Kevin M. Cahill reclaims one of Ludwig Wittgenstein's most passionately
pursued endeavors: to reawaken a sense of wonder around human life and
language and its mysterious place in the world. Following the
philosopher's spiritual and cultural criticism and tying it more tightly
to the overall evolution of his thought, Cahill frames an original
interpretation of Wittgenstein's engagement with Western metaphysics and
modernity, better contextualizing the force of his work.
Cahill synthesizes several approaches to Wittgenstein's life and
thought. He stresses the nontheoretical aspirations of the philosopher's
early and later writings, combining key elements from the so-called
resolute readings of the Tractatus with the "therapeutic" readings of
Philosophical Investigations. Cahill shows how continuity in
Wittgenstein's cultural and spiritual concerns informed if not guided
his work between these texts, and in his reading of the Tractatus,
Cahill identifies surprising affinities with Martin Heidegger's Being
and Time--a text rarely associated with Wittgenstein's early
formulations.
In his effort to recapture wonder, Wittgenstein both avoided and
undermined traditional philosophy's reliance on theory. As Cahill
relates the steps of this bold endeavor, he forms his own innovative,
analytical methods, joining historicist and contextualist approaches to
text-based, immanent readings. The result is an original, sustained
examination of Wittgenstein's thought.
