One of the reasons that many earlier introductions and commentaries on Wittgenstein are dated, in my opinion, not just because preoccupations and fashions in philosophy move on, though they do, but because Wittgenstein's writing is extremely and deceptively difficult to understand. Even contemporary introductions, of which there are many, are vitiated by lack of awareness of W's writings in their totality, which run to some 10,000 pages in the Nachlass.
Whilst there is no substitute for reading W himself, in which the Tractatus, the Philosophical Investigations and On Certainty would be the three I would start with, I don't see how one could develop a real understanding of them without the help of the best scholars and scholarship. Of these Peter Hacker, Hanjo Glock, Severin Schroeder and Joachim Schulte are, in my view, the best. Without their help, misunderstanding is very easy and even amongst academic philosophers misunderstanding and misrepresentations are legion.
Jarman's film, the subject of a famous spat between him and Eagleton over the script, is amusing if not very enlightening about his thought. The two volume False Prison by Pears is an interesting work but very difficult.
Rob Hoveman
On 16 Oct 2011, at 08:01, Rob Hoveman <robhoveman at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> Ray Monk's biography is very good but the analysis of his thinking is largely derived from Peter Hacker. No harm in this, as Hacker's four volume commentary on the Philosophical Investigations and the "fifth volume" on W's place in twentieth century philosophy are fantastic. I would highly recommend Hacker's work but if you are not up for reading maybe 2,500 pages of essays and exegesis, I would recommend Schroeder's Wittgenstein which was published in 2006 as probably the best introduction to W with respect to both the Tractatus and the Investigations.
>
> Rob Hoveman
>
> On 16 Oct 2011, at 06:01, Mark Bennett <bennett.mab at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> It's been some years since I read it, but I don't recall Monk's biography
>> delving very deeply into Wittgenstein's thought. Perhaps I should read it
>> again. It does contain a great deal of very interesting biographical
>> material, some of it obscure, but even the well-known aspects of
>> Wittgenstein's life are given a fresh take. For instance, Wittgenstein's
>> effect on Russell is the stuff of academic legend, but Monk documents just
>> how staggering the effect of Wittgenstein's thought was on Russell. The war
>> years are well-covered, too, and the folly of war is rather dramatically
>> illustrated by the details of Wittgenstein's service in the trenches. It
>> seems something of a miracle that he wasn't killed in the general
>> holocaust.
>>
>> I haven't read this wildly Routledge volume, but for a Marxist perspective,
>> this would appear to be a good starting point:
>>
>> http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000FBFIM4/ref=pd_lpo_k2_dp_sr_1?pf_rd_p=486539851&pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe-1&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=0415247756&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=1P3NRCB8N0HXZAXGZ7JJ
>>
>> On Sat, Oct 15, 2011 at 6:35 PM, Jim Farmelant <farmelantj at juno.com> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> On Sun, 16 Oct 2011 01:13:35 +0100 (BST) Angelus Novus
>>> <fuerdenkommunismus at yahoo.com> writes:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Sorry for the strange request, but some of the smartest people I
>>>> know hang out on these lists, so:
>>>>
>>>> can anyone recommend some useful introductory/secondary literature
>>>> to the thought of Wittgenstein? (beyond Wikipedia, of course)
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Is the Ray Monk biography useful in this regard, or is it purely
>>>> biographical and not much of an actual introduction in terms of
>>>> ideas?
>>>>
>>>> Plus points of course for anything written from a broadly Marxist
>>>> perspective. ;-)
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>> Yes, I would endorse Ray Monk's bio of Wittgenstein,
>>> unlike his Russell bio, which IMO is not so good because
>>> Monk's rather obvious hatred of Russell gets in his way there.
>>> And as I recall, Monk does get in Wittgenstein's ideas too.
>>> Concerning Wittgenstein's ideas, Anthony Kenny has a good
>>> introductory book on Wittgenstein's philosophy, that is simply
>>> titled, Wittgenstein, by Penguin Press.
>>>
>>> David Pears, who was a noted Wittgenstein scholar, wrote
>>> a good short intro book on him also simply titled, Wittgenstein.
>>> He also wrote more advanced studies of Wittgenstein's work
>>> like his, The False Prison: A Study of the Development of
>>> Wittgenstein's Philosophy.
>>>
>>>
>>> Jim Farmelant
>>> http://independent.academia.edu/JimFarmelant
>>> www.foxymath.com
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