Round and Round the Garden Went the Teddy Bear
You just have to love Ludwig Wittgenstein–not that he was a very lovable character. If Hume was the enfant terrible, the dismantler of the Enlightenment’s claim to objective, evidence based, rationalistic “truth”, Wittgenstein was his twentieth century step-child. He was the gladiatorial, scathing, sarcastic progenitor of post-modernism.
Wittgenstein pointed out that in all reasoning and arguments there are sets of pre-interpretative grids at play which lead one to certain inferences and conclusions about the facts and data being discussed. All knowledge is circular. All reasoning is circular. To Enlightenment rationalists and their twentieth century descendants, this is hateful stuff. Continue reading
contracelsum 