Applying Wittgenstein

A key development in Wittgenstein Studies over recent years has been the advancement of a resolutely therapeutic reading of the Tractatus. Rupert Read offers the first extended application of this reading of Wittgenstein, encompassing Wittgenstein's later work too, to examine the implications of Wittgenstein's work as a whole upon the domains especially of literature, psychopathology and time. Read begins by applying Wittgenstein's remarks on meaning to language, examining the consequences our conception of philosophy has for the ways in which we talk about meaning. He goes on to engage with literary texts as Wittgensteinian, where 'Wittgensteinian' does not mean expressive of a Wittgenstein philosophy, but involves the literature in question remaining enigmatic, and doing philosophical work of its own. He considers Faulkner's work as productive too of a broadly Wittgensteinian philosophy of psychopathology. Read then turns to philosophical accounts of time, finding a link between the division of time into discrete moments and solipsism of the present moment as depicted in philosophy on the one hand and psychopathological states on the other.

Rupert Read is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of East Anglia.