Wittgenstein and Contemporary Philosophy

The course deals with the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein from his Philosophical Investigations and from his works which were written along with them or/and which followed them until his death (Remarks on Foundations of Mathematics, Remarks on Colour, On Certainty …). Certainly, the philosophy is as well concerned “by contrast with and against the background of” views of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus.
Topics: the nature of language, the nature of proper names, meaning, understanding, concepts in the terms of family resemblance (paradigmatic samples), rule-following considerations, Wittgenstein’s philosophy of religion, certainty and hinge proposition …
Some of Wittgenstein’s meta-philosophical questions are also discussed, which will be embedded in the classical and therapeutic interpretation of his philosophical method: the nature and purpose of philosophy, the advantages and disadvantages of the grammatical method in comparison to others ...
The course faces Wittgenstein’s and Wittgensteinian views with important contemporary topics: the distinction between knowledge-how and knowledge-that along with the explanation of skills; epistemic and other modality; relation between language and thought; theory-ladenness of experience and perception; artificial intelligence; animal thinking ...
Students present seminars (45 min.) on the topics offered in the course of lectures, or choose their themes related to the topics presented there, or link their seminars to already known comparisons of Wittgenstein’s philosopheme with the philosophemes of other contemporary authors (Quine, Ryle, McDowell, Cavell, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty ...).