Charles Kay Ogden

This paper examines the relation of C. K. Ogden's Basic English (BE) to early analytic philosophy. Ogden's engagement in the movement for an international auxiliary language (IAL) will be related to his affiliation to empiricist and analytic traditions in philosophy of language. The need to develop an alternative language in order to overcome the misleading common-sense ontology is shared with several early founders of analytic philosophy such as Frege, Russell and Carnap. While analytic philosophers chose formal languages to accomplish this critical task, Ogden had a more pragmatic approach and proceeded to restructure an existing language (English) for international communication. A study of BE's philosophical background reveals influences of empiricists and analytic philosophers on various language planning movements of the first half of the 20th century.

Rhythm & Colour is a biography of the avant-garde dancers, Hélène Vanel (1898–1989), Loïs Hutton(1893–1972), and Margaret Morris (1891–1980), whose, work, lives and loves are doucumented through newly discovered letters, photographs, journals, memoirs, and
contemporary criticism.

The book considers the place of dance in post-WWI Modernism from Morris’ involvement with Futurism and Vorticism to Vanel’s dances at the opening of the 1938 International
Surrealist Exhibition in Paris which are now heralded as the
beginning of Performance Art.

Hutton’s affair with American poet Edna St Vincent Millay, Morris’
relationship with J.D. Fergusson, and the pursuit of Vanel by Scottish
Colourist painter, Leslie Hunter raise issues of gender and sexuality.

Their theatres in Chelsea, Paris and the French Riviera attracted,
among many others Scott Fitzgerald, Charles Rennie Mackintosh,
Ernest Hemingway, Pablo Picasso and James Joyce (whose
daughter Lucia was among their pupils). The dancers worked with
Jean Renoir, Marcel Duchamp and Salvador Dalí.

This paper examines projects in universal communication from the interwar period, including Charles Kay Ogden's Basic English, Otto Neurath's Isotype, and László Moholy-Nagy's typo-photo. The projects under discussion — experiments in language reform, graphic design and photography — were all born from a dissatisfaction with the imprecise, arbitrary and historically-contingent nature of established languages and semiotic systems. A non-arbitrary mode of communication was sought, one that represented reality directly without translation through a cultural code.

I consider the dispute, not with a view to reaching a final verdict, but for the light it sheds on the notion of philosophical nonsense.  How does it look to a sceptic about philosophical nonsense?  It is generally agreed that the Tractatus is an unsatisfactory work, if the traditional reading of, for example, G. E. M. Anscombe or Peter Hacker is correct.  But is it any better on the ‘resolute’ reading of Cora Diamond or James Conant?  I maintain that it is more difficulty to handle the concept of nonsense than nonsensicalists of any stripe realise.  If the ‘ineffable truths’ and ‘important nonsense’ of traditional readings raise problems, so too do the contrast between meaningful frame and nonsensical core, Diamond’s idea that one can imaginatively identify with the nonsense-talker and the mysterious new entity, ‘transitional’ nonsense.  Meaning and communication, I suggest, keep reappearing precisely where they should not.

This thesis is organised around the aim of accounting for a hitherto unanalysed passage Wittgenstein wrote on 10 February 1931. The passage curiously concerns Kant and, though written in 1931, the central theme of the Tractatus, viz. the limit of language. How so? My claim is that Wittgenstein had to revisit this Leitmotiv because around that time the conception of thought in the Tractatus such that the world is the totality of facts had met serious objections. Kant was mentioned in this context because the Tractatus emerged through Wittgenstein’s engagement with transcendental idealism. In detail:

I. The notion of fact as opposed to that of object was initially developed to correct the accounts of propositions in Frege and Russell (ch.1). During the wartime period, Wittgenstein further elaborated it to reject the erroneous conception of possibility involved in Russell’s scientific method and, by so doing, he came to draw on Kant’s transcendental philosophy (ch.2). The resulting account of thoughts as logical pictures, though, rejected transcendental idealism altogether (ch.3). Indeed, the evolution of the Tractatus from 1916 onwards attests that Wittgenstein exploited consequences of his account of thoughts so as to show that transcendental idealism, together with its aspirations, misfires (ch.4).

II. After his return to philosophy, Wittgenstein continued to uphold his view in the Tractatus in its essentials. In the autumn of 1929, however, Ramsey delivered his fatal objection, insinuating that the underlying conception of thought was totally false (ch.5). Ramsey’s criticism soon led Wittgenstein to re-examine his logical standpoint against causal theories of meaning, and it is in this context that Wittgenstein’s remark of 10 February 1931 was written (ch.6).

All these events are encapsulated in the entry of 10 February 1931, and it accordingly marks a decisive turning point in the transition from the Tractatus to the Investigations.