Deadline for submission: 1st June 2021
Research papers should not exceed 45.000 characters, including spaces and notes and should be accompanied by an abstract in English of no more than 1500 characters and five keywords.
Answer to proposals: 30th August 2021
Expected release: October 2021
Editor: Luigi Vero Tarca – “Ca’ Foscari” University of Venice
In the Vorwort to Philosophische Untersuchungen (Philosophical Investigations), Ludwig Wittgenstein wrote, in 1945, that this new book of his should be read «by contrast [durch den Gegensatz]» to the old book, the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (which he however cites as Logisch-Philosophische Abhandlung) but also «against the background [auf dem Hintergrund]» of it. Immediately afterwards, the author speaks of the «grave mistakes [schwere Irrtümer]» contained in that first volume.
A century after the publication of Wittgenstein’s early masterpiece (1921), it is duty of the philosophical world to undertake an exercise of thought which – keeping the entire Wittgensteinian work “in the background” (starting naturally with that first, formidable ‘little book’) – questions the current situation of the philosophical experience.
This issue of the Journal «Il Pensiero» aims precisely at collecting a series of contributions that essentially stem from a rethinking of Wittgenstein’s philosophical experience, of course giving due attention to the fundamental work by him dedicated to logic and its foundations.
More concretely, in this issue both contributions substantially referring to the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and writings more widely relating to the entire range of Wittgenstein’s thought will be welcomed. Furthermore, the contributions can assume as content either the Austrian thinker’s thought, or a philosophical theme free with respect to the Wittgensteinian dictate, although of course inspired, in an explicit and significant way, by the need to engage in dialogue with his thought.
Given the great variety of themes touched by Wittgenstein in his life, this opens up the possibility of a very wide range of proposals. His thought is in fact characterized by the circumstance, certainly rare, of being to some extent at the origin of both the great currents of thought that have dominated the philosophy of the twentieth century: the analytical one (in a more direct and evident way) and the continental and hermeneutics (in a way perhaps less explicit and striking but all the same equally very significant).
In a period, as it seems to be the current one, in which this contrast, often so clear and sharp, seems to reach a turning point – without however necessarily implying a reconciliation of the two ways, since it could instead mean a change of scenario so radical as to displace both those currents of thought – here it becomes urgent to ask what role Wittgenstein’s philosophy could possibly still have within this new horizon, of course in particular in relation to the vision expressed in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus.
In conclusion, to put it another way, the question could precisely be: what path does current philosophy manage to see “starting from the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus”?
Since the spectrum of philosophical paths that can be proposed is obviously very broad, the magazine will privilege those texts that will prove particularly suitable for holding together a profound rethinking of Wittgenstein’s philosophy with a look aware of current philosophical needs.
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