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Wittgenstein's On Certainty
There - Like Our Life

Rush Rhees (Author), D. Z. Phillips (Edited by)

9781405134248, Wiley

Paperback / softback, published 1 May 2005

208 pages
23 x 15.3 x 1.6 cm, 0.308 kg

"This book contains illuminating remarks and a novel perspective on an important and widely discussed classic. And it has a special authority, being the work of one of the author’s best students and closest friends." William Brenner, Old Dominion University, Norfolk, Virginia

"This book contains two remarkable and original contributions by Rush Rhees and D. Z. Phillips to the burgeoning scholarship on Wittgenstein’s On Certainty. I recommend it strongly." Avrum Stroll, University of California, San Diego

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.

Preface vii

PART I THE PHILOSOPHICAL BACKGROUND TO ON CERTAINTY 1

1 On Certainty: A New Topic? 3

2 Saying and Describing 6

3 Concept-Formation 11

4 ‘Seeing’ and ‘Thinking’ 16

5 Thought and Language 27

6 Picturing Reality 34

7 What Makes Language Language? 40

8 The Logical and the Empirical 44

9 On Certainty: A Work in Logic 48

PART II DISCUSSIONS OF ON CERTAINTY 53

10 Two Conversations with Wittgenstein on Moore 55

11 Preface to On Certainty 61

12 On Certainty’s Main Theme 67

13 Induction 73

14 Wittgenstein’s Propositions and Foundations 78

15 Language as Emerging from Instinctive Behaviour 93

16 Words and Things 106

17 Not Worth Mentioning? 111

18 Certainty and Madness 118

PREFACE

Appendix 1: Comparisons Between On Certainty and Wittgenstein’s Earlier Work 125

Appendix 2: Some Passages Relating to Doubt and Certainty in On Certainty 131

Afterword: Rhees on Reading On Certainty 133
D. Z. Phillips

Notes 183

Index 192

Subject Areas: Philosophy [HP]
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