Wittgenstein’s Phenomenology: Bridging the Analytic-Continental Gap

Wittgenstein’s Parting With Phenomenology

Convenor: Mihai Ometiță (ICUB Humanities Fellow)

The research seminar questions the traditional association of Wittgenstein’s philosophy with the Anglo-American analytic tradition, understood in opposition with the Continental phenomenological tradition. We will focus on an under-explored episode in Wittgenstein’s development: his sketch of an explicitly phenomenological project in manuscripts around 1930, as well as his coming to criticize various methodological assumptions and expectations of that project. Significantly, his critiques pertain also to various aspects of classical phenomenology, paralleling reservations towards it that emerged on the continent in the meantime. Among the themes in focus: the desideratum of a pure description, the notion of immediate experience, the use of indexicals such as “here” and “now”, memory in relation to perception and history, first-person vs. third-person expressions of pain, the idealist temptations of philosophy.

The seminar meets once every two weeks (in weekly alternation with the Permanent Seminar on Recent Phenomenology) on Wednesdays 18:00-20:00, in the Office of the Romanian Society for Phenomenology (1 Dimitrie Brândză St.).

First meeting: Thursday, 21 November.

Second meeting: Wednesday, 4 December

Contact: mihai.ometita(at)icub.unibuc.ro.