Wittgenstein's On Certainty There - Like Our Life

by Rhees, Rush; Phillips, D. Z.

• ISBN13: 9780470776247
• ISBN10: 0470776242
• Edition: 1st
• Format: eBook
• Copyright: 2008-02-25
• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell

Summary

Rush Rhees, a close friend of Wittgenstein and a major interpreter of his work, shows how Wittgenstein's On Certainty concerns logic, language, and reality – topics that occupied Wittgenstein since early in his career.

• Authoritative interpretation of Wittgenstein's last great work, On Certainty, by one of his closest friends.
  
• Debunks misconceptions about Wittgenstein's On Certainty and shows that it is an essay on logic.
  
• Exposes the continuity in Wittgenstein's thought, and the radical character of his conclusions.
  
• Contains a substantial and illuminating afterword discussing current scholarship surrounding On Certainty, and its relationship to Rhees's work on this subject.

Author Biography

Rush Rhees (1905–89) was one of Wittgenstein’s closest friends and his literary executor. He taught at Swansea from 1940 to 1966. Amongst Wittgenstein’s posthumous works edited by Rhees are Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics (1956), Blue and Brown Books (1958), Philosophical Remarks (1964), Lecture On Ethics (1965) and Philosophical Grammar (1969). Rhees is also the author of Discussions of Wittgenstein (1970, 1996) and Wittgenstein and the Possibility of Discourse (1998).

D. Z. Phillips is Professor of Philosophy Emeritus and Rush Rhees Professor Emeritus at the University of Wales, Swansea, and Danworth Professor of the Philosophy of Religion at Claremont Graduate School, California. He has published widely in the philosophy of religion and ethics; some of his more recent books include Interventions in Ethics (1992), Wittgenstein and Religion (1993) and Religion and the Hermeneutics of Contemplation (2001). He is also editor of the Blackwell journal Philosophical Investigations.

Table of Contents

Preface.

Part I: The Philosophical Background to On Certainty:.

1. On Certainty - A New Topic?.

2. Saying and Describing.

3. Concept-Formation.

4. 'Seeing' and 'Thinking'.

5. Thought and Language.

6. Picturing Reality.

7. What Makes Language Language?.

8. The Logical and the Empirical.

9. On Certainty - A Work in Logic.

Part II: Discussions of On Certainty:.

10. Two Conversations with Wittgenstein on Moore.

11. Preface to On Certainty.

12. On Certainty's Main Theme.

13. Induction.

14. Wittgenstein's Propositions and Foundations.

15. Language as Emerging from Instinctive Behaviour.

16. Words and Things.

17. Not Worth Mentioning?.

18. Certainty and Madness.

Appendix 1: Comparisons Between On Certainty and Wittgenstein's Earlier Work.

Appendix 2: Some Passages Relating to Doubt and Certainty in On Certainty..

Afterword: D. Z. Phillips: Rhees on Reading On Certainty.

Organizing the Notes on On Certainty.

Groundlessness and Language-games.

Searching for Primary Links Between Language and Reality.

Seeing.

Logic and Practice.

Pictures, Propositions and Reality.

Forms of Life.

Practices and Parallels.

Is the Title On Certainty a Happy One?.

Is On Certainty a Polemic against Moore?.

Is Wittgenstein's Main Interest in Moore's Propositions the Nature of Nonsense?.

Does Wittgenstein Say that the Propositions he is Interested in Form a Class, and Does he.

Say the Same of All of Them?.

Are Wittgenstein's Propositions Context-free?.

What is the Connection between Wittgenstein's Propositions and Logic?.

Is Wittgenstein Appealing to Primitive, Pre-linguistic Reactions as the Basis of our Language-games?.

What is Meant by the Sureness in Our Language-games?.

How are Our Conclusions Related to the Notions of a Form of Life or World-picture? How do Wittgenstein's Conclusions Differ from Some Classical and Contemporary Views of Our Relation to the World?.

Rhees's Development of Wittgenstein's Concerns.

Notes.

Index.