Abstract
The introduction spells out the aims of the study and offers a brief summary of its contents. The author clarifies that the goal of the work is not to assess whether Wittgenstein was or was not, in any specific sense, a pragmatist, but to let some aspects of his thought emerge and be seen in the particular light provided by comparison with the pragmatist tradition. Without claiming to offer an alleged all-encompassing analysis of the relationship between these two perspectives, the inquiry focuses, on the Wittgensteinian side, on the notes of On Certainty, and, on the pragmatist side, on the thought of the two ‘founding fathers’ of classical pragmatism, Charles S. Peirce and William James.
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- 1.
‘I believe that my originality (if that is the right word) is an originality belonging to the soil rather than to the seed. (Perhaps I have no seed of my own.) Sow a seed in my soil and it will grow differently than it would in any other soil’, CV, p. 36, remark dated 1939–1940, original formulation in MS 162b, p. 60r. See Goldstein (2004).
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Although when quoting from Wittgenstein’s writings I will often refer to the original manuscripts of the Nachlass, with respect to OC the examination of the original formulations will normally not be necessary, OC being, as is well-known, a collection of a part of the last manuscripts.
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Bouwsma (1986, pp. xxiv, 39) records a conversation in which Wittgenstein affirmed of having heard John Dewey talk about education, it seems, during a lecture.
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He cites Dewey during his lectures on philosophical psychology (1946–1947), asserting that according to Dewey belief consists in an adjustment of the organism to its environment, an idea which in Wittgenstein’s opinion is valid only in limited cases (LPP, p. 90); during the aforementioned conversation with Bouwsma; and during another conversation, again with Bouwsma, in which, being surprised at the fact that Dewey was still alive, he commented: ‘Ought not to be’ (Bouwsma 1986, p. 29).
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The theme on which the comparison between Wittgenstein and Dewey is probably more feasible is that of the connection between truth and consequences, but it would require a further inquiry, which it is impossible to undertake here.
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Wittgenstein speaks in a quite disparaging tone about him, using a work of his on logic as an example of evident nonsense: see Britton (1967, p. 58).
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For an up to date reading of the fertility of the comparison between Wittgenstein and pragmatism, in connection with thinkers such as not only Richard Rorty and Hilary Putnam but also Robert Brandom and Huw Price, see Margolis (2012a). On recent and contemporary pragmatism more generally see Misak (2007).
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- 11.
By Peirce, see in particular the essays ‘Questions Concerning Certain Faculties Claimed for Man’ and ‘Some Consequences of Four Incapacities’ (W 2, pp. 193 ff. CP 5.213 ff.). On this topic see also Calcaterra (2003a, Chap. 2).
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Boncompagni, A. (2016). Introduction: ‘A kind of Weltanschauung’. In: Wittgenstein and Pragmatism. History of Analytic Philosophy. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-58847-0_1
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