Philosophy Society Meets Wittgenstein

Lower Sixth Former, Imo Sears, reviews a thought-provoking talk on Wittgenstein:

Barnaby Burleigh, a St Hilda’s College, Oxford PhD student, spoke to the Philosophy Society at St Edward’s on 25th April. His inspiring talk focused on Wittgenstein, the subject of his thesis, and the meaning of language in relation to Descartes.

It began with a brief history of Wittgenstein and explained his significance as one of the most influential philosophers of the 20th century. Wittgenstein wanted to emphasise the importance of philosophy to everyone and how he understood that many fail to see the relevance of philosophical ideas in everyday life. He linked this to Descartes and explained Cartesian reasoning and how you can only be sure of yourself as a thinking being rather than being certain of your senses. He demonstrated how Descartes failed to lead this into a persuasive argument for the existence of God due to his arbitrary use of language, which I found particularly intriguing.

Descartes believed language was the mirror image of objects within the world whereas Wittgenstein believed language is intertwined with social/cultural practices and believed language is a series of games that communicate meaning.

The talk was enjoyable and informative with relevant information for topics studied in the Sixth Form and provided a lot of useful discussion for upcoming exams. The event concluded with a chance for pupils to ask questions. It was a very insightful talk and provided details on a topic I wasn’t familiar with previously. 

An image of Wittgenstein in his youth in Oxford, which has been imagined by Midjourney AI