Admission requirements
Admission to this course is restricted to:
BA students in Filosofie, who have successfully completed at least 70 ECTS credits of the mandatory components of the first and second year of their bachelor’s programme, including History of Modern Philosophy, Logica, Epistemologie or Wetenschapsfilosofie, Analytische filosofie.
BA students in Philosophy: Global and Comparative Perspectives, who have successfully completed at least 70 ECTS credits of the mandatory components of the first and second year of their bachelor’s programme, including World Philosophies: Modern Europe, Logic, Epistemology or Philosophy of Science, Language of Thought.
Pre-master’s students in Philosophy who are in possession of an admission statement and who have to complete an advanced seminar, to be selected from package C.
Description
Wittgenstein’s Tractatus (1921) has been a turning point in philosophy of logic, with a focus on the relation between language, thought, and the world. What are the necessary conditions for language to express a thought about the world? What are the limits of thought and language? In what sense is logic a logic of language and the world? In the seminar we work by means of a close-reading of this difficult but intriguing text, but we also engage with the literature on the Tractatus in order to get a better understanding of it.
It is now agreed upon that a logical-positivist reading of the Tractatus neglects important elements of the text. Are we to read Wittgenstein as a Kantian philosopher, instead? Is the influence of Russell and Frege only a negative one? What is the meaning of Wittgenstein’s thesis at the end of the Tractatus that the book consists of nonsense? What is the method of philosophy? What is the role of logic if logical propositions do not have any content?
Course objectives
Students who successfully complete the course will have a good understanding of:
the central questions in philosophy of logic;
a classical text in philosophy;
the history of early analytic philosophy;
philosophical method.
Students who successfully complete the course will be able to:
read closely a classical text in philosophy;
ask critical, philosophical questions in a group;
evaluate secondary literature;
write a well-argued paper with a central research question, a thesis, and a clear structure, discussing one of the papers from the secondary literature read in class.
Timetable
The timetables are avalable through MyTimetable.
Mode of instruction
- Seminar
Class attendance is required.
Assessment method
Assessment
- Paper
Weighing
- Paper (100%)
Active participation in class is required for admission to the exam.
Resit
A student admitted to the resit will write a final paper (100% of the grade). Active participation in class is required for admission to the resit. Students who have obtained a satisfactory grade for the first examination cannot take the resit.
Inspection and feedback
How and when an exam review will take place will be disclosed together with the publication of the exam results at the latest. If a student requests a review within 30 days after publication of the exam results, an exam review will have to be organized.
Reading list
- L. Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 1921 (we are going to use the original German as well as English translations; a translation in your mother language may also be helpful)
Registration
Enrolment through MyStudymap is not possible for this course. Students are requested to submit their preferences for the third-year electives by means of an online registration form. They will receive the instruction and online registration form by email (uMail account); in June for courses scheduled in semester 1, and in December for courses scheduled in semester 2. Registration in uSis will be taken care of by the Education Administration Office.
Contact
For substantive questions, contact the lecturer listed in the right information bar.
For questions about enrolment, admission, etc, contact the Education Administration Office: Huizinga
Remarks
Not applicable.