Wittgenstein: Understanding And Meaning: Volume 1 of an Analytical Commentary on the Philosophical Investigations, Part II: Exegesis §§1-184 / Edition 2

by Gordon P. Baker, P. M. S. Hacker

Overview

This is a much revised and extended new edition of Part II of the first volume of the monumental four-volume Analytical Commentary on the Philosophical Investigations.

• Takes into account much new material that was unavailable when the first edition was written
• Following Baker’s death in 2002, P.M.S. Hacker has rewritten many sections of exegesis completely
• Part II: Exegesis §§1-184 has been thoroughly revised in the light of the electronic publication of Wittgenstein’s Nachlass, and includes many new interpretations of the remarks, a history of the composition of the Philosophical Investigations and an overview of its structure
• The accompanying Part I: Essays now includes two completely new essays: 'Meaning and Use' and 'The Recantation of a Metaphysician'; the essays: ‘The Augustinian Conception of Language’, ‘The Language-Game Method’, ‘Contextual Dicta and Contextual Principles’, ‘Philosophy’, ‘Surveyability and Surveyable Representations’, and ‘Truth and the General Propositional Form’ are redrafted and expanded, incorporating new source materials and new arguments, as well as taking into account debates of the last quarter of a century
• The revisions will ensure that this remains the definitive reference work on Wittgenstein’s masterpiece for the foreseeable future

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781405199254
Publisher:	Wiley
Publication date:	12/14/2009
Series:	Analytical Commentary on the Philosophical Investigations , #1
Edition description:	2nd Revised ed.
Pages:	384
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

G.P.Baker was a Fellow of St John’s College, Oxford from 1967 until his death in 2002. He is the co-author with P.M.S. Hacker of the first two volumes of the four-volume Analytical Commentary on the Philosophical Investigations (Blackwell, 1980–96), author of Wittgenstein, Frege and the Vienna Circle (Blackwell, 1988) and with Katherine Morris of Descartes’ Dualism (1996). He also wrote numerous articles on Wittgenstein, Frege, Russell, Waismann and Descartes.

P.M.S. Hacker is the leading authority on the philosophy of Wittgenstein. He is author of the four-volume Analytical Commentary on the Philosophical Investigations, the first two volumes co-authored with G.P. Baker (Blackwell, 1980–96) and of Wittgenstein’s Place in Twentieth-century Analytic Philosophy (Blackwell, 1996). His other previous works include The Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience (Blackwell, 2003) and History of Cognitive Neuroscience (Wiley-Blackwell, 2008), both co-authored with M.R. Bennett. Most recently he has published Human Nature: The Categorical Framework (Blackwell, 2007), the first volume of a trilogy on human nature.Together with Joachim Schulte, he has produced the 4^th edition and extensively revised translation of Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations (Wiley-Blackwell, forthcoming 2009).

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Table of Contents

Acknowledgements viii

Introduction to Part II: Exegesis xi

Note to the paperback edition 2009 xiv

Abbreviations xv

The history of the composition of the Philosophical Investigations 1

An overview of the structure and argument of the Philosophical Investigations 7

Exegesis 25

The Title 27

The Motto 29

The Preface 33

Chapter 1 The Augustinian conception of language (??1-27(a)) 43

Chapter 2 Illusions of naming: ostensive definition, logically proper names, simples and samples, and analysis (??27(b)-64) 93

Chapter 3 Family resemblance, determinacy of sense, and the quest for essence (??65-88) 145

Chapter 4 Philosophy (??89-133) 191

Chapter 5 The general prepositional form (??134-42) 285

Chapter 6 Understanding and ability (??143-84) 305

Index 357