Wittgenstein’s use of the word ‘phenomenology’ to describe his own work in Philosophical Remarks and The Big Typescript has occasioned much puzzlement and confusion. This paper seeks to shed light on what Wittgenstein meant by the word through a close analysis of key passages in those two works. I argue against both the view of Nicholas Gier that Wittgenstein held ‘grammatical’ phenomenological remarks to be synthetic a priori and that expressed by Moritz Schlick that Wittgenstein held grammar to be tautological. (...) I also take issue with the claim by Merrill and Jaakko Hintikka that Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus ought to be regarded as a work of phenomenology. Wittgenstein’s adoption of a variant of Husserlian phenomenology, I argue, lasted no more than a few months, from February to October 1929, during which he conceived of phenomenology as something that sought to establish what one might call ‘analytic a posteriori’ truths through something like the Husserlian method of ‘bracketing’. By the end of 1929, I claim, he had abandoned that in favour of the view expressed in the slogan ‘phenomenology is grammar’, where ‘grammar’ is not confined to the tautological, but is rather intimately linked to Wittgenstein’s notion of ‘the understanding that consists in seeing connections’. (shrink)

Philosophical Investigations, Volume 44, Issue 4, Page 372-402, October 2021.

"Certainty" occupies an important place in Wittgenstein’s epistemology: it does not belong to the category of knowledge but constitutes its foundation. In his view, knowledge boils down to language games, and language games are based on indubitable certainties. According to Wittgenstein, scepticism is meaningless, and if there is no certainty, then even doubt would be meaningless. Wittgesntein maintains that [relative] doubt and knowledge are epistemic categories, whereas absolute doubt and certainty are non-epistemic categories. Epistemic categories are meaningful and when expressed (...) by means of statements could be either true or false. In contrast, non-epistemic categories are meaningless and when expressed by means of statements the properties of truth and falsehood do not apply to them. The aim of the present paper is two fold: 1- Providing an explanation of the status of certainty in comparison to categories such as doubt and knowledge in Wittgenstein’s thought; 2- Providing a critical assessment of Wittgenstein's approach to certainty through the prism of critical rationalism. The main arguments of the paper are as follows: 1. Although Wittgenstein considers certainty to be meaningless and therefore not on a par with epistemological categories, he regards it as an objective concept that functions as the foundation upon which all human knowledge is based; 2. Wittgenstein's efforts to show the objectivity of certainty have not been entirely successful, partly due to his reliance on a defective notion of ‘objectivity’ and partly as a result of the prominence he assigns to the category of ‘meaning’ at the expense of the category of ‘truth’. (shrink)