Wittgenstein and Hegel: An Annotated Bibliography

Note: Annotations marked “abstract” are taken from other sources. Those marked “comment” are my own.

Blum, Alan; McHugh, Peter. Self-Reflection in the Arts and Sciences. Atlantic Highlands: Humanities Press, 1984.

ABSTRACT: An attempt to integrate the sociological conception of social action and "subjective meaning" with the so-called "linguistic turn" in the arts and science by formulating the narrative character of theorizing as the integration of speech and language in ways adumbrated by the Greeks, Hegel, Wittgenstein and Heidegger. This book seeks to reconcile a modern conception of discourse and of its indefinite expandability with the classical conception of "paidea" and reality in ways which avoid the possible excesses of either taken alone.

Cook, Daniel. “Hegel, Marx and Wittgenstein,” Philosophy and Social Criticism, Fall 1984; 10: 49-74.

ABSTRACT: Several writers have recently claimed that there are definite affinities between Wittgenstein's (later) thought and that of Hegel and Marx, especially in their respective conceptions of dialectic, language and "praxis". I show that these purported areas of agreement between the Hegelian tradition and Wittgenstein are neither substantive nor illuminating.

Cook, Daniel J. “Was Wittgenstein Influenced by Hegel?”, Owl of Minerva, Fall 1984; 16: 102-107.

ABSTRACT: Whatever affinities one finds between the Hegelian tradition and Wittgenstein's thought, there is no substance to the suggestions that Wittgenstein's philosophy (especially in its later forms) may have been influenced by Hegel. There is no evidence—either biographical or textual—that Wittgenstein ever read Hegel. Furthermore, there is little to sustain the claim that he may have indirectly known Hegel's philosophy through contact with European Hegelians, British Neo-Hegelians or his reading of Kierkegaard and Marx.

De Praetere, Thomas. “Le depassement du scepticisme selon Hegel et Wittgenstein,” De Philosophia, 1992; 9: 9-18.

ABSTRACT: For ancient skeptics, no proposition is absolutely certain, because to every proposition is opposed an equal proposition. Hegel takes this for true and presents skepticism as the absolute contradiction. One can overcome skepticism, however, through the experience of the unhappy consciousness. For Wittgenstein, skepticism cannot be refuted, but it doesn't need to be, as life requires only  propositions which are accepted by everybody, even if we cannot be assured that they are actually true. Hegel's and Wittgenstein's solutions are different but have the same origin: a coherence conception of truth.

Dreben, Burton. “Tautology: How Not to Use a Word,” Synthese, Ap 91; 23-49.

ABSTRACT: We discuss the character and philosophical significance of Wittgenstein's use of "tautology" in the Tractatus, a use which was not clear. Wittgenstein justified or shifted the term from rhetoric to logic, and hence shaped  (misshaped?) debates concerning the nature and scope of logic from the time of the Vienna Circle onward. We discuss relevant historical uses of "tautology" in philosophy from Leibniz, Kant, Hegel, Bradley, Mauthner and the early Moore and Russell, and document Russell's later (1918) jump to the verbiage of "tautology", as well as C. I. Lewis's and Ramsey's attempts to wrest a philosophical lesson from the Tractatus new use.

Findlay, John N. “The Diremptive Tendencies of Western Philosophy,” Philosophy East and West, July 1964; 14: 167-178.

ABSTRACT: The article stresses the extent to which fragmenters rather than unifiers have abounded in the West. Even Hegel hates abstract, undifferentiated unity, and the thought of Wittgenstein makes everything independent and piecemeal. The author, if he has to be "ultimate," favours a flight from fragmentation, not to unitive absorption, but to a mystical interpenetration in which differences will be retained.

George, Rolf; Rusnock, Paul. “The Semantic Tradition from Kant to Carnap: To the Vienna Station,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, June 96; 56(2): 461-468.

ABSTRACT: A review article of J. Alberto Coffa's posthumously published "The Semantic Tradition From Kant to Carnap", ed. Linda Wessels, Cambridge University Press 1991. This is meant to be a history of epistemology "the way Carnap would have written it had he been Hegel." The article discusses Coffa's sorting out of various Kantian confusions, beginning with the shinning work of Bolzano and the contributions of various 19th century mathematicians and scientists down to Wittgenstein, Russell and Carnap. Coffa's book is an enormously import contribution to the history of thought.

Kadir, Kazi A. “On Sense and Nonsense,” Pakistan Philosophical Journal, July-Dec. 1972; 11: 99-114.

Kainz, Howard P. “Wittgenstein's Tractatus: Some Metaphilosophical Considerations,” Journal of Thought, July 1974; 9: 172-178.

ABSTRACT: Some metaphilosophical comparisons are drawn in this article between a) Wittgenstein's notion of number and Plato's 'mathematica'; b) Wittgenstein's statement that a proposition could be a fact and Aristotle's statement that form itself could be the subject of a science; c) Wittgenstein's formula for the general form of propositions and Hegel's definition of absolute knowledge as the negation of negations.

Lamb, David. “Hegel and Wittgenstein on Language and Sense-Certainty,” Clio, Winter 1978; 7: 285-301.

ABSTRACT: This article is concerned with affinities between the Hegelian and Wittgensteinian critiques of empiricist accounts of language and reality. Hegel's exposition of the inadequacy of sense-certainty, in the Phenomenology of Mind is compared with Wittgenstein's rejection of the realist assumption that terms like 'here', 'now' and 'this' are logically proper names. Similarities are then developed between their refutation of subjective idealism and solipsism, and with their respective accounts of the adequacy of language. Finally an Hegelian interpretation of Wittgenstein's language-game model is advanced. This draws attention to the convergence of the theory of truth in Hegel and the later Wittgenstein.

Lamb, David. Hegel: From Foundation to System. The Hague: Nijhoff, 1980.

ABSTRACT: Starting from Hegel's criticism of foundationalist epistemology in the introduction to The Phenomenology of Mind, Hegelian idealism is presented as one of the precursors of twentieth-century philosophy, alive to problems raised and discussed by English speaking philosophers in the latter half of the twentieth-century. Hegel's approach to epistemology, language, ethics, the natural sciences, religion and art, is examined against the background of twentieth-century thinkers, such as Russell, Moore, Von Bertalanffy, Kuhn, Feyerabend, and Wittgenstein.

Lamb, David. Language and Perception in Hegel and Wittgenstein. NewYork: St. Martin's Press, 1979.

ABSTRACT: Starting with an account of Hegel and Wittgenstein's theories of language and perception, this work introduces some of the main doctrines associated with them, drawing attention to hitherto neglected similarities between their philosophical methods. Concepts fundamental to Wittgenstein's later thought, such as "grammar", "meaning", and "form of life", are compared with Hegel's insights. Hegel's account of the absolute truth, and philosophical inquiry, are examined in the light of the revolution associated with Wittgenstein and the recent development of professionalization in philosophy.

Lutterfelds, Wilhelm. “Die Einsamkeit der privaten Sprache: Hegels dialektische Konzeption von Wittgensteins These uber Innen und Aussen,” Deutsche Zeitschrift fur Philosophie, 2002; 50(5): 715-731.

McCumber, John. The Company of Words: Hegel, Language, and Systematic Philosophy. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1993.

COMMENT: My general opinion of McCumber is none too flattering. See McCumber Marking Time.

ABSTRACT: This book interprets Hegel as the first important philosopher to have made the linguistic turn (so that the famous "Absolute," for example, is a language game). Hegel's approach to language and thought is related to earlier thinkers (Plato, Locke, Kant, and others). It is contrasted with contemporary thinkers who unknowingly followed Hegel in the linguistic turn: Frege, Wittgenstein, Austin, Davidson. Strengths and possibilities are assessed.

Munson, Thomas N. “An Interpretation of Hegel's Political Thought,” Monist, January 1964; 48: 97-111.

ABSTRACT: Hegel and Wittgenstein, notwithstanding the profound differences between them, were both deeply concerned with the question "what is explanation?" having argued elsewhere that this is indeed the core issue in Wittgenstein, Munson argues the same here about Hegel, in regard to the latter's political thought. After focussing on the relation of particular individual to state, the state as the embodiment of reason and the concretization of dialectic, he concludes by spelling out ways in which Hegel makes common cause with Wittgenstein, and by raising various difficulties with Hegel over against Wittgenstein.

Priest, Graham. Beyond the Limits of Thought. 2nd ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press; New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. Table of contents.

See my review: Graham Priest, Paraconsistent Logic, and Philosophy, Or, Logic and Reality.

Rasmussen, David M. “The Symbolism of Marx: From Alienation to Fetishism,” Cultural Hermeneutics, May 75; 3: 41-55.

ABSTRACT: This essay, part of a special issue on "the sociology of knowledge and Marxism," follows mannheim in searching for the 'constellation' constitutive of current social cohesion. Exposing the limits of analytic (Wittgenstein),  structural (Chomsky) and phenomenological (Heidegger, Eliade, Ricoeur, Schutz)  approaches to language, I demonstrate how Marx accounted for the cohesion of capitalism by shifting from the category of alienation to that of commodity fetishism. Noting the connection with Hegel, I indicate how the speculative anthropology of Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau can be overcome and why the sociology of knowledge must accommodate economics to delimit distribution of knowledge.

Rowe, M. W. “Wittgenstein's Romantic Inheritance,” Philosophy, July 94; 69(269): 327-351.

ABSTRACT: This paper argues that Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations embodies one of the standard narrative forms of Romanticism which can be found in, amongst others, both Goethe and Hegel. A consciousness is infected by illusion and is therefore both divided against itself and cut off from reality. This self-division leads to perpetual inner dialogue and an intense desire for space. In order to bring this about, the consciousness tests its experience by undertaking a journey. The point of this journey is not to get to another (better) place, but to arrive back at its point of starting, a place, however, which has now been transformed and clarified by the experiences of the way.

Singh, R. P. “Contradiction and Sublation: Hegel on Dialectic,” Indian Philosophical Quarterly, July 1991; 503-518.

ABSTRACT: The work is to formulate Hegel's dialectic by emphasizing on its two operative terms: contradiction and sublation. It is proposed to be achieved in the following manner: I: Hegel's critical assessment of Kant's transcendental   dialectic; both for its basic distinction between understanding and reason, and, for its general dissatisfaction with traditional metaphysics. II: To explicate the three principles of Hegel's dialectic—unity and struggle of opposites, quantitative to qualitative changes and vice-versa, and negation of negation. III: Hegel's dialectic as a counter-thrust to any form of positivism from Hume to Russell, earlier Wittgenstein and Ayer.

Stekeler Weithofer, Pirmin. “Hegel's Logic as a Theory of Meaning,” Philosophical Investigations, O 96; 19(4): 287-307.

ABSTRACT: The concepts of truth, reference and meaning depend heavily on accepted frameworks of representation. Hegel distinguishes in his Science of Logic different levels: The logic of being analyses [the] basis [of] forms of our talk about perceptible and abstract things, sets, and other quantities. The logic of essence shows what it means to claim that statements presented in a given form of representation (like, for example, in mythology or folk psychology) are superficial and that new theories explain how things really are. According to the logic of concept, knowledge, like any human institution, is relative to the contemporal situation of cultural development.

Tugendhat, Ernst; Stern, Paul (trans.). Self-Consciousness and Self-Determination. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1986.

Wiehl, Reiner. “Dialog und Philosophische Reflexion,” Neue Hefte fur Philosophie, 1972; 2/3: 41-94.

ABSTRACT: The inquiry of the conditions and differences of dialogical acting and reflexion tries to determine the significance of dialogue for philosophical thinking. The methodical reduction of the acting of real persons in dialogues and the reduction's peak in transforming the real persons in logical subjects (in the broadest sense) and theoretical standpoints is investigated. The ancient dialogue (Plato) and the modern dialogical phenomenology (Hegel, Wittgenstein, Husserl, et al) are recognized as problematic methods in epistemology.

On this site

Hegel, Wittgenstein, and Philosophy as Negation (Dumain diary)

Logicomix: Logic and Madness Reviewed by Ralph Dumain

Wittgenstein and Dialectic: An Annotated Bibliography

Wittgenstein, Marxism, Sociology: An Annotated Bibliography

On other sites

@nti-Dialectics, by Rosa Lichtenstein

Lichtenstein, Rosa. “Wittgenstein and Marxism.” 2006.