Document Type : Scientific-research
Author
Assistant professor, Department of contemporary intercultural studies, Institute for Humanities and Cultural Studies. Tehran. Iran
Abstract
The later philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein is interpreted by some commentators as a realistic philosophy, while others view it as an idealistic one. Each of these camps supports its interpretation by citing specific passages from his works. The first group primarily bases their argument on ideas such as the centrality of ordinary understanding and everyday language in his philosophy of language. In contrast, the second group emphasizes the primacy and precedence of language over any form of theorizing, additionally interpreting language as a subjective element in his work. Beyond these two camps, a third group of interpreters understands Wittgenstein’s thought as neither a realistic philosophy nor an idealistic one. This latter group argues that Wittgenstein opposes any conventional metaphysical theorizing found in the history of philosophy, and therefore cannot be aligned with either idealism or realism. In this paper, after presenting the reasons given by all three groups of interpreters, I ultimately defend an idealist interpretation based on two points. The first point concerns understanding idealism in Ludwig Wittgenstein’s thought through his notion of family resemblance. The second point concerns the way in which idealism should be attributed to Wittgenstein’s philosophy in a manner that does not conflict with his rejection of metaphysical theorizing.
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