Wittgenstein's: Philosophical Investigations an Introduction (Cambridge Introductions to Key Philosophical Texts)

This really is the very best and most accessible introduction to the Philosophical Investigations! It clearly takes the reader through the themes of the work - outlining the major contemporary perspectives as it does - yet never patronising the new reader. This should be your first item of secondary literature ( possibly followed by the Routledge Guide ).

All good

David Stern understands the Philosophical Investigations much better than I do. I wish I had read this book a long time ago.Stern has done his homework in ferreting out the different voices to be heard in the Investigations. Such a "literary" perspective is taken often for philosophers such as Nietzsche and Kierkegaard, but rarely, if ever, for Wittgenstein. Stern shows that "reading Wittgenstein" is an essential dimension in understanding his subtle views on language and mind.His recommendation is to recognize 3 voices. The usual reading recognizes two -- the voices of Wittgenstein and an "interlocutor". Stern identifies a third voice, while also renaming the first the "narrator" rather than "Wittgenstein". The third voice, a "commentator", discounts or even makes fun of the very idea of taking any definitive "philosophical" position on the question at hand, whether the traditional philosophical position or the anti-philosophical or ordinary language position (typically taken to be the voice of Wittgenstein himself).This third voice enables Wittgenstein to escape dogmatic interpretations of "rules" and "practices" in his later philosophy of language. He recognizes that the rules of language are not guarantees of linguistic objectivity in any deep sense. Rather, they are intrinsic to a "form of life" through which languages are used to practical ends of communication and behavior. Any description of our linguistic practices, even Wittgenstein's own, is no more than partially true, just another way of characterizing the practices making up our language games. This step back is characteristic of the ancient skeptics, known as Pyrronhists, who were expert at such subtle argument. Stern explains how Wittgenstein's long-noticed skepticism about any foundations for language is clarified by the role played by this third voice of the Investigation's "commentator."I think it's important to consider that all three of the voices Stern identifies are Wittgenstein's own voices, in a kind of interminable three-way conversation, not only failing to reach a resolution to philosophical problems, but losing the ground to stand on in trying to resolve them in the first place. Wittgenstein follows the paths that philosophers follow, taking them through an internal dialogue led by the temptations to theorize, until, in that third voice, he recognizes the futility of the lines of thinking he has followed. He doesn't disown those lines of thought as those of others -- after all, these are the temptations of philosophy itself, and we are all seduced by them.Stern formulates his general point in numerous ways.. One that I found particularly clear appears on page 170, during his discussion of rule following:". . . it would be closer to the truth to approach [Wittgenstein] as a quietist who sees that any attempt to explicitly articulate quietism will lead to dogmatism of one kind or another, and that therefore the best way to advocate quietism is to write a genuinely conflicted dialogue in which non-Pyrrhonian participants play the leading roles."Any attempt at non-Pyrrhonian, positive philosophical theories runs up against the limits of theorizing itself.Maybe it comes down to something like this. All there really is is our speaking, acting, judging, deciding, . . . -- all of our living ("the human form of life"). And there is no theory of it, no account of it from the outside that gets it all right. It's as if we were trying to make a perfectly accurate map of the world. If it were perfectly accurate, it would just be the world itself, not something "about" or "of" it.

I have had this book for a number of years, scanned it numerous times, used parts of it, but did not really begin to appreciate it until now. Continuing my reading in the huge secondary literature on Wittgenstein and evolving new views of what language is and does (Language and the Ineffable: A Developmental Perspective and Its Applications) seems to have led me to a point where Stern's book is clear, easily accessible, a real page-turner; it reads like a novel. Stern has a staggeringly deep, scholarly as well as human understanding of Wittgenstein that is wonderfully balanced. I cannot say enogh good things about this superb book -- but it is mainly for those deeply interested in, and curious about, Wittgenstein's work. I found that reading Lee Braver's fine two recent books, Groundless Grounds: A Study of Wittgenstein and Heidegger and A Thing of This World: A History of Continental Anti-Realism (Topics in Historical Philosophy), made Stern's work all the more accessible. When you are ready for it, go read this gem!