This is the first collection of papers devoted to Ludwig Wittgenstein's cryptic but brilliant, On Certainty . This work, Wittgenstein's last, extends the thinking of his earlier, better known writings, and in so doing, makes the most important contribution to epistemology since Kant's Critique of Pure Reason - a claim the essays in this volume help to demonstrate. The essays have been grouped under four headings, reflecting current approaches to the work: the Framework, Transcendental, Epistemic, and Therapeutic readings.

This is the first collection of papers devoted to Ludwig Wittgenstein's cryptic but brilliant On Certainty. This work, Wittgenstein's last, extends the thinking of his earlier, better known writings, and in so doing, makes the most important contribution to epistemology since Kant's Critique of Pure Reason--a claim the essays in this volume help to demonstrate. The essays have been grouped under four headings, reflecting current approaches to the work: the Framework, Transcendental, Epistemic, and Therapeutic readings.

This book sheds unprecedented light on Wittgenstein's third masterpiece, On Certainty , clarifying his thoughts on basic beliefs and rebuttal of scepticism. As an introduction and commentary on Wittgenstein's final major philosophical work, Moyal-Sharrock's book will prove an indispensable guide to the student, scholar and general reader.

Though Wittgenstein wrote on the same subjects that dominate the work of other analytic philosophers - the nature of logic, the limits of language, the analysis of meaning - he did so in a peculiarly poetic style that separates his work sharply from that of his peers and makes the question of how to read him particularly pertinent. At the root of Wittgenstein's thought, Ray Monk argues, is a determination to resist the scientism characteristic of our age, a determination to insist on the integrity and the autonomy of non-scientific forms of understanding. The kind of understanding we seek in philosophy, Wittgenstein tried to make clear, is similar to the kind we might seek of a person, a piece of music, or, indeed, a poem. Extracts are taken from Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and from a range of writings, including Philosophical Investigations, The Blue and Brown Books and Last Writings on the Philosophy of Psychology.

Table of contents - Plato, Knowledge and Opinion, from 'Republic'; - Augustine, Three Things True and Certain, from 'City of God'; - Aquinas, Whether Faith is More Certain than Science . . . ? from 'Summa Theologica'; - Descartes, Meditations I, II, VI, from 'Meditations'; - Leibniz, On the Method of Distinguishing Real from 'Imaginary Phenomena'; - Hume, Of the Academical or Sceptical Philosophy, from 'Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding'; - Reid, Reflections on the Common Theory of Ideas, from 'Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man'; - Husserl, First Meditation; the Way to the Transcendental Ego, from 'Cartesian Meditations'; - Moore, Certainty, from 'Philosophical Papers'; - Wittgenstein, On Certainty, from 'On Certainty'; - Reichenbach, The Search for Certainty and the Rationalistic Conception of Knowledge, from 'The Rise of Scientific Philosophy'; - Malcolm, Do I Know I Am Awake? from 'Dreaming'; - Bouwsma, Descartes Evil Genius, from 'Philosophical Essays'; - Smullyan, Dream or Reality, from 5000 B.C. and Other Philosophical Fantasies; - Octavio Paz, Certainty, a poem from 'Configurations'.

Does scepticism threaten our common sense picture of the world? Does it really undermine our deep-rooted certainties? Answers to these questions are offered through a comparative study of the epistemological work of two key figures in the history of analytic philosophy, G. E. Moore and Ludwig Wittgenstein.

Paul Horwich presents a bold new interpretation of Wittgenstein's later work. He argues that it is Wittgenstein's radically anti-theoretical metaphilosophy - and not his identification of the meaning of a word with its use - that underpins his discussions of specific issues concerning language, the mind, mathematics, knowledge, art, and religion.