Wittgenstein

Wittgenstein: Meaning and Mind, Part II – Exegesis §§243-427 explores and clarifies the patterns, developments, and conclusions of Wittgenstein’s arguments in §§243-427 of Philosophical Investigations. Each numbered remark in Wittgenstein’s text is systematically analysed. Hacker’s thoughtful, rigorous commentary clarifies problematic expressions, phrases, and sentences, and elaborates source remarks in Wittgenstein’s Nachlass that shed light on the text, illustrating their bearing on deep philosophical problems.

This volume of exegesis of §§243-427 has been extensively revised, incorporating numerous references to original and secondary texts of Wittgenstein that were not known to exist in 1990.The second edition features new comprehensive tables of correlation between the remarks of the Investigations and the source of the remarks in the Nachlass, and addresses a variety of controversies from the last quarter of a century concerning the private language arguments, the nature of thought and imagination, consciousness, and the self, settling them explicitly or implicitly in the new exegesis. All references to Wittgenstein’s text have been adjusted to the revised fourth edition, although page references to the first and second editions have been retained in parentheses.

These revisions bring the book up to the high standard of the extensively revised editions of Wittgenstein: Understanding and Meaning (Blackwell 2005) and Wittgenstein: Rules, Grammar and Necessity (Wiley Blackwell, 2009). They ensure that this survey of Investigations §§243-427 will remain the essential reference work on Wittgenstein’s masterpiece for the foreseeable future.