Ludwig Wittgenstein and other Vienna philosophers of the early 20th century believed that much of traditional philosophy was meaningless word-play, and that the reason many people didn’t see this is that it’s difficult to distinguish the meaningless from the meaningful. Their attempts to do so – taking what Richard Rorty called ‘the linguistic turn’ – shaped much of 20th century philosophy in English-speaking countries. This course will critically examine the original movement, some attempts to apply its ideas in various areas such as epistemology, ethics and philosophy of mind, and some ideas that arose in reaction to the original movement, e.g., so-called ‘ordinary language philosophy,’ neopragmatism and naturalized philosophy.
