“How Kantian is Wittgenstein?” — a masterclass with Dr. Ian Proops

Welcome to SADHO’s third guest expert event on Analytic philosophy.

Dr. Ian Proops, one of the foremost experts on Kant and Wittgenstein, will be with us to present new insights into one of the most exciting “influence puzzles” in all of Western philosophy. This is a rare opportunity to learn from one of the most sensitive and subtle Kant researchers alive today.

Ian Proops is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin. He works on Kant and on the history of analytic philosophy (especially Wittgenstein and Russell), while also having teaching interests in early modern philosophy (especially Leibniz and Descartes). His Ph.D. was published in 2000 as Logic and Language in Wittgenstein’s Tractatus. He has spent the last decade working on Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, with a special focus on the section of that work known as the ‘Transcendental Dialectic’. His book, The Fiery Test of Critique: A reading of Kant’s Dialectic was published in 2021 by Oxford University Press.

Here is Professor Proops’ event description in his own words:

Q: How Kantian is Wittgenstein?

“I examine this question with special reference to the question of philosophical method. It is often supposed that Wittgenstein is a profoundly Kantian thinker. I argue that, while there are many superficial similarities between the writings of these two thinkers, Kant and Wittgenstein nevertheless have profoundly different visions of what philosophy is and ought to be. In little-known writings, Kant in fact turns out to have considered and rejected the later Wittgenstein’s approach to the problems of metaphysics.”

How to prepare

To prepare, people should read the brief handout Dr. Proops has prepared, summarizing the theses he will present tomorrow: Proops Handout.

Other preparatory steps, in order of relevance:

1. Re-read the Tractatus (see below).
2. Take a look at Proops’ article in the European Journal of Philosophy, “Wittgenstein on the substance of the world” (use the solid blue button to download from here).
3. If time permits, read the introduction of Proops’ book, The Fiery Test of Critique.
4. For the ambitious who are prepared to get hold of a copy of his book—take a look at chapter 10: “The Resolution of the Mathematical Antinomies,” especially the section entitled ‘The Road Not Taken: Nonsense (10.11)’.

Tractatus Resources

Here are some great diagrammatic and side-by-side versions of the Tractatus:

1. Side-by-side
2. Colorized overview
3. Dynamic structure-revealing
4. Scroll structure-revealing
5. University of Iowa Tractatus map

More about Ian Proops

Professor Proops earned his B.A. in PPE and a B. Phil. (on Kant's Transcendental Idealism under the supervision of Ralph Walker) at Oxford. He went on to earn a Ph.D. from Harvard, where he wrote a disseration on Wittgenstein's Tractatus under the supervision of Warren Goldfarb, Richard Heck, and Charles Parsons. Before coming to Texas, he taught for ten years at the University of Michigan, and spent six years a founding editor of The Review of Symbolic Logic. You can check out his recent publications here and here.