David LaRocca on Autobiographical Remarks The greatest obstacle to truth in conventional autobiography is not insufficient insight (about facts, memories, desires, or ideas elucidated by the intellect) but vanity — a resistance by one’s will to that very difficult type of understanding we may call self-understanding. […] In the present essay, in light of Wittgenstein’s […]
George Steiner on … 1. Hermeneutics A master-reader (or viewer or listener) equipped, in the case of literature, with linguist-historical knowledge, ideally sensitive to the polysemic, metamorphic lives of language, inspiredly intuitive in his or her empathy – a Coleridge reading Wordsworth, a Karl Barth glossing Romans, a Mandelstam responding to Dante – will come […]
Gilbert Meilaender on Matthew 18:21-35 (The Parable of the Unforgiving Servant) The gifts of God are always available. His grace knows no limit. But this God, when he gives freely, says: “freely you have received, freely give.” Not everyone wants to be around a Lord like that. Not everyone wants to be grateful. The unforgiving […]
Rush Rhees on the philosophical life The difficulties of philosophy have in certain ways the character of moral difficulties. This is what Wittgenstein implies when he says that in philosophy one has to struggle constantly against a resistance within oneself, which is a resistance of will. One is unwilling to let certain ways of thinking go. […]
M. O’C. Drury on Wittgenstein and the history of philosophy It is said that Wittgenstein knew little about the history of philosophy and spoke with some contempt about what had previously been called metaphysics. This is not true. Certainly he would not allow a philosophical discussion to be side tracked by irrelevant references to the […]
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