Wittgenstein on Practice Back to the Rough Ground

This volume brings together twelve previously unpublished essays on the theme of Wittgenstein on practice and on the insight that careful attention to human or animal activity is essential for thinking about philosophical problems. While Wittgenstein’s thought frames the collection as a whole, each chapter aims first and foremost at rigorous philosophical argument directed at contemporary issues. In this sense, each contribution “drafts” Wittgenstein on practice either by following in his wake, or by critiquing some aspect of his thought, or both.

This book is essential reading for all scholars and researchers of Wittgenstein and of philosophical methods.

1: Introduction.- I: And End to Skimming.- 2: The (Hard) Practice of Reading: On the Use and Misuse of Wittgenstein for Literature.- II: Learning to Go on.- 3: ‘Following a Rule’ is a Practice.- 4: Kripke and Wittgenstein on Rule-Following: The Problem of Empty Philosophical Explanations.- 5: Wittgenstein, Meaning and Action.- 6: What is a Context?.- III: Counting Matters.- 7: The Bolshevik Menace of Anthropological Mathematics: Ramsey and Wittgenstein.- 8: Technik and Praxis in Later Wittgenstein.- 9: Mathematics and Aspect-Seeing.- 10: Entering a Practice of Mathematical Proof – On the Difficulty of Teaching Proofs.- IV: Agreeable Animals.- 11: Social Ontology, Evolution, and the Foundations of Practice Theory.- 12: Practices, Normativity, and the Natural History of Human Biological Niche Construction.- 13: Avoiding Tac-on Theories of Culture.

Kevin M. Cahill is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Bergen.