This book is a collection of essays motivated by a "cultural" and biographical reading of Wittgenstein. It includes some new essays and some that were originally published in Educational Philosophy and Theory. The book focuses on the concept of “technoscience”, and the relevance of Wittgenstein’s work for philosophy of technology which amplifies Lyotard’s reading and provides a critique of education as an increasingly technology-led enterprise. It includes a distinctive view on the ethics of reading Wittgenstein and the ethics of suicide that shaped him. It also examines the reception and engagement with Wittgenstein’s work in French philosophy with a chapter on post-analytic philosophy of education as a choice between Richard Rorty and Jean-François Lyotard. Peters examines Wittgenstein’s academic life at Cambridge University and his involvement as a student and faculty member in the Moral Sciences Club. Finally, the book provides an understanding of Wittgensteinian styles of reasoning and the concept of worldview. Is it possible to escape the picture that holds us captive? This constitutes a challenging introduction to Wittgenstein’s work for academics, researchers and postgraduate students in the fields of education, technology and philosophy.

Ludwig Wittgenstein and Martin Heidegger are arguably the two most influential philosophers of the twentieth century. Their work not only reshaped the philosophical landscape, but also left its mark on other disciplines, including political science, theology, anthropology, ecology, mathematics, cultural studies, literary theory, and architecture. Both sought to challenge the assumptions governing the traditions they inherited, to question the very terms in which philosophy’s problems had been posed, and to open up new avenues of thought for thinkers of all stripes. And despite considerable differences in style and in the traditions they inherited, the similarities between Wittgenstein and Heidegger are striking. Comparative work of these thinkers has only increased in recent decades, but no collection has yet explored the various ways in which Wittgenstein and Heidegger can be drawn into dialogue. As such, these essays stage genuine dialogues, with aspects of Wittgenstein’s elucidations answering or problematizing aspects of Heidegger’s, and vice versa. The result is a broad-ranging collection of essays that provides a series of openings and provocations that will serve as a reference point for future work that draws on the writings of these two philosophers.

Ludwig Wittgenstein was the most influential, and arguably the greatest, philosopher of the twentieth century. This fact about his influence is not only a matter of how much he influenced people but also of how many people he influenced. His early work was taken up by some of the pioneers of analytical philosophy. His later work helped spawn another movement within analytic philosophy, that of ordinary language philosophy (sometimes called Oxford philosophy). He is also considered by some to be a key postmodern thinker, and an interest in his work is a distinguishing feature of many post-analytical philosophers who seek to bridge the gap between analytical and so-called continental philosophy. This second edition of Historical Dictionary of Wittgenstein's Philosophy covers the history of this philosophy through a chronology, an introductory essay, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 300 cross-referenced entries on every aspect of his work. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about Wittgenstein’s philosophy.

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) was undoubtedly one of the most important philosophers of the 20th century, and perhaps of any century. He was also a fascinating, charismatic, and irritating man. His philosophical ability was recognized almost immediately by Bertrand Russell, and during his lifetime his work influenced first logical positivism and then ordinary language philosophy. Since then it has also become central in post-analytical philosophical thought. Beyond the world of academic philosophy it has inspired playwrights, poets, novelists, architects, filmmakers, and biographers. The A to Z of Wittgenstein's Philosophy is intended for anyone who wants to know more about the philosophy and the life of this enigmatic thinker. The book contains an introductory overview of his life and work, a timeline of the major relevant events in and after his life, an extensive bibliography, and, above all, an A-Z of ideas, people, and places that have been involved in his philosophy and its reception. The dictionary is written with no particular agenda and includes entries on philosophers (and others) who influenced Wittgenstein, those he influenced in turn, and some of the main figures in contemporary Wittgenstein scholarship. Suggestions for further reading are also included, as well as a guide to the literature on Wittgenstein and a bibliography broken down by subject area.

Ludwig Wittgenstein’s On Certainty explores a myriad of new and important ideas regarding our notions of belief, knowledge, skepticism, and certainty. During the course of his exploration, Wittgenstein makes a fascinating new discovery about certitude, namely, that it is categorically distinct from knowledge. As his investigation advances, he recognizes that certainty must be non-propositional and non-ratiocinated; borne out not in the things we say, but in our actions, our deeds. Many philosophers working outside of epistemology recognized Wittgenstein's insights and determined that his work's abrupt end might serve as an excellent launching point for still further philosophical expeditions. In Exploring Certainty: Wittgenstein and Wide Fields of Thought, Robert Greenleaf Bricesurveys some of this rich topography. Wittgenstein's writings serve as a point of departure for Brice's own ideas about certainty. He shows how Wittgenstein's rough and unpolished notion of certitude might be smoothed out and refined in a way to benefit studies of morality, aesthetics, cognitive science, philosophy of mathematics. Brice's work opens new avenues of thought for scholars and students of the Wittgensteinian tradition, while introducing original philosophies concerning issues central to human knowledge and cognition.

This book considers the important twentieth century Austrian philosopher, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and his conception of certainty. In his work entitled On Certainty, Wittgenstein provides not only a brilliant solution to a previously intractable philosophical problem, but also the elements of an entirely new way of approaching this and similar longstanding, apparently unresolvable, problems. In On Certainty, he re-conceives the problem of radical skepticism–the claim that we can never really be certain of anything except the contents of our own minds–as a kind of philosophical “disease” of thought. His approach to the problem, which is emphasized in the book, is similar to the treatment of disease, has two main goals: (1) bring about an awareness in the philosopher that this kind of extreme skepticism is not a methodological approach to be taken seriously, and, with this awareness, (2) an attempt to replace this radical skepticism with a practical, Common Sense framework. Implicit in Wittgenstein’s approach are a number of strategies found in a contemporary approach to psychotherapy known as Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). These strategies, along with philosophical methods and scientific practices rooted in the Scottish School of Common Sense, seek to diagnose and treat irrational thoughts and beliefs that often emerge (and re-emerge) in the discipline of philosophy. The aim of this book, then, is to provide students of philosophy with the tools necessary to adjust and reshape these irrational, self-defeating thoughts and beliefs into something new, something healthy.

Foundationalism is the view that philosophical propositions are of two kinds, those which need supporting evidence, and those which in themselves provide the evidence which renders them irrefutable. This book, originally published 1988, describes the battle between foundationalism, which places belief in God in the first category, and various other approaches to the problem of faith – ‘Reformed Epistemology’, hermeneutics; and sociological analysis. In the concluding section of the book, an examination of concept formation in religious belief is used to reinterpret the gap between the expressive power of language and the reality of God.