Corso di laurea magistrale in Filosofia

The course aims at describing the multifaceted relationship between Wittgenstein and the Cambridge Keynesians as an episode in the history of ideas, at the crossroad between the history of philosophy and the history of economic thought.

At the end of the course students should:
- have a clear understanding of some conjectures concerning Wittgenstein's intellectual debt towards Sraffa;
- being able to reflect on the similarieties and differences between Wittgenstein's later philosophy and some of the methodological and epistemological views explicitly defended or tacitly assumed by Keynes (especially in his mature work) and the economists who gathered around him in Cambridge.

Frontal lessons and discussion sessions.
Supplementary teaching material will be made available during the course.

Students who attend the course regularly will be given a written test concerning the topics and texts dealt with during the course. The written exam consists in a set of questions, to be answered partly in class and partly at home.

Students who cannot attend the course are required to study the texts listed below (see "Testi consigliati e bibliografia").

Wittgenstein returned to Cambridge in 1929, and soon after the Cambridge "Circus" – the circle of economists strictly associated with John Maynard Keynes at the time when he was preparing his General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1936) – was formed. There were several personal and intellectual connections between Wittgenstein and these Keynesians. As is well-known, a central figure in this episode was that of Piero Sraffa, whom Wittgenstein credited for providing him with the main stimulus for the most original and consequential ideas expressed in the Philosophical Investigations (1953) and, in particular, for the adoption of an "anthropological" standpoint in philosophy. The course will make an attempt to clarify some aspects of this story by focusing on issues at the intersection between (Wittgensteinian) philosophy and (Keynesian and Sraffian) economics. Among them:
- a methodological analysis of philosophy and the social sciences;
- anti-intellectualism and the centrality of practice;
- conceptions of human rationality.

1) Coates, J. 1996, The Claims of Common Sense: Moore, Wittgenstein, Keynes and the Social Science. Cambridge University Press
2) Roncaglia, A. 2009, Piero Sraffa, Great Thinkers in Economics, Palgrave Macmillan
3) Kenny, A. 2005, Wittgenstein, revised edition, Blackwell
4) Wittgenstein L. 1987,  Remarks on Frazer's Golden Bough, Humanities Press
5) One among the following texts:
- Arena, R. 2015, Order, process and morphology: Sraffa and Wittgenstein. Cambridge Journal of Economics, 39 (4), 1087–1108
- Davis, John B. 2002, A Marxist influence on Wittgenstein via Sraffa, in Marx and Wittgenstein: Knowledge, Morality and Politics. Eds. G. Kitching and N. Pleasants, London, Routledge, 131-143 (the volume is avaliable here: https://www.bibliosum.unito.it/it/node/1347 – EBSCO Academic eBook Collection).
- McLachlan, H. V., & Swales, J. K., 1998, Sraffa, Wittgenstein and the Nature of Economic Theory, Journal of Interdisciplinary Economics, 9 (4), 253–271
- Sen, A. 2003, Sraffa, Wittgenstein, and Gramsci. Journal of Economic Literature, 41, 1240–1255
6) One among the following texts:
- Marion, M. 2005, Sraffa and Wittgenstein: Physicalism and Constructivism. Review of Political Economy, 17, 381–406
- McGuinness, B. 2008, What Wittgenstein owed to Sraffa. In: G. Chiodi, L. Ditta, eds. Sraffa or An Alternative Economics. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 227-235
- Venturinha, N. 2013, Wittgenstein’s debt to Sraffa, in Forms of Life and Language Games, ed. by Gálvez Jesús Padilla, Gaffal Margit, Ontos, Frankfurt, 187-195