Books about Wittgenstein from Amazon.com

Perhaps the most important work of philosophy written in the twentieth century, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus was the only philosophical work that Ludwig Wittgenstein published during his lifetime Written in short, carefully numbered paragraphs of extreme brilliance, it captured the imagination of a generation of philosophers. For Wittgenstein, logic was something we use to conquer a reality which is in itself both elusive and unobtainable. He famously summarized the book in the following words: 'What can be said at all can be said clearly; and what we cannot talk about we must pass over in silence.' David Pears and Brian McGuinness received the highest praise for their meticulous translation. The work is prefaced by Bertrand Russell's original introduction to the first English edition..
Price: $10.67 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Written by one of the century's truly great thinkers, Ludwig Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations is a remarkable--and surprisingly approachable--collection of insights, statements, and nearly displayed thinking habits of the philosopher's work on language, symbols, categories, and a host of other topics. Organized into nearly 700 short observations, this book is a treasure trove for anyone who needs to think carefully about objects, categories, and symbols, especially in relation to structured logic applications in computer programming.

The short (and sometimes aphoristic) observations in Philosophical Investigations allow the reader to ponder basic questions on what describes a category, how language works in everyday situations, and how symbols function to represent our world.

Originally a series of notes to himself as he lectured on philosophy, the book is a brilliant grab bag of thought and example. Often framed as a question ("How do I recognize that this is red?"), the philosopher provides short answers in a sentence or two, never more than a paragraph. (The second part of the book uses longer answers of several pages to develop its arguments.) An index lets the reader browse on topics of interest--such as language, concept, games, or naming.

Any artificial intelligence researcher looking to understand human language will be intrigued by Wittgenstein's ideas on how symbols and language operate. And for anyone who designs software with objects, this book's careful attention to thinking about what makes a good category demonstrates rigorous thinking about everyday objects and things. Philosophical Investigations is at times a strange and often wonderful book that reveals the thought processes of one of history's finest minds. It exposes the fundamental problems of using language as a means of teaching machines to think using words. --Richard Dragan

Topics covered: Theory of language and language games, meaning and symbols, concepts and categories, behavior, games (including chess), color, images and perception, grammar and language, sensations, theory of mind and thinking..
Price: $35.01 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) was an extraordinarily original thinker, whose influence on twentieth-century thinking far outside the bounds of philosophy alone. In this engaging Introduction, A.C. Grayling makes Wittgenstein's thought accessible to the general reader by explaining the nature and impact of Wittgenstein's views. He describes both his early and later philosophy, the differences and connections between them, and gives a fresh assessment of Wittgenstein's continuing influence on contemporary thought..
Price: $3.55 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Distinguished philosopher Hilary Putnam, who is also a practicing Jew, questions the thought of three major Jewish philosophers of the 20th century--Franz Rosenzweig, Martin Buber, and Emmanuel Levinas--to help him reconcile the philosophical and religious sides of his life. An additional presence in the book is Ludwig Wittgenstein, who, although not a practicing Jew, thought about religion in ways that Putnam juxtaposes to the views of Rosenzweig, Buber, and Levinas. Putnam explains the leading ideas of each of these great thinkers, bringing out what, in his opinion, constitutes the decisive intellectual and spiritual contributions of each of them. Although the religion discussed is Judaism, the depth and originality of these philosophers, as incisively interpreted by Putnam, make their thought nothing less than a guide to life..
Price: $15.96 [Notify me when price goes down.]

On October 25, 1946, in a crowded room in Cambridge, England, the great twentieth-century philosophers Ludwig Wittgenstein and Karl Popper came face to face for the first and only time. The meeting -- which lasted ten minutes -- did not go well. Their loud and aggressive confrontation became the stuff of instant legend, but precisely what happened during that brief confrontation remained for decades the subject of intense disagreement.

An engaging mix of philosophy, history, biography, and literary detection, Wittgenstein's Poker explores, through the Popper/Wittgenstein confrontation, the history of philosophy in the twentieth century. It evokes the tumult of fin-de-siécle Vienna, Wittgentein's and Popper's birthplace; the tragedy of the Nazi takeover of Austria; and postwar Cambridge University, with its eccentric set of philosophy dons, including Bertrand Russell. At the center of the story stand the two giants of philosophy themselves -- proud, irascible, larger than life -- and spoiling for a fight..
Price: $4.45 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Visiting his student Ludwig Wittgenstein one night only to find him in the throes of despair, Bertrand Russell facetiously asked whether it was logic or his sins that was troubling him. "Both," Wittgenstein gravely replied. Is it any wonder that Wittgenstein the man, as well as his elusive but profound philosophical work, continue to fascinate? "Any attempt at a definitive exposition of his ideas would be doomed to failure," according to editor Hans Sluga; therefore, the Cambridge Companion to Wittgenstein is intended mainly "to alert readers to some of the most important and most interesting issues raised in Wittgenstein's philosophical writings." For the most part, the 14 essays succeed.

With the exception of Thomas Ricketts's discussion of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, the focus of the essays is on Wittgenstein's later work, particularly the Philosophical Investigations. His conception of philosophy is approached from various angles by Robert J. Fogelin, Newton Garver, and Stanley Cavell. The format of Cavell's essay--which consists of his lecture notes from the 1960s and 1970s interspersed with afterthoughts from the 1990s--is somewhat irritating, but the depth of his insight makes up for it. Other essays deal with Wittgenstein's ideas about the philosophy of mathematics, ethics, necessity and normativity, the self, and epistemology. Especially worthy of attention is Donna M. Summerfield's "Fitting and Tracking: Wittgenstein on Representation." In explaining the development of Wittgenstein's thought about representation, Summerfield also manages to sketch the philosophical problem of representation in careful and perspicacious detail. All in all, The Cambridge Companion to Wittgenstein is recommended to anyone grappling with its enigmatic subject. --Glenn Branch.
Price: $7.72 [Notify me when price goes down.]

.
Price: $7.00 [Notify me when price goes down.]