In this book Saul Kripke brings his powerful philosophical intelligence to bear on Wittgenstein's analysis of the notion of following a rule.

Drawing on writers as diverse as Saul Kripke, Stanley Cavell, G. E. M. Anscombe, Jonathan Lear, and Bernard Williams, I offer an interpretation of Wittgenstein's key notion of a form of life that explains why Wittgenstein was so enigmatic about it. Then, I show how Hilary Putnam's criticism of Wittgenstein's philosophy of mathematics and Richard Rorty's support of (what he takes to be) Wittgenstein's legacy in the philosophy of mind both require mistaken assumptions about Wittgenstein's idea of a form of (...) life. Finally, I consider the extent to which the idea of a form of life is subject to Donald Davidson's critique of the idea of a conceptual scheme. (shrink)

Introduction It is by no means obvious that someone interested in politics and society needs to concern himself with philosophy; nor that, in particular, ...

James D Marshall; Wittgenstein on Rules: implications for authority and discipline in education, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 19, Issue 1, 30 May.

John Wilson; Concepts, Contestability and the Philosophy of Education, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 15, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 3–15, https://.

Philip Snelders; An Essentially Contesting Philosopher: a reply to John Wilson, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 15, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 17–22.

Ludwig Wittgenstein was born in Vienna in 1889 and died in Cambridge in 1951. He studied engineering, first in Berlin and then in Manchester, and he soon began to ask himself philosophical questions about the foundations of mathematics. What are numbers? What sort of truth does a mathematical equation possess? What is the force of proof in pure mathematics? In order to find the answers to such questions, he went to Cambridge in 1911 to work with Russell, who had just (...) produced in collaboration with Whitehead (1861-1947) Principia Mathematica (1910-1913), a monumental treatise which bases mathematics on logic. But on what is logic based? Wittgenstein's attempt to answer this question convinced Russell that he was a genius. During the 1914-8 war he served in the Austrian army and in spare moments continued the work on the foundations of logic which he had begun in 1912. His war-time journal, Notebook s 1914-16 (1961), reveals the development of his ideas more clearly that the final version, Tractatus Logico- Philosophicus, which he published in the early 1920s. (shrink)