Wittgenstein's Private Language: Grammar, Nonsense, and Imagination in Philosophical Investigations, 243-315

by Stephen Mulhall

Stephen Mulhall presents a detailed critical commentary on sections 243-315 of Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations: the famous remarks on 'private language'. In so doing, he makes detailed use of Stanley Cavell's interpretations of these remarks; and relates disputes about how to interpret this aspect of Wittgenstein's later philosophy to a recent, highly influential controversy about how to interpret Wittgenstein's early text, the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, by drawing and testing out a distinction between resolute and substantial understandings of the related notions of grammar, nonsense and the imagination. The book is concerned throughout to elucidate Wittgenstein's philosophical method, and to establish the importance of the form or style of his writing to the proper application of this method.

Genres: Philosophy

160 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2006

Reviews

[Tully · Rating 5 out of 5]

indispensible for anyone engaged in a serious reading of PI. His use of Cavell's example of the "corsican brothers" (a test drive of what the other-minds skeptic supposes we lack) makes LW's sense of humanity, of what it means to share the intimacy of a world, vivid and clear. And check out the connection Mulhall makes (as an aside!) b/t the vision of language instruction opened up by PI and Rene Girard's work on mimetic desire---a new theory of evil, I think. Somebody should run with it.