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 Wittgensteins later work too, to examine the implications of Wittgensteins work as a whole upon the domains especially of literature, psychopathology, and time. Read begins by applying Wittgensteins remarks on meaningto language, examining the consequencesour 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 Faulkners 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.

This important book positions itself at the forefront of a revolutionary movement in Wittgenstein studies and philosophy in general and offers a new and dynamic way of using Wittgensteins works.