In addition to reading, analyzing, and commenting on advanced texts, both literary and nonliterary, students practice and extend their writing skills in a series of compositions. Wittgenstein's case is far from unique. What he shared with many of his contemporaries was the belief that metaphysics is a basic disease of humankind. What he did not share with some of them was the belief that one can overcome metaphysics and thus be permanently cured. The seminar will discuss the cases of Ludwig Wittgenstein and several other major European Modernist authors, who have intermittently described their tasks, literary and philosophical alike, as the overcoming of a disease and, indeed, as the overcoming of metaphysics.
Modernism is in fact often hard to distinguish from a series of therapeutic claims.
Page last updated September 2000.