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Wittgenstein, von Wright and the Myth of Progress

Wittgenstein, von Wright and the Myth of Progress <jats:p> The Viennese satirist Karl Kraus called progress a ‘standpoint that looks like movement’ and a ‘mobile decoration’: a politically useful slogan devoid of content. Despite his tendency to think in the revolutionary mode of the tabula rasa, Ludwig Wittgenstein was a cultural conservative, sceptical of progress. He shares this pessimistic scepticism with some, but not all, of the early twentieth-century Viennese writers he read enthusiastically (strong sceptics include Kraus but not Robert Musil). It would, however, be too simple to claim that Wittgenstein did not believe in the possibility of progress. Rather, he thought it mistaken to confuse progress with continued movement in one direction. Georg Henrik von Wright, Wittgenstein's student and successor at Cambridge, has discussed the ‘myth of progress’ in Wittgenstinian terms; the relevance of these analyses of progress in contemporary political discourse is examined. </jats:p> http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Paragraph Edinburgh University Press

Wittgenstein, von Wright and the Myth of Progress

Bouveresse, Jacques
Paragraph , Volume 34 (3): 301 – Nov 1, 2011
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Publisher
Edinburgh University Press
Copyright
© Edinburgh University Press 2011
Subject
Literary Studies
ISSN
0264-8334
eISSN
1750-0176
DOI
10.3366/para.2011.0027
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

<jats:p> The Viennese satirist Karl Kraus called progress a ‘standpoint that looks like movement’ and a ‘mobile decoration’: a politically useful slogan devoid of content. Despite his tendency to think in the revolutionary mode of the tabula rasa, Ludwig Wittgenstein was a cultural conservative, sceptical of progress. He shares this pessimistic scepticism with some, but not all, of the early twentieth-century Viennese writers he read enthusiastically (strong sceptics include Kraus but not Robert Musil). It would, however, be too simple to claim that Wittgenstein did not believe in the possibility of progress. Rather, he thought it mistaken to confuse progress with continued movement in one direction. Georg Henrik von Wright, Wittgenstein's student and successor at Cambridge, has discussed the ‘myth of progress’ in Wittgenstinian terms; the relevance of these analyses of progress in contemporary political discourse is examined. </jats:p>

Journal

Paragraph – Edinburgh University Press

Published: Nov 1, 2011

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