Wittgenstein, Part I: Essays - (Analytical Commentary on the Philosophical Investigations) by P M S Hacker (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

This fourth and final volume of the monumental commentary on Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations covers pp 428-693 of the book. Like the previous volumes, it consists of philosophical essays and exegesis.

From the Back Cover

This fourth and final volume of the monumental commentary on Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations covers pp. 428-693 of the book. Like the previous volumes, it consists of philosophical essays and exegesis. The nine essays cover all the major themes of this concluding part of Wittgenstein's masterpiece: intentionality, inductive reasoning, the arbitrariness of grammar and the bounds of sense, negation, methodology in philosophical psychology, memory and recognition, willing and the nature of voluntary action, intending, and the mythology of meaning something. Wittgenstein's writings on some of these themes have been relatively neglected, and the analytical essays on the topics of intentionality, the arbitrariness of grammar, and the will shed fresh light upon his characteristically original contributions to these subjects, which are highly relevant to current debates. The exegesis clarifies and evaluates Wittgenstein's arguments, drawing extensively on all the unpublished papers, examining the evolution of his ideas in manuscript sources and definitively settling many controversies about the interpretation of the published text.

This commentary, like its predecessors, is indispensable for the study of Wittgenstein and is essential reading for students of philosophy of mind and philosophy of language.

The completion of the Commentary will be followed by a historical monograph entitled Wittgenstein's Place in Twentieth Century Analytic Philosophy, which will give an overview of Wittgenstein's achievement, locate his work within the mainstream of analytic philosophy and examine his influence upon the development of Cambridge analysis in the interwar years, upon the Vienna Circle and upon postwar Oxford analytic philosophy.

Review Quotes

"Anyone reading Philosophical Investigations would do well to keep it by their side, not only for its authoritative commentary on particular passages, but also for Hacker's extremely illuminating essays on the themes of the last part of the book: one each on intentionality, induction, the arbitrariness of grammar, negation, methodology in philosophical psychology, memory and recognition the will, intention and the mythology of meaning." London Review of Books

"It is as good a commentary on the Investigations as seems humanly possible. This will reamin the definitive starting point for the forseeable future. Indeed, it must rank alongside the greatest contributions to philosophical scholarship (such as Ross on Aristotle or Vaihinger on Kant), since it combines, on a momentous scale, authoritative textual exegesis, philosophical insight, encyclopedic knowledge of the historical background and lucidity of expression. Hacker succeeds brilliantly in showing that these passages are essential to the discussion of language and linguistic meaning that is the leitmotif of the Investigations. The chapter on mental states and processes provides an excellent interpretation and defence of Wittgenstein's approach to philosophical psychology, in particular of his denial that our psychological concepts constitute a 'folk psychology' that must be replaced by a more scientific alternative. Similarly, the chapter on will is the most authoritative discussion yet of Wittgenstein's fiendishly difficult treatment of that topic." Hans-Johann Glock, Times Higher Education Supplement

About the Author

P. M. S. Hacker is Fellow of St. John's College, Oxford. He is author of Insight and Iffusion (1972, revised ed. 1986), Appearance and Reality (Blackwell, 1987) and Wittgenstein: Meaning and Mind (Blackwell, 1990). He edited The Renaissance of Gravure: The Art of S. W. Hayter (1988), Graure and Grace: the Engravings of Roger Vieillard (1993) and co-edited a Festschrift for H. L. A. Hart together with J. Raz. Law, Morality and Society (1977). He has written five books with G. P. Baker, Wittgenstein: Understanding and Meaning (Blackwell, 1980), Wittgenstein: Rules, Grammar and Necessity (Blackwell, 1985), Frege: Logical Excavations (Blackwell and Oxford University Press, New York, 1984), Language, Sense and Nonsense (Blackwell, 1984), and Scepticism, Rules and Language, (Blackwell, 1984).