Wittgenstein's On Certainty There - Like Our Life

by Rhees, Rush; Phillips, D. Z.

• ISBN13: 9781405105798
• ISBN10: 1405105798
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2003-01-31
• 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	p. vii
The Philosophical Background to On Certainty	p. 1
On Certainty: A New Topic?	p. 3
Saying and Describing	p. 6
Concept-Formation	p. 11
'Seeing' and 'Thinking'	p. 16
Thought and Language	p. 27
Picturing Reality	p. 34
What Makes Language Language?	p. 40
The Logical and the Empirical	p. 44
On Certainty: A Work in Logic	p. 48
Discussions of On Certainty	p. 53
Two Conversations with Wittgenstein on Moore	p. 55
Preface to On Certainty	p. 61
On Certainty's Main Theme	p. 67
Induction	p. 73
Wittgenstein's Propositions and Foundations	p. 78
Language as Emerging from Instinctive Behaviour	p. 93
Words and Things	p. 106
Not Worth Mentioning?	p. 111
Certainty and Madness	p. 118
Comparisons Between On Certainty and Wittgenstein's Earlier Work	p. 125
Some Passages Relating to Doubt and Certainty in On Certainty	p. 131
Afterword: Rhees on Reading On Certainty	p. 133
Notes	p. 183
Index	p. 192
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