Philosophy of Wittgenstein: Indian Responses

The book is open-minded evaluation of Wittgenstein’s philosophy of language from fresh perspectives to bring out its contemporary significance. Including papers presented by noted Indian philosophers at a naional seminar, it examines the special place of WIttgenstein in the development of philosophy in the West in the twentieth century. The papers offer an in-depth critique of Wittgenstein’s theories on the limits and structure of language, operationalism, in philosophy of language, idea of a private language, necessaity of mathematics and logical truths, grammer of the language of emotions and language as a liberating force. Throughout the attempt is to analyse Wittgenstein’s contributors vis-a-vis Indian philosophical thinking and trace and the similarities between him and Indian thinkers. The work, for instance, includes a detailed study of Wittgenstein’s notion of silence and its affiliations with silence as interpreted in the Nyaya system and identifying the common factors in Gandhi and Wittgenstein’s approach to western civilisation. It also presents a radically different understanding — from what is traditionally understood of the Wittgensteinian concept of picture. The work will prove immensely useful to scholars concerned with linguistic representation and meaning in general and Wittgenstein’s contributors to philosophy of language in particular.