The Cambridge companion to Wittgenstein

the long version

Each volume of this series of companions to major philosophers contains specially commissioned essays by an international team of scholars, together with a substantial bibliography, and will serve as a reference work for students and non-specialists. One aim of the series is to dispel the intimidation such readers often feel when faced with the work of a difficult and challenging thinker. Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) is one of the most important, influential, and often-cited philosophers of the twentieth century, yet he remains one of its most elusive and least accessible. The essays in this volume address central themes in Wittgenstein's writings on the philosophy of mind, language, logic, and mathematics. They chart the development of his work and clarify the connections between its different stages. The authors illuminate the character of the whole body of work by keeping a tight focus on some key topics: the style of the philosophy, the conception of grammar contained in it, rule-following, convention, logical necessity, the self, and what Wittgenstein called in a famous phrase, "forms of life." An important final essay offers a fundamental reassessment of the status of the many posthumously published texts. New readers will find this the most convenient and accessible guide to Wittgenstein currently available. Advanced students and specialists will find a conspectus of recent developments in the interpretation of Wittgenstein.