Going Continental

Abstract

It is not by chance that one meets proclamations of the following type: “… there is now an increasing recognition that analytic and continental philosophers genuinely ought to have something to say to one another, and that the later work of Wittgenstein may provide a bridge between them.”¹ One could embark here, yet again, on a continuation of an erstwhile tradition, on the oft-told tale of two Wittgensteins — the early and the later. Beyond this paragraph being a disclaimer, let us only point, yet again, to the problematics involved in that traditional division: a problematics which addresses not only the legitimacy and accuracy of dividing the Wittgensteinian legacy into a clearly delimited early and later (sometimes by pointing to outstanding continuities, other times to divisions, between the two) but also the exact number of Wittgensteins (usually by adding on a pre-early, a middle, and lately even a post-later level to the original two). These classical partitions are not to the point here, which is not to say that they do not touch, in a way to be followed up on later, on our own point. We do not intend to talk of diverging Wittgensteins here, but rather of diverging readings of Wittgenstein; neither do we intend to continue our survey of the myriad of interpretations now with us concerning Wittgenstein, but rather to point to two main “families” of interpretation — analytic and continental interpretations.

I may find questions interesting, but they never really grip me. Only conceptual and aesthetic qustions do that. At bottom I am indifferent to the solution of scientific problems; but not the other sort. (Culture and Value 79 )