Abstract

Despite the title, this book is really an introduction to the study of the later philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein, and the significance of his way of philosophizing for problems in social and political thought. As the author points out, Wittgenstein was not a political theorist; he "did not write about society or history or revolution or alienation". The author, obviously conversant with the work and methodology of Wittgenstein, has written a work ad mentem magistri, not attempting to isolate specific doctrine but to indicate how a philosopher, convinced of the centrality of language in human life, would reflect on the problems of associative life. Language is seen, not as a system of labels, but as the carrier of human culture that both asserts the individuality and communality of men, and illuminates "the nature of innovation and continuity in human affairs." The author sees the later Wittgenstein as rejecting his earlier satisfaction with the Tractatus, being careful to point out that Wittgenstein did not question ethical aesthetic and religious values, as much as to claim that they could not be talked about in a philosophically meaningful way. Roughly, the second half of the book concerns itself with social and political implications, the quarrel between Socrates and Thrasymachus on the nature of justice being seen as paradigmatic of contemporary concerns about the objectivity of social values. The book is significant not because it develops a political philosophy, for it quite obviously does not; but because it suggests possibilities and indicates a developing respect in Wittgenstein for metaphysics and objectivity, and a desire to know and understand that objectivity by means of language analysis.—R.P.M.