 First edition | |
| Author | Ludwig Wittgenstein |
|---|---|
| Translator | Denis Paul andG. E. M. Anscombe |
| Language | German andEnglish |
| Subject | Ordinary Language Philosophy,Skepticism andCertainty |
| Publisher | Basil Blackwell |
Publication date | 1969 |
| Publication place | England |
| Media type | Book |
| Pages | 90 |
| ISBN | 0631120009 |
| OCLC | 799287983 |
| LC Class | 69-20428 |
On Certainty (German:Über Gewissheit,original spellingÜber Gewißheit) is aphilosophical book composed from notes written byLudwig Wittgenstein over four separate periods in the eighteen months before his death on 29 April 1951. He left his initial notes at the home ofElizabeth Anscombe, who linked them by theme with later passages in Wittgenstein's personal notebooks and (withG. H. von Wright), compiled them into a German/English parallel text book published in 1969. The translators were Denis Paul and Anscombe herself. (The editors also numbered and grouped the 676 passages; citations to the work are standardly given as OC1 through OC676 rather than by page number.)
The book's concerns are largelyepistemological, a recurrent theme being that there are some things which must be exempt from doubt in order for human practices to be possible, including the activity of raising doubts: "A doubt that doubted everything would not be a doubt" (OC450). The book takes as its starting point the 'here is one hand' argument made byG. E. Moore and examines the role of knowledge claims in human language, particularly of "certain ('gewisser') empirical propositions", what are now called Moorean propositions or Moorean certainties.
An important outcome is Wittgenstein's claim that all doubt is enmeshed in belief and therefore the most radical forms of doubt must be rejected since they form a contradiction within the system that expressed them: "If you tried to doubt everything you would not get as far as doubting anything. Thegame of doubting itselfpresupposes certainty" (OC115). Wittgenstein also sketched (then-)novel refutations ofphilosophical skepticism in various guises[1]: "If you are not certain of any fact, you cannot be certain of the meaning of your words either" (OC114); "If the true is what is grounded, then the ground is not true, not yet false" (OC205). Another recurrent motif (OC111,448,654), one that arguably unlocks the text for the lay reader, concerns the futility of endlessly re-checking an arithmetical calculation (OC77): what, precisely, is being re-checked? The calculation itself? Or, rather, the sanity, sobriety, and comprehension (say), of the re-checker? (See:Linguistic turn.) But (OC658): are not the sanity, sobriety, and comprehension of the re-checker presupposed by the very activity of, validly, checking and re-checking? "Giving grounds, however - justifying the evidence - comes to an end. But the end is not certain propositions' striking us immediately as true, i.e. it is not a kind of seeing on our part; it is ouracting which lies at the bottom of the language-game" (OC204).
The genesis ofOn Certainty was Wittgenstein's "long interest" in two famous papers by G. E. Moore, his 1939Proof of the External World and earlierDefence of Common Sense (1925).[2] Wittgenstein thought the latter was Moore's "best article", but despite that he did not think Moore's 'proof' ofexternal reality decisive. Apparently at the instigation of his close friendNorman Malcolm in mid-1949, Wittgenstein began to draft his response on loose sheets, probably while staying in Vienna in late 1949 and early 1950. He returned to the subject twice more before a fourth and final, highly energetic six week period immediately before his death, when more than half ofOn Certainty was written. By this time Wittgenstein was using notebooks, recording dates, and marking the topic off separately. Wittgenstein described this final, fertile period in his last letter to Norman Malcolm[3] dated 16 April 1951, thirteen days before his death from the cancer diagnosed in autumn 1949:
Nevertheless, on the same day he recorded (after OC532): "I do philosophy now like an old woman who is always mislaying something and having to look for it again: now her spectacles, now her keys." A week and a half earlier he had written a similar note before OC471: "Here there is still a big gap in my thinking. And I doubt whether it will be filled now."
In addition, Wittgenstein was inspired byJohn Henry Newman's study on the nature of belief in theGrammar of Assent. Oxford philosopherAnthony Kenny writes thatLudwig Wittgenstein's final notes on philosophy just before his death mention Newman and thatOn Certainty "covers many of the same topics as the Grammar of Assent, uses many of the same illustrations, and draws some of the same conclusions".[4]
The four parts ofOn Certainty are of fairly unequal length and only the last is systematically dated:
