The New Tractatus: Summing Up Everything - Tapa blanda

Ludwig Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus was informed by the belief that it was possible to get clarity once and for all on fundamental philosophical issues, and so to think our way to a silence where philosophy was no longer necessary. This is The New Tractatus: it sympathizes with Wittgenstein's impatience with the endless cycle of argument, but reacts to this impatience and takes it in different directions than Wittgenstein did. Wittgenstein was concerned with questions like these: What is the meaning of language? What is our relationship to the universe? What is the nature of philosophy? These questions are covered in The New Tractatus, along with many other topics, such as: Why is sex a controversial issue? Why are we so interested in celebrities? What is the nature of love? Why do liberals and conservatives argue about so many things? What is magic? Can miracles occur? Is science objective? Does art lie to us? How do we win arguments? What is the meaning of life? What The New Tractatus shares with the old is the fundamental perception that we can never transcend what is. The world is all that is the case: whatever comes to be is part of the world.

Bruce Fleming is Professor of English at the U.S. Naval Academy, Annapolis. He is a graduate of Haverford College, and holds subsequent degrees from the University of Chicago and Vanderbilt University. He was a Fulbright Scholar in Berlin, studied in Paris and Siena, and has taught at the University of Freiburg, Germany, and at the National University of Rwanda. He is the recipient of an O. Henry short story award and the Antioch Review Award for Distinctive Prose, a career award. His most recent books include Annapolis Autumn: Life, Death and Literature at the U.S. Naval Academy (2005) and Why Liberals and Conservatives Clash (2006). His previous books with University Press of America are: Disappointment or The Light of Common Day (2005); Sexual Ethics (2004); Art and Argument (2003); and Science and the Self (2004). He has published a novel, Twilley (1997), and a volume of dance criticism entitled Sex, Art, and Audience (2000), as well as other scholarly books, personal essays and stories in literary quarterlies, and articles for venues such as The Washington Post and The Village Voice.