February 2.  Crisis of Language: Mauthner & Wittgenstein

Lecture: Ophuls’s La Ronde (1950) — changes from Schnitzler’s text:

La Ronde & Impressionism: “Kleinkunst.” 

Lecture:  The Crisis of Language—Mauthner

Vienna School of Analytical Phisophy

Ernst Mach

language & metaphysics

Fritz Mauthner (1849–1923):  Sprachkritik — Critique of Language

3 volume Beiträge zu einer Kritik der Sprache [Contributions to a Critique of Language, 1901–03]

"Wortaberglaube" = Word-Superstition

 cf. Impressionism

In-Class Writing Assignment:  How would you relate Hofmannsthal’s “Letter of Lord Chandos” to the Critique of Language of Mauthner?

Lecture:  The Crisis of Language: Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951)

Tractatus Logico-philosophicus (1918-21): Sprachlehre [doctrine of language]

•     “Everything that one knows can be summed up in 3 words.”

•      “Whatever can be said at all can be said clearly; and that of which one can not speak, one must be silent about.”

•      Language = the limit of our ability to think

•     all philosophy = critique of language

•     “The limits of my language constitute the limits of my world.”

Metaphysics

The Mystical

"Viennese School of Philosophy"