Wittgenstein

WITTGENSTEIN WROTE cryptically, and to make sense
of his prose is always a challenge. One method of coping with
this problem that I have found useful is that of working out
my own way of handling a problem with which he was
dealing. Sometimes when I have come, largely on my own, to
see a way through his difficulty, I found I had a vantage point
from which for the first time I could make some clear sense of
various remarks of his that had baffled me. That is by no
means a fast route to understanding Wittgenstein. One may
sometimes make a half a dozen attempts before the pieces
begin to fall into place, and there are all too many of his
themes on which it has not yet worked for me at all. But with
luck and patience, often enough it is rewarding; and when it
is, I am confronted with the question whether to present the
conclusions I have reached as my own views, or as interpreta­
tions of Wittgenstein. In an earlier volume, Essays after Witt­
genstein ( Toronto, 1973), I followed the former course: I
presented what I had to say as philosophy, rather than as
Wittgenstein scholarship; but I confessed my belief that on
many points I either had a correct interpretation of Wittgen­
stein, or at least an interesting suggestion about how some of
his deliberations might be understood.

The studies in the present volume do, or do more of, what I
scarcely attempted in the earlier essays. They vary consider­
ably in this respect, but they gravitate towards the scholar's
task of focusing closely on particular passages and themes,
bringing out in some detail the difficulties there are in under­
standing them, projecting possible lines of interpretation,
and comparatively evaluating these in the light of whatever
textual evidence appears relevant.