A Beginner’s Guide to the Later Philosophy of Wittgenstein: Seventeen Lectures and Dialogues on the Philosophical Investigations

In this Beginner’s Guide, Peter Hacker introduces the later philosophy of Wittgenstein in a lively and engaging combination of lectures and dialogues that presupposes no philosophical knowledge. He examines such topics as the nature of language and linguistic meaning, the analysis of necessity and its roots in convention, the relation of thought and language, the nature of the mind and its relation to behaviour, self-consciousness, and knowledge of other minds. This unique form of introduction will capture the interest of all readers with an enquiring mind.

Wittgenstein is acknowledged as one of the towering intellectual figures of the twentieth-century, but he is often considered to be difficult to read, let alone to understand. In this Beginner’s Guide, Peter Hacker, a leading authority on the philosophy of the later Wittgenstein and author of a dozen books on the subject, introduces a selection of the leading ideas in Wittgenstein’s masterwork, the Philosophical Investigations. The Guide presupposes no philosophical knowledge, only curiosity and a willingness to shed prejudices. It presents a magisterial understanding of the Investigations in an accessible and witty form.

The approach is bold: the seventeen chapters alternate between authorial lecture and dialogue between the author and an imaginary interlocutor. It is both dialectical and didactic. The interlocutor challenges Wittgenstein’s ideas as presented by the lecturer, and his questions are answered, his qualms resolved, and his challenges rebutted. Innumerable objections are canvassed and patiently refuted or dissolved by comprehensive argument.

Nothing comparable to this exists in the literature on Wittgenstein. Wittgenstein’s revolutionary ideas are presented for the widest possible audience in all their profundity in a style that is both intellectually stimulating and entertaining.