Books in the Anthem Studies in Wittgenstein series

Wittgenstein and Modernist Fiction: The Language of Acknowledgment shows how early twentieth-century economic and social upheaval prompted new ways of conceptualizing the purposes and powers of language. Scholars have long held that formally experimental novels written in the early twentieth century reflect how the period's material crises-from world wars to the spread of industrial capitalism-call into question the capacity of language to picture the world accurately. This book argues that this standard scholarly narrative tells only a partial story. Even as signal modernist works by Virginia Woolf, Nella Larsen, William Faulkner, and others move away from a view of language as a means of gaining knowledge, they also underscore its capacity to grant acknowledgment. They show how language might matter less as a medium for representing reality than as a tool for recognizing others. The book develops this claim by engaging with the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein. Writing in 1945, in the preface to Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein laments, "e;It is not impossible that it should fall to the lot of this work, in its poverty and in the darkness of this time, to bring light into one brain or another-but, of course, it is not likely."e; Worrying that "e;the darkness"e; of this historical moment renders his words unintelligible, Wittgenstein echoes the linguistic skepticism that scholars have found in literary modernism. But the Investigations ultimately pushes back against such skeptical doubts by offering a vision of language as a set of shared human practices. Even when it comes to a word like "e;pain,"e; which seemingly gestures toward something absolutely private and individual, Wittgenstein indicates that we learn what "e;pain"e; means by familiarizing ourselves with the contexts in which people use the term. In his pioneering reading of the Investigations as a "e;modernist"e; work, Stanley Cavell argues that Wittgenstein's distinctive response to the problem of skepticism consists in the view that "e;other minds [are] not to be known, but acknowledged."e;The book argues that this concept of acknowledgment, as articulated implicitly by Wittgenstein and explicitly by Cavell, enables a broader reconceptualization of modernist fiction's stance toward the referential capacities of language, and it bears out this claim by reading a series of modernist novels through the lens of Wittgenstein's philosophy. From the residence halls of Cambridge to the farmsteads of rural Mississippians, the early decades of the twentieth century sowed serious doubts about the ability of individuals to find shared criteria for the meanings of words: the greater convenience of travel led to increased cross-cultural misunderstandings; technological developments facilitated new modes of race-, class-, and gender-based oppression, and two world wars irrevocably shattered an earlier generation's optimism about the inevitability of political and moral progress. In this light, Wittgenstein and Modernist Fiction contends that modernist representations of consciousness strive to capture the inner lives of socially marginalized figures, seeking to facilitate new forms of intimacy and community amongst those who have survived crushing losses and been subject to deeply isolating social forces.

The proposed volume covers Christopher Winch's work over a period of 37 years and illustrates four interconnected themes that have informed his thinking over that period. Writing from a Wittgensteinian perspective, Winch is primarily interested in applying Wittgenstein's general approach to philosophising to educational problems and puzzles of a variety of different kinds. Throughout the collection there is an emphasis on the complexity and subtlety of many of the philosophical problems associated with education, the importance of appreciating differences and the contestability of many educational judgements. Thus the volume starts with a section on rationality and argument and a discussion of some of the perplexities about the nature of literacy and whether it represents a cognitive 'leap forward' for the human race or whether it is more of an enabling technology. It is followed, in a reply to David Cooper, by an article that emphasises the importance of charitable interpretation in understanding reasoning and looks at some of the difficulties involved in understanding reasoning in informal contexts.Winch's interest in rule-following and concept formation is the theme of the next few articles. Winch has long been interested in philosophical aspects of professional action and judgement. The third section of this book focuses on that preoccupation. Gilbert Ryle's ideas as well as Wittgenstein's have been a significant influence on this. This section closes with a discussion of the sense we can make of the claim that theoretical knowledge can inform agency in professional contexts. The fourth section gathers together seven papers on learning and training that Winch has published over the last 25 years. The overarching theme of this section is the highly variegated nature of the phenomena of learning and the difficulty of constructing a 'grand theory' of learning.

Hinge epistemology is a rising trend in epistemology. Drawing on some of Wittgenstein's ideas in On Certainty, it claims that knowledge always takes place within a system of assumptions, or "e;hinges"e;, that are taken for granted and are not subject to verification and control.This volume brings together thirteen papers on hinge epistemology written by Annalisa Coliva, the coiner of the term and one of the leading figures in this trend, and published after her influential monographs Moore and Wittgenstein. Scepticism, Certainty and Common Sense (2010), Extended Rationality. A Hinge Epistemology (2015). By mixing together Wittgenstein scholarship and systematic philosophy, they illuminate the significance of hinge epistemology for current debates on scepticism, relativism, realism and anti-realism, as well as alethic pluralism, and envision its possible extension to the epistemology of logic.Along the way, other varieties of hinge epistemology, such as Moyal-Sharrock's, Pritchard's, Williams' and Wright's are considered, both with respect to Wittgenstein scholarship and in their own right.