Overview
- New Insights into the “making of Wittgenstein” based on the use of new archival sources
- Praxeological approach to the historiography of philosophy
- Inspiring interdisciplinary research of philosophy, editorial studies, sociology and media sciences
Part of the book series: Beiträge zur Praxeologie / Contributions to Praxeology (BPCP)
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Table of contents (7 chapters)
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Front Matter
Keywords
About this book
This book tells a great philosophical tale. The backstory of this tale is simple: the famous philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein published only one philosophical book during his lifetime: the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. He left the lion’s share of his philosophical writings to posterity in the form of unpublished manuscripts and typescripts amounting to more than 18,000 pages. In his will, Wittgenstein entrusted three of his former students – Elizabeth Anscombe, Rush Rhees and Georg Henrik von Wright – with the task of publishing from his writings what they thought fit. During the subsequent decades, these literary heirs edited the volumes that the learned world has come to know as the influential works of Wittgenstein. Now, the essays in this book tell about Wittgenstein’s literary heirs in their ambition to publish the writings of their beloved teacher. This history of the posthumous publication processes for Wittgenstein’s writings will extinguish the genius cult that still exists in some historiographies of philosophy. This cult is partly responsible for the impression that great philosophical works fall from the window of an ivory tower, in completed form, printed and bound, just in order to hit and inspire the next genius philosopher walking by. In actual fact, in the history of philosophy, there are a number of cases in which it takes the great philosophers’ pupils and followers to bring their teachers’ thought into a publishable form. Indeed, this is how literary tradition of Western philosophy begins. In the case of Wittgenstein’s writings, this book opens, at least to some extent, the black box of the discipulary production processes of the making of a classic philosopher.
Authors and Affiliations
About the author
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: The Happy Afterlife of Ludwig W.
Book Subtitle: The People that Made Wittgensteinʼs Books and Turned Him into the Worldʼs Most Popular Philosopher
Authors: Christian Erbacher
Series Title: Beiträge zur Praxeologie / Contributions to Praxeology
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-66155-0
Publisher: J.B. Metzler Berlin, Heidelberg
eBook Packages: J.B. Metzler Humanities (German Language)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer-Verlag GmbH, DE, part of Springer Nature 2023
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-662-66154-3Published: 31 March 2023
eBook ISBN: 978-3-662-66155-0Published: 30 March 2023
Series ISSN: 2946-0158
Series E-ISSN: 2946-0166
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XIII, 207
Number of Illustrations: 2 b/w illustrations
Topics: Philosophy of Language, History of Philosophy, Media Sociology, Social Sciences, general