'Rambling around Wittegenstein'

Philosophy & Aesthetics

Fee £3

Occasional meetings usually held Sundays evenings at 7 PM.

Suitable for beginners & those with more experience & knowledge ( beginner's book list supplied)

The group consists of talks , meetings and debates from the intelligent layman's point of view. Meetings will remain easy-going, fun and informative. All people are invited….feel free to attend however much you know or don’t know

Next meeting:

April 15th

'RAMBLING AROUND WITTEGENSTEIN' .

http://photos1.meetupstatic.com/photos/event/a/f/5/c/event_101384892.jpeg

Ludwig Wittgenstein’s The Tractatus is “ ranked as one of the most important books of 20th-century philosophy, standing out as ...the one crossover masterpiece in twentieth-century philosophy, appealing across diverse specializations and philosophical orientations" ( Wikipedia)

Bertrand Russell called him "a genius , passionate, profound, intense, and dominating" and granted him a degree on the strength of this one book.

Wittgenstein only ever finished one book, The Tractatus Logico Philosophicus, which can be read in the time it takes to get a train from London to York, but it has taken many Universities many years to try to understand its implications. He wrote another book, the Philosophical Investigations, but died leaving it unfinished and badly in need of editing. The Investigations largely contradicts the Tractatus - though 21st-century scholarship suggests they might be more in accord than was previously thought. Various other books 'by Wittgenstein' have been compiled from his, and his student's notes - probably concluding with On Certainty.

The Tractatus aims to reveal the relationship between language and the world: what can be said about it, and what can only be shown. Wittgenstein argues that language has an underlying logical structure, a structure that provides the limits of what can be said meaningfully, and therefore the limits of what can be thought. The limits of language, for Wittgenstein, are the limits of philosophy. Much of philosophy involves attempts to say the unsayable: "what can we say at all can be said clearly", he argues. Anything beyond that—religion, ethics, aesthetics, the mystical—cannot be discussed. They are not in themselves nonsensical, but any statement about them must be.

Rudolph Carnap, wrote “ His point of view and his attitude toward people and problems, even theoretical problems, were much more similar to those of a creative artist than to those of a scientist; one might almost say, similar to those of a religious prophet or a seer... When finally, sometimes after a prolonged arduous effort, his answers came, his statement stood before us like a newly created piece of art or a divine revelation“

CURRENT HOST : Ben Basing ( our new group host) BA Philosophy (Open Univ ) & BSc (Open Univ ) MA in Aesthetics and Art Theory (Middlesex). Also ongoing study at Birkbeck and Oxford University Department of Continuing Education. He was was treasurer of the British Society of Aesthetics for ten years which focused his interest in the Arts, specifically visual arts and music from the twentieth century.
( Ben has a particular interest in Aristotle, Berkeley, Descartes, Heidegger, Kant, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Plato, Spinoza & Wittgenstein )

Join us at the, "Salon Meeting Room"

Location: ( map below)

First Floor, 1a Hollybush Place,

Off Bethnal Green Road, E2 9QX
We are across the street from

Bethnal Green Tube Station.

If you are coming from the tube station,

walk under the iron railway bridge.

Hollybush Place is then the FIRST STREET

ON YOUR RIGHT, JUST NEXT TO THE RAILWAY BRIDGE.

The “Globe” Estate agents ( a red painted shop,is right on it’s corner)

You can also take these busses:

8, 106, 254, 309, 388, D3, D6

The entrance to the venue is located 10 yards

down Hollybush Place. Go up the stairs to the first floor

and across the roof patio to the Salon room.