Wittgenstein's "On Certainty": There Like Our Life - Hardcover

Rhees, Rush

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1405105798 ISBN 13: 9781405105798

Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell, 2002

Synopsis

Even Wittgenstein's admirers have been puzzled by his last work, On Certainty. Some even regard it as a lapse at the end of a distinguished career, or as a late epistemological interest that remained undeveloped. 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 from early in his career. From his earliest work on the nature of propositions, to his interest in On Certainty with the 'sureness' in our language-games, Wittgenstein questions 'what it means to say something'. He emphasizes the importance not of that which cannot be questioned, but of what we do not question in our thought and action. In this book, Rhees brings out the continuity in Wittgenstein's thought, and the radical character of his conclusions. In explicating this text, and demonstrating its continuity with Wittgenstein's earlier work, Rhees has done a great service that will be of profound interest to students and scholars of Wittgenstein for generations to come. Rhees's comments are introduced by D. Z. Phillips, who writes a substantial and illuminating afterword that discusses current scholarship surrounding On Certainty, and its relationship to Rhees's work on this subject.

About this title

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

About the Author:

Rush Rhees (1905-1989) 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). D.Z. Phillips is Professor of Philosophy 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 From Fantasy to Faith (1991), Interventions in Ethics (1992) and Wittgenstein and Religion (1993). He is also editor of the Blackwell journal Philosophical Investigations.

About this edition

• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 1405105798
• ISBN 13: 9781405105798
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 208
• Editor: Phillips D. Z.