Wittgenstein

This paper examines the relationship between the environmental aesthetics approach backed by knowledge (ecological aesthetics) and the possibility of doing an action in favor of environmental conservation. It seems that even having such an approach towards the environment fails to sufficiently motivate people to protect the environment and nature, since there is a tension between the course of daily life and scientifically supported environmental aesthetics. In order to explain such tension, we tend to examine and critique ecological aesthetics (which is in some respects overlapped with environmental ethics) from the viewpoint of the philosophy of Wittgenstein, particularly with reference to his later work including the concept of formal life. Based on this concept, ecological aesthetics can be criticized and examined on three grounds: First, aesthetics is not able to create understanding or appreciation that leads to action. Second, the ecological concept added to reinforce the aesthetics, cannot support aesthetics in this regard and can even make things worse; ecological aesthetics, in fact, diverts aesthetics from its purpose (the purpose with regards to the environment, which is to motivate people to preserve nature) by trying to give it a strong objectivity. Third, the role of ethics in its current form in environmental conservation cannot be an active role.

In some contexts, philosophical debate can be rancorous even when the volume is kept low. In other contexts, certain stripes of “evangelical apologetics” can be equally adversarial and inimical in tone. In the name of preserving a professional, if not an irenic spirit, some unspoken ground rules have been adopted for interreligious dialogue. First is the demand to avoid all appearance of circular reasoning, which is to say avoid making any rhetorical moves that depend upon metaphysical presuppositions about the reality of God. Second, it is understood that (supposedly) unimportant theologically-laden details are to be left off until the (supposedly) prior task of establishing God’s reality is achieved. Such ground rules put philosophical theologians at a distinct disadvantage in interreligious dialogue as they sideline the very voices that have the highest stake in the conversation. William Wainwright offers the concept of “passional reason” as a way to counter the ground rules. Wainwright has shown that charges of circularity and subjectivism fail in the cases of such thinkers as Jonathan Edwards, John Henry Newman, and William James. Read in one way, Wainwright’s work may be taken as a strategic defense that prevents antagonists from excluding religious voices from philosophical conversation. I argue that there is an even more fruitful way to read Wainwright. Simply put, Wainwright’s recapture and rehabilitation of “passional reason” for philosophy of religion simultaneously opens the door for more constructive approaches to interreligious dialogue than an agonistic-styled philosophical debate can allow.

In the Blue Book (pp. 17-18) and in the Philosophical Investigation (§§ 66-67), Wittgenstein offers the idea of ‘family resemblances’ to explain the relation between some ‘things’. This paper first explores two accounts of this idea, one by Renford Bambrough and the other by Ilham Dilman. This reveals that there are at least two different accounts of ‘family resemblances’. Secondly, the paper sets out a critical assessment of both accounts so as to suggest that they both fail at what they claim to do.

La vision du langage a toujours été soumise au point de vue ontologique des philosophes. Dans cette perspective, nous avons étudié le lien du langage avec la réalité en examinant les différentes perceptions du statut ontologique de ce dernier dans la dialectique permanente entre le relativisme et l’objectivisme afin de pouvoir dégager les phases principales d’un parcours évolutif riche et complexe. Pour ce faire, nous avons délimité l’étendu de notre recherche aux philosophes tels que Socrate, Platon, Aristote, Frege, Russell, Wittgenstein, etc., qui ont contribué à marquer un tournant dans la conception de ce lien depuis l’Antiquité jusqu’à nos jours. Notre étude se termine par l’examen de la théorie austinienne dans la mesure où cette dernière reste toujours la plus récente à dépasser les conceptions classiques du langage et du traitement de la vérité. Nous avons ainsi, relevé trois phases d’évolution réflexive à propos du lien entre le langage et la réalité.