| Leading a Human Life: Wittgenstein, Intentionality, and Romanticism Contributor(s): Eldridge, Richard (Author) |
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ISBN: 0226203123 ISBN-13: 9780226203126 Publisher: University of Chicago Press OUR PRICE: $98.01 Product Type: Hardcover Published: October 1997 Annotation: Beginning from the Kantian and post-Kantian efforts to maintain a connection between intentionality and conscience, but without assuming any dogmatic metaphysical system, Richard Eldridge argues in Leading a Human Life that human persons are caught up in a continuing effort to bring their intentionality and powers of practical reason to full and fit expression. Contrary to the claims of both dogmatism and naturalism, human life remains haunted by the question, "How might I, in interaction with those around me, effectively form and choose a life of expressive freedom?" Eldridge reads Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations as a sustained, self-interrogative internal monologue that is concerned continuously with this question, embracing both ethics and philosophy of mind. Its protagonist struggles to bring his powers of spontaneity into coherent expression in human life. By following this effort, we can find grounds for resisting underdescriptions of human life that rest on overly simple accounts of either thinking or right action. Leading a human life becomes a creative act, akin to writing a poem, of continuously seeking to overcome both complacency and skepticism. Eldridge's careful reconstruction of the central motive of Wittgenstein's work will influence all subsequent scholarship on it. |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Philosophy | History & Surveys - Modern |
| Dewey: 192 |
| LCCN: 97007998 |
| Physical Information: 0.86" H x 6.18" W x 9.31" (1.28 lbs) 307 pages |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: In this provocative new study, Richard Eldridge presents a highly original and compelling account of Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations, one of the most enduring yet enigmatic works of the twentieth century. He does so by reading the text as a dramatization of what is perhaps life's central motivating struggle--the inescapable human need to pursue an ideal of expressive freedom within the difficult terms set by culture. Eldridge sees Wittgenstein as a Romantic protagonist, engaged in an ongoing internal dialogue over the nature of intentional consciousness, ranging over ethics, aesthetics, and philosophy of mind. The picture of the human mind that emerges through this dialogue unsettles behaviorism, cognitivism, and all other scientifically oriented orthodoxies. Leading a human life becomes a creative act, akin to writing a poem, of continuously seeking to overcome both complacency and skepticism. Eldridge's careful reconstruction of the central motive of Wittgenstein's work will influence all subsequent scholarship on it. |
