Dr Danièle Moyal-Sharrock
PhD Philosophy (University of Geneva), PhD Comparative Literature (Sorbonne, Paris)
Job title: Senior Lecturer in Philosophy
Email Address: D.Moyal-Sharrock@herts.ac.uk
Telephone Number: 01707285645
Memberships and Appointments: President, British Wittgenstein Society (BWS) Scientific Collaborator, Institut d'Histoire et de Philosophie des Sciences et des Techniques (IHSPT), Paris External Examiner, Taught MA on Wittgenstein, Swansea Research Associate, Laboratoire d'études et de recherches sur les logiques contemporaines de la philosophie (LLCP), Université Paris 8.
Danièle Moyal-Sharrock's research interests include Wittgenstein, philosophy of psychology, philosophy of literature, philosophy of art and aesthetics. Her publications focus on what she calls 'the third Wittgenstein' (the post-Investigations corpus), and particularly on On Certainty, which she considers to be Wittgenstein's third masterpiece. She distances herself from the school that sees in Wittgenstein nothing beyond therapy and has sought to show his contribution to the solution, and not only dissolution, of problems such as external world scepticism, the mind-body gap, and the nature of basic beliefs. Underlying her work is the conviction that many philosophical problems stem from the inflated role allotted to the propositional at the expense, mostly, of non-reflective action.
In 'The Good Sense of Nonsense', Moyal-Sharrock argues against Therapeutic and Ineffabilist readings of the Tractatus as self-repudiating. The Tractatus has been considered self-repudiating for two reasons: it refers to its own propositions as 'nonsensical', and it makes 'paradoxical ineffability claims' -- that is, its remarks are themselves instances of what it says cannot be said. The first problem is addressed by showing that, on Wittgenstein's view, nonsense is primarily a technically descriptive, not a defamatory, qualification, and is not indicative of Wittgenstein rejecting or disavowing his own Tractarian 'propositions'. The paradoxical ineffability claim is then dissolved via a distinction between saying and speaking. ('The Good Sense of Nonsense: A Reading of Wittgenstein's Tractatus as Nonself-repudiating' in Philosophy [January 2007]).
List of publications