Wittgenstein and the Problem of Metaphysics: Aesthetics, Ethics and Subjectivity

Exploring the rupture between Wittgenstein’s early and late phases, Michael Smith provides an original re-assessment of the metaphysical consistencies that exist throughout his divergent texts. Smith shows how Wittgenstein’s criticism of metaphysics typically invoked the very thing he was seeking to erase. Taking an alternative approach to the inherent contradiction in his work, the ’problem of metaphysics’, as Smith terms it, becomes the organizing principle of Wittgenstein’s thought rather than something to overcome.

This metaphysical thread enables further reflection on the poetic nature of Wittgenstein’s philosophy as well as his preoccupation with ethics and aesthetics as important factors mostly absent from the secondary literature. The turn to aesthetics is crucial to a re-assessment of Wittgenstein’s legacy, and is done in conjunction with an innovative analysis of Nietzsche’s critique of Kantian aesthetics and Kant’s ’judgments of taste’. The result is a unique discussion of the limits and possibilities of metaphysics, aesthetics, ethics and the task of the philosopher more generally.

Michael Smith is Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts, USA, and serves on the faculty of the Humanities Department at Western Governors University, USA.