Wittgenstein’s On Certainty: The Case of the Missing Propositions

Abstract

A word of explanation is necessary about the form of my chapter. It is written as the unbroken reflections of an individual on what he takes to be Wittgenstein’s main concern in On Certainty. The reflections go through many stages, but the outcome is meant to be the best overall reading of On Certainty that that individual thinks can be reached. That reading cannot be applied to every proposition Wittgenstein discussed in that work. But Wittgenstein said that the propositions he was interested in do not form a class, and that the same thing cannot be said of them all. The overall reading settled for, is meant to do justice to Wittgenstein’s major philosophical concerns.