Wittgenstein's On Certainty: There - Like Our Life

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.

Table of Contents:
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

About the Author :
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.

Review :
"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