This book aims to explain the decline of the later Wittgensteinian tradition in analytic philosophy during the second half of the twentieth century. Throughout the 1950s, Oxford was the center of analytic philosophy and Wittgenstein the later Wittgenstein the most influential contemporary thinker within that philosophical tradition. Wittgenstein's methods and ideas were widely accepted, with everything seeming to point to the Wittgensteinian paradigm having a similar impact on the philosophical scenes of all English speaking countries. However, this was not to be the case. By the 1980s, albeit still important, Wittgenstein was considered as a somewhat marginal thinker. What occurred within the history of analytic philosophy to produce such a decline?

This book expertly traces the early reception of Wittgenstein in the United States, the shift in the humanities to a tradition rooted in the natural sciences, and the economic crisis of the mid-1970s, to revealthe factors that contributed to the eventual hostility towards the later Wittgensteinian tradition.

Explains the decline of the later Wittgensteinian tradition in the history of analytic philosophy from the 1950s to the present day Illuminates the tension between Wittgenstein's later humanistic style and the natural science- based methods of post second world war analytic philosophy Traces the impact of Wittgenstein's legacy including his early reception in the United States

Autorentext
Paolo Tripodi teaches history of philosophy at the University of Turin, Italy. His research focuses on the history of analytic philosophy, the later Wittgenstein and Wilfrid Sellars, as well as the attempt to apply distant reading methods to the history of philosophy. He recently co-edited a monographic issue of "Philosophical Inquiries" with Guido Bonino, devoted to the History of Late Analytic Philosophy (2018).

Inhalt

1. From the Golden Age to the Decline.- 2. The Core and the Periphery.- 3. Carnapstein in America.- 4. Rigourism in the Humanities.- 5. Science, Philosophy and the Mind.- 6. Necessity, Style and Metaphilosophy.- 7. Concluding Remarks: The Last Decades.