On Certainty

Author: Ludwig Wittgenstein
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2002-02-01
Features: Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889—1951) was one of the most important philosophers in the 20th century Western philosophy. He was the person who had the most decisive influence on contemporary analytic philosophy after Russell. As early as the 1920s and 1930s, his early work Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921) had a significant inspirational effect on the emerging Vienna Circle. Since the mid-20th century, with the continuous publication of his posthumous works, Wittgenstein's philosophy has gained increasing attention, and many of his philosophical viewpoints have become central topics of heated discussion in the philosophical community. Today, no philosopher can discuss a philosophical issue without ignoring the views Wittgenstein holds on it. His philosophy has become an important part of contemporary philosophy. We could even say that without understanding Wittgenstein, one cannot understand contemporary philosophy, just as one cannot understand Greek philosophy without understanding Aristotle. On Certainty (1969) is Wittgenstein's critique of Moore's (G.E. Moore, 1873–1958) famous paper Proof of an External World (1939), in which Moore refuted skepticism. In this paper, to oppose skepticism, Moore proposed his own "proof" of the existence of external objects. He concluded that there are things outside the mind by raising his hands and saying "Here is one hand" and "Here is another hand." Moore knew that some philosophers would not be satisfied with this method of proof. They demanded logical proof for the premises "Here is one hand" and "Here is another hand." Moore admitted that he could not provide such a proof but still insisted that he could indeed know these propositions to be true. He believed that some truths are known by people but cannot be proven. He had also listed some propositions in an earlier paper Maintaining Common Sense (1925), saying he "knew them to be true," such as "I have a body," "There are others besides myself," and "The earth existed long before I was born," and so on. On Certainty is the result of Wittgenstein's in-depth exploration of the issues of knowledge and certainty in the last 18 months of his life. It is, in fact, a record of his philosophical thinking at that period, reading it as if it were an author's monologue. Each note simply records his thoughts on the date they were written, and the chronological order is not rearranged according to themes. Therefore, the same discussion topic is often repeated multiple times, and sometimes the arguments are inevitably contradictory. Readers often have to flip back and forth through hundreds of notes to clarify the author's views on a particular issue, requiring great patience to read this book. However, this effort is worthwhile. While reading, one occasionally discovers individual sentences that spark brilliant flashes of insight as ideas take shape, and the endless emergence of novel thoughts continuously expands and reshapes the reader's perspective, as if allowing them to wander with the author in new intellectual landscapes. This book is the crystallization of a great thinker's thoughts as he explores these difficult epistemological issues from a completely fresh perspective. Here, Wittgenstein powerfully criticizes the mistaken direction of epistemology, which has since Descartes pursued some kind of "absolute certainty." It can be said with certainty that On Certainty represents a significant advancement in the field of epistemology achieved by 20th-century philosophy.