Wittgenstein's On Certainty

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