Michael Potter
Wittgenstein’s Phenomenological Phase
On 29th November 1929 Wittgenstein wrote in his notebook, "I no longer have phenomenological language, or "primary language" as I used to call it, in mind as my goal. ... We must make do with our ordinary language and only understand it aright, i.e. we must not let it mislead us into thinking nonsense." The remark could easily be presented as the moment of a decisive break with his previous research project and his replacement of it with a new one. However, the truth, I shall argue, is somewhat more complicated.
Michael Potter is Professor of Logic at Cambridge University, where he is a Life Fellow of Fitzwilliam College. Much of his research has been on the history of early analytic philosophy, with a particular focus on the work of Frege, Russell, Wittgenstein and Ramsey. His books include Reason's Nearest Kin (OUP, 2000), Wittgenstein's Notes on Logic (OUP, 2008) and The Rise of Analytic Philosophy 1879-1930 (Routledge, 2020). He has also worked on the philosophy of mathematics and, in Set Theory and its Philosophy (OUP, 2004), advanced a novel approach to axiomatic set theory.