Morphology and Metaphilosophy: Goethe, Wittgenstein and Waismann

Authors

  • Annalisa Coliva University of California, Irvine

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.15845/nwr.v13.3728

Abstract

The paper explores how Wittgenstein and Waismann interpreted Goethe’s ideas from The Metamorphosis of Plants. These ideas laid the foundation for Wittgenstein’s concept of “family resemblance”, which Waismann also embraced in The Principles of Linguistic Philosophy. However, the paper argues that Wittgenstein’s and Waismann’s  metaphilosophical implications evolved differently in their later works. Notably, it is Waismann, rather than Wittgenstein, who took these ideas to their extreme, concluding in How I See Philosophy that all forms of philosophical theorizing should be rejected. By contrast, Wittgenstein rejected only the kind of theorizing in philosophy which aims at offering monistic and reductionist explanations of key philosophical concepts.

Author Biography

Annalisa Coliva, University of California, Irvine

Annalisa Coliva is a Full Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of California, Irvine, and the editor-in-chief of the Journal for the History of Analytical Philosophy. She has authored several books, including Moore and Wittgenstein: Scepticism, Certainty and Common Sense (2010), Extended Rationality: A Hinge Epistemology (2015), The Varieties of Self-Knowledge (2016), Wittgenstein Rehinged: The Significance of On Certainty for Contemporary Epistemology (2022), Relativism (with Maria Baghramian, 2020), and Skepticism (with Duncan Pritchard, 2022).

 

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Published

2024-10-06

Issue

Volume 13 (2024), S. Säätelä (ed.-in-chief); S. Bangu, G. Bengtsson, L. Jakola (eds.); A. Pichler (from the archives); J. Trächtler (book reviews); F. Mosca (ed. asst.)

Section

Invited Paper

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