The Cambridge Companion to Wittgenstein

Description

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) is one of the most important and influential philosophers in modern times, but he is also one of the least accessible. In this volume, leading experts chart the development of his work and clarify the connections between its different stages. The essays, which are both expository and original, address central themes in Wittgenstein's writing on a wide range of topics, particularly his thinking about the mind, language, logic, and mathematics. The contributors illuminate the character of the whole body of work by focusing on 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'. This revised edition includes a new introduction, five new essays - on Tractarian ethics, Wittgenstein's development, aspects, the mind, and time and history - and a fully updated comprehensive bibliography.

Hans Sluga is the William and Trudy Ausfahl Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of Gottlob Frege (1980), Heidegger's Crisis: Philosophy and Politics in Nazi Germany (1993), Wittgenstein (2011), and Politics in Search of the Common Good (Cambridge, 2014). David G. Stern is Professor of Philosophy and a Collegiate Fellow in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Iowa. His authored works include Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations: An Introduction (Cambridge, 2004) and he is also a co-editor of Wittgenstein: Lectures, Cambridge 1930-1933, from the Notes of G.E. Moore (Cambridge, 2016).

'The distinguished contributors take different interpretive approaches to Wittgenstein's work and cover a wide range of topics. Some essays stay within the standard range of topics, whereas others, e.g., Sluga's 'Time and History in Wittgenstein', look to extend the range.' Choice