Peter Winch

Peter Guy Winch (14 January 1926 – 27 April 1997) was a British philosopher known for his contributions to the philosophy of social science, Wittgenstein scholarship, ethics, and the philosophy of religion. His early book The Idea of a Social Science and its Relation to Philosophy (1958) was an attack on positivism in the social sciences, drawing on the work of R. G. Collingwood and Ludwig Wittgenstein's later philosophy.

Biography

Winch was born on 14 January 1926, in Walthamstow, London. He attended Leyton County High School for boys,[2] before going up to St Edmund Hall, Oxford to read Philosophy, Politics and Economics. Following the outbreak of World War II, he served in the Royal Navy 1944–47, before graduating from the University of Oxford in 1949.[3]

He was a lecturer in philosophy at the then University College of Swansea from 1951 until 1964. He was influenced by his colleagues Rush Rhees and R.F. Holland, both experts in the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein. In 1964, he moved to Birkbeck College, University of London, before becoming Professor of Philosophy at King's College London in 1967. During this period, he served as president of Aristotelian Society, from 1980 to 1981. In 1985 Winch moved to the United States to become Professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.[4]

He died on the 27 April 1997, in Champaign, Illinois.[3][5]

He was survived by his wife Erika Neumann and his two sons, Christopher and David.

Thought

Major influences upon Winch include Ludwig Wittgenstein, Rush Rhees, R. G. Collingwood and Simone Weil. He gave rise to a form of philosophy that has been given the name 'sociologism'.[6] He also bears responsibility for a small school of sociology that was prepared to accept his radical criticism of the subject.[7]

Winch saw himself as an uncompromising Wittgensteinian. He was not personally acquainted with Wittgenstein; Wittgenstein's influence upon him was mostly mediated through that of Rush Rhees, who was his colleague at the University College of Swansea, now known as Swansea University, and whom Wittgenstein appointed as one of his literary executors.[8] Winch's translation of Wittgenstein's Vermischte Bemerkungen (as edited by Georg Henrik von Wright) was published in 1980 as Culture and Value (with a new translation by Winch of a revised edition by Alois Pichler appearing in 1998).[9] After the death of Rhees in 1989, Winch took over his position as literary executor.[5]

From Rush Rhees, Winch derived his interest in the religious writer Simone Weil. Part of the appeal was a break from Wittgenstein into a very different type of philosophy which could nevertheless be tackled with familiar methods. Also Weil's ascetic, somewhat Tolstoyan, form of religion harmonised with one aspect of Wittgenstein's personality.

At a time when most Anglo-American philosophers were heavily under the spell of Wittgenstein, Winch's own approach was strikingly original. While much of his work was concerned with rescuing Wittgenstein from what he took to be misreadings, his own philosophy involved a shift of emphasis from the problems that preoccupied Oxford style ‘linguistic’ philosophy, towards justifying and explaining 'forms of life' in terms of consistent language games. He took Wittgensteinian philosophy into areas of ethics and religion, which Wittgenstein himself had relatively neglected, sometimes showing considerable originality. An example is his illuminating treatment of the moral difference between someone who tries and fails to commit murder and someone who succeeds, in his essay "Trying" in Ethics and Action. With the decline of interest in Wittgenstein, Winch himself was increasingly neglected and the challenge his arguments presented to much contemporary philosophy was sidestepped or ignored. In insisting on the continuity of Wittgenstein's concerns from the Tractatus through to the Philosophical Investigations, Winch made a powerful case for Wittgenstein's mature philosophy, as he understood it, as the consummation and legitimate heir of the entire analytic tradition.[10]

Wittgenstein famously said that philosophy leaves the world as it is.[11] Winch takes his ideas into regions that have strong moral and political implications.

Works

Books

Authored

  • The Idea of a Social Science and its Relation to Philosophy, London 1958.[12][13]
  • Ethics And Action, London 1972.[14]
  • Trying to Make Sense, Oxford 1987.[15][16]
  • Simone Weil, the Just Balance, Cambridge 1989.[17]
  • Spinoza on ethics and understanding, London 2020. ISBN 9781785275432.[18]

Translated/edited

Select articles/book chapters

See also: works by Peter Winch at PhilPapers

References

  1. ^ "Portrait of Peter Winch | University of Illinois Archives". archives.library.illinois.edu. Retrieved 18 July 2019.
  2. ^ D. Z. Phillips (2004). "Winch, Peter Guy (1926–1997), philosopher | Oxford Dictionary of National Biography". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/65661. Retrieved 18 July 2019. (Subscription, Wikipedia Library access or UK public library membership required.)
  3. ^ a b Palmer, Anthony (2 June 1997). "Obituary: Professor Peter Winch". The Independent. Archived from the original on 3 June 2022. Retrieved 18 July 2019.
  4. ^ Phillips, D. Z.; Schacht, Richard (1997). "Peter Winch 1926-1997". Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association. 71 (2): 132–135. ISSN 0065-972X. JSTOR 3130949.
  5. ^ a b Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen: Newsletter 57 p.33 Obituary (1997).(Archived on 7 December 2010)
  6. ^ Sutton, Claud, 1898-1972. (1974). The German tradition in philosophy. New York: Crane, Russak. ISBN 0844802573. OCLC 892542.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  7. ^ Giddens, Anthony. (1993). New rules of sociological method : a positive critique of interpretative sociologies (2nd ed.). Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press. ISBN 0804722250. OCLC 30154711.
  8. ^ Lyas, Colin (1999). Peter Winch. Durham: Acumen. ISBN 9781315710884. OCLC 922958047.
  9. ^ Wang, Joseph (2007). "Culture and Value Revisited – Draft of a new electronic edition". From the ALWS Archives: A Selection of Papers from the International Wittgenstein Symposia in Kirchberg Am Wechsel. Archived from the original on 12 March 2022. Retrieved 19 July 2019.
  10. ^ Hacker, P. M. S. (Peter Michael Stephan) (1997). Wittgenstein's place in twentieth-century analytic philosophy. Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell. ISBN 0631200983. OCLC 33207191.
  11. ^ "Wittgenstein: Philosophical Investigations". topologicalmedialab.net. Retrieved 18 July 2019. 124. Philosophy may in no way interfere with the actual use of language, it can in the end only describe it. For it cannot give it any foundation either. It leaves everything as it is...
  12. ^ Alexander, Peter (1959). "Review of The Idea of a Social Science and Its Relation to Philosophy". Philosophy. 34 (130): 278–279. ISSN 0031-8191.
  13. ^ Merton, Robert K. (1961). "Review of The Idea of a Social Science and Its Relation to Philosophy". Isis. 52 (4): 596–599. ISSN 0021-1753.
  14. ^ Gill, Jerry H. (1973). "Review of Ethics and Action". Religious Studies. 9 (2): 245–247. ISSN 0034-4125.
  15. ^ Phillips, D. Z. (1988). "Review of Trying to Make Sense". Religious Studies. 24 (2): 271–273. ISSN 0034-4125.
  16. ^ Murray, David (1990). "Review of Trying to Make Sense". Philosophy. 65 (251): 102–105. ISSN 0031-8191.
  17. ^ Lewis, Meirlys (1990). "Review of Simone Weil: 'The Just Balance'". Philosophy. 65 (251): 105–106. ISSN 0031-8191.
  18. ^ Hertzberg, Lars; Kienzler, Wolfgang (11 September 2023). "Spinoza on Ethics and Understanding, by Peter Winch: Book Review". Nordic Wittgenstein Review. doi:10.15845/nwr.v12.3656. ISSN 2242-248X.
  19. ^ Lyas, C. A. (1970). "Studies in the Philosophy of Wittgenstein". Philosophy. 45 (174): 330–332. ISSN 0031-8191.
  20. ^ Gustafson, Donald (1972). "Review of Studies in the Philosophy of Wittgenstein; Wittgenstein's Conception of Philosophy". Philosophy and Phenomenological Research. 32 (4): 577–579. doi:10.2307/2106301. ISSN 0031-8205.
  21. ^ Sharrock, William (15 February 2007). "Winch, Peter (1926–1997)". In Ritzer, George (ed.). The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology (1 ed.). Wiley. doi:10.1002/9781405165518.wbeosw038. ISBN 978-1-4051-2433-1. Winch's paper "Understanding a primitive society" (1964) remains very widely read and is still controversial, conjoining [...] the concern with the meaning of religious language (its use in the magical practices of a "primitive" society) with skepticism about the influence of "scientism," leading to great exaggeration of the extent to which – if it all – Winch was a relativist.

Further reading

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