Wittgenstein's House Language, Space, Architecture Nana Last $55.00 ISBN: 9780823228805 Book (Hardcover) Fordham University Press 176 pages 16 black and white illustrations May 2008 Quantity:

"Argues that the philosopher's design and construction of a house in Vienna is linked to spatial concepts in his philosophy of language."—The Chronicle of Higher Education “A strikingly brilliant and lucid piece of work. Last shows how Wittgenstein’s entanglements of philosophy and architecture become the necessary prologue to his accomplishment in the Investigations. Wittgenstein’s House takes what is often considered a marginal or extraneous interlude in his work and demonstrates how it in fact forms the indispensable pivot of a major reorientation in Wittgenstein’s thought.”—Bruce Clarke, Texas Tech University Wittgenstein’s House reads his two main philosophical texts, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and Philosophical Investigations, in relation to an experience that intervened between them: his design and construction of the Stonborough-Wittgenstein house in Vienna. Arguing that the practice of architecture occupies not just a historical position between Wittgenstein’s early and late philosophy but a conceptual position as well, the book demonstrates that Wittgenstein’s practice of architecture constitutes a fundamental component in the development of his philosophy of language from its early to late phases. The book advances the radical proposition that the field in which architecture and philosophy operate includes linguistic and spatial practices. It develops innovative forms of interdisciplinary analyses to demonstrate that the philosophical positions put forth by Wittgenstein’s two main works are literally unthinkable outside of their respective conceptions of space: the view from above in the early work and the view from within constructed by the late work. NANA LAST is Assistant Professor of Architecture at Rice University.

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