On Certainty: Parallel Text [Hardcover]

Ludwig Wittgenstein (Author), G. E. M. Anscombe (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 1969 | ISBN-10: 0631120009 | ISBN-13: 978-0631120001

Written over the last 18 months of his life and inspired by his interest in G. E. Moore's defense of common sense, this much discussed volume collects Wittgenstein's reflections on knowledge and certainty, on what it is to know a proposition for sure.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"The volume is full of thought-provoking insights which will prove a stimulus both to further study and to scholarly disagreement." -- -- Alan R. White, Philosophical Books --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Language Notes

Text: English, German (translation)
Original Language: German

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 187 pages
• Publisher: Blackwell Publishers (December 1969)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0631120009
• ISBN-13: 978-0631120001
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,965,587 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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97 of 102 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Very Useful Little Book from a Very Substantial Philosopher, April 27, 2003

By 

Stuart W. Mirsky "swm" (New York, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: On Certainty (Paperback)

A compilation of loosely connected, aphoristic-like statements about the idea of certainty, taking off from G. E. Moore's famous assertion in favour of common sense, Wittgenstein here presents his thoughts, at the end of his life, concerning the question of how sure of anything we can ever be. Dealing with a fundamentally epistemological question, this little book follows the path Wittgenstein had defined for himself in the latter part of his career, concerning itself with language and how we talk about the ideas we have.

Some misread him very badly, which is not surprising given his penchant for cryptic brevity and his own tendency to avoid extensive explication of his ideas in favour of the brief observation or statement reflecting moments of insight. Indeed, insight seems to have been at the very core of his later philosophy . . . it's all about seeing things in a new way.

On the matter of certainty, his claims here, sometimes rambling and seemingly unconnected, seem to boil down to a couple of points, consistent with his general way of seeing things:

1) Being certain of anything, he seems to say, is a matter of what we mean in the context in which we are expressing certainty. That is, he suggests that "certainty" the word has different meanings, depending on the application, and that we can become too readily confused if we try to apply one meaning (or use) in a place where another is required. As a corollary of this, he clearly holds that there is no basic idea of "certainty" to which all can be reduced, but only a range of related uses of the word in our language. This is in keeping with his larger view of the world as "contained" in our knowledge of it, and our knowledge "contained" in the words we use which are, themselves, a function of our language, which last is a part of our behavioural continuum, representing a rule-governed activity in which we are embedded as what he called a "form of life". (There are significant metaphysical implications for this but he does not touch on these, either in this book or more generally elsewhere, since he felt that to do that was often to stray out of the bounds that language made for us.)

2) As an outgrowth of the above, his second insight here tells us that there are some things of which we can be certain in a way that does not require what we would normally expect, i.e., evidence or proof. That is, sometimes a statement is just grounded in the rules of the game itself, i.e., in order to play in the game we must just assert the certainty . . . and believe in it. While such assertions may look the same as assertions of empirical certainty ("there is a bird outside my window") they are not (e.g., "there is an external world," "there are other minds inside other human bodies," etc.). To doubt certain things like this would be to break the rules of the game in which we are operating, in which case everything else collapses and we can no longer play.

In keeping with his usual approach, Wittgenstein does not present an argument for any of this or even make these claims, quite as explicitly as I have just done, in this book but, rather, confines himself to musings and observations, examples and questions. But it is to these two main points that everything he is presenting in On Certainty leads.

A note: some seem to have concluded from Wittgenstein's penchant for aphorisms and indirection that he was saying things quite different than he really was saying. I note someone here who accuses Wittgenstein of solipsism and this is a woeful misreading of him. His philosophical approach, in fact, put paid to the solipsist argument if read aright! Others have thought he was just playing with words or posturing as some kind of faux mystic. I would suggest that such ideas are false but that they arise because he was so unwilling to explicate his thoughts in the usual discursive way and, perhaps because he thought to do that would just lead one in circles.

So when reading Wittgenstein, you have to do it as he thought it and join him in the gnawing of the intellectual bones he displays in his observations. It is a matter of our seeing his point and not of his establishing logically defensible claims and arguments which we can debate with him or ourselves.

Someone else here likened him to a Zen master and I would suggest that that is very apt, indeed. Although his philosophical interests were mainly epistemological and not "spiritual" (defined as trying to place the conscious self in relation to the world in which it finds itself a la Zen), his techniques were not much different from those of Zen and his outcomes, insights into what we really mean when we say things, were on a par with the Zen idea of achieving satori (the moment of enlightenment). Different focal points, indeed, but the same strategy and the same basic understanding of the way introspective knowledge is secured for both.

Still, this particular work is very incomplete, perhaps because he wrote it while ill and apparently died before he could "complete" it . . . . leaving us a very limited look at a very significant epistemological problem with a somewhat spotty analysis and "solution." The Philosophical Investigations, his last (and also incomplete) work written specifically for publication, has much more to offer on his overall view of things and relative to the basic insights he invokes here in understanding "certainty".

SWM

43 of 46 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Readable Wittgenstein, tackles epistemological relativism, February 9, 2001

By 

"pierce_inverarity" - See all my reviews

This review is from: On Certainty (Paperback)

On Certainty is an excellent introduction to Wittgenstein's thought, especially for those who may be turned off by the terseness and impenetrability of the Tractatus. This piece is still terse by any standard but Wittgenstein's, and many statements are just clever one-sentence aphorisms that float by themselves, seemingly disconnected from the main thread of argument. Assertions are often left unproven, and the numbered-statements style can be tiring. Still, some numbered statements are actually several sentences long (!), and many actually go into detail -- this makes it is somewhat unusual among Wittgenstein's works. As is often the case with philosophers' works, a beginning student would be well advised to proceed into Wittgenstein's works in reverse chronological order. The early Wittgenstein -- of perfect edifices of language and logic -- may be better understood in light of the later Wittgenstein, of social constructs and language games.

Where does Wittgenstein come down on the question of epistemological relativism? In classical paradoxical Wittgensteinian fashion, he is both for and against, sort of. He admits that he is certain of some things, and that he often thinks that someone who is not certain of these things (e.g., "This is my hand." etc) as not "reasonable." But he does not go so far as to say there is an objective truth on a Platonic plane. Certainty is more personal than that (a la Michael Polanyi?), and in some deep axiomatic way, has to be taken on faith. We are ultimately certain of things just because we are certain of them, and, as Wittgenstein writes about the statement "this is my hand," any evidence we could muster to support such a statement is not as strong as the original statement itself.

Overall, this is a fascinating look at the interplay of language, belief, and epistemology, from one of the 20th century's master philosophers.

17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Zen master for the 21st century..., June 18, 2002

By 

Yuri Kuzyk (Toronto, Ontario Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: On Certainty (Paperback)

Wittgenstein hastily wrote "On Certainty" in his last days - several places he seemed frustrated that he was unlikely to be able to get his ideas across. However, this work distills most of his work on the foundations of knowledge in a manner that is quite accessible. In fact, this book should have been entitled something like "cutting through centuries of misguided notions" - you only get clarity of vision such as contained in this volume if you are lucky enough to get samadhi from "show me your original face".

Wittgenstein used Moore's (in)famous paper that started with "knowing" his hand and then deduced the universe. Wittgenstein showed the inherent fallacy of this attempt and in the process paraded the naked emperor of metaphysics around in all its dualistic glory. For Wittgenstein really attacked the 'mapping' of what is really psychology into the analytic framework of philosophy.

Wittgenstein pointed out that doubt is a 'game', in the sense that doubting must follow logical rules. The game runs aground when it attempts to doubt the actual framework - such as doubting your own existence. This is no longer part of the 'game' but instead is simply nonsense or, better, psychology.

Wittgenstein wrote the book in his familiar style utilizing short semi-paragraphs to map out his arguments. I find the format quite similar to Eastern philosophy such as Tao Te Ching and the Zen koans and feel it is quite readable. Other people may want to buy Avrum Stroll's excellent "Moore and Wittgenstein on Certainty" for a more 'standard' overview of the argments.

This is essential reading for anyone interested in the future of philosophy.