting than Ayn Rand. Although you're probably better off reading Chomsky today. Popper is awesome.

> I've been trying to work through Marx recently too, but I find reading him to be a lot like reading Ayn Rand. > Insufferable and they expect you to swallow the bitter pill of their ridiculous foundations they use to prop up the philosophy they work backwards from their personal preferences to justify. I'm going to continue for the sake of trying to extract some sense of analysis with respect to Capitalism, but it's slow-going.

I'm sorry, but what on earth are you reading? Ayn Rand was a rambling novelist, while Marx' Capital is a brilliant work of economic analysis. Parts of it are completely outdated, and some predictions proved drastically false, but it's nonetheless got some brilliant insights at its core. If you happen to be reading The Communist Manifesto, it's a political pamphlet for agitation and not a work of philosophy.

I'm reading Das Kapital, not a pamphlet. Try to lend other people a little more intellectual credit than that.

With regards to Ayn Rand, in a similar spirit, I'm not talking about her crappy fiction work (which is similar in purpose to the Communist Manifesto), but rather her more deliberate and directly philosophical tracts.

Interestingly, as a result, I can only assume you committed the mistake you thought I did, judging the philosopher on the basis of their secondary output rather than the core subject matter.

I don't adhere to objectivism and I think they're fucking cultists, but I do know their philosophy well and the basis for it bears a lot of resemblance to how Marxism is grounded and justified philosophically speaking. Marxism is somewhat more empirical but not by much.

My perspective on the similarity of the bases of each may be colored by the fact that I come from a strongly skeptical and deconstructionist background.

In general, I'm willing to entertain a priori suggestions for the sake of exploring an interesting thought. An example would be that I'm willing to suspend disbelief long enough to discuss the subject of "desert" with a philosopher who isn't a nihilist if it leads to interesting conversation.

What I am not willing to do is suspend disbelief long enough to swallow an overarching socio-political theory on how the whole world should be run regardless of social context (Marxism and Objectivism) based on some ridiculous presumptions about truth and human nature.

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