2410637, Studies in the Philosophy of Wittgenstein I: (3-0)3.

Halil Turan

Description:

Ethics and Aesthetics in Ludwig Wittgenstein’s works; identity of ethics and aesthetics; fact and value; transcendence of ethics and aesthetics; will as the bearer of good and evil; the world and life; happy life; the subject as the boundary of the world; art as a kind of expression; art and ethics: the world seen sub specie aeternitatis; will and significance (Bedeutung); beauty and happiness; Wittgenstein’s views on music and composers –J.S. Bach, Brahms, Mendelssohn, Bruckner, … ; genius and talent; taste and creative power.

Content and Objectives:

This course seeks to provide graduate students with an opportunity to study Ludwig Wittgenstein’s arguments concerning ethics and aesthetics in detail. Main foci of the readings and discussions will be on fact-value distinction, value and its bearer, will and Wittgenstein’s remarks on art as expression.

Texts

Wittgenstein, Ludwig. “A Lecture on Ethics”, The Philosophical Review, 74(1), 1965, 3-12.

(Selections from the following works)

-- Culture and Value (Vermischte Bemerkungen), ed. G. H. Von Wright, trans. P. Winch (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1980).

-- Notebooks 1914-1916, ed. G. H. Von Wright, G. E. M. Anscombe, trans. G. E. M. Anscombe (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1969).

-- Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, trans. C. K. Ogden (London: Basil Blackwell, 1983).

Course Conduct:

Formal lectures, presentations.

Grading:

Presentations, working paper (mid-term), term paper.

Schedule:      Tuesday: 13:40-16:30, B103.

Program

Weeks

1:         Introduction to the themes and texts.

2:         “A Lecture on Ethics”:

http://www.jstor.org/stable/2183526?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

3-5:      Notebooks 1914-1916 (esp. pp. 72-91).

6-7:      Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1, 2, selections from 5, 6).

8-10:     Culture and Value (pp. 1-46).

11:       Student presentations.

12-14:  Culture and Value (pp. 47-87).