On Certainty E-Book

Ludwig Wittgenstein

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 445

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

The German text, with a facing English translation by P. M. S. Hacker

Ludwig Wittgenstein's On Certainty collects the final notes of one of the twentieth century’s most influential thinkers, written during the last eighteen months of his life. These posthumously published fragments reflect on questions of knowledge, doubt, and belief. They offer a distinctive perspective on Wittgenstein's late philosophy, and contain many remarks which have greatly influenced epistemological debate in the ensuing decades.

This new translation by P. M. S. Hacker offers a clear and improved rendering of the original German, restoring features of the manuscripts that are essential for understanding the text. Presented in a facing-page German–English format, the edition is clear and readable for both students and scholars, includes a detailed introductory essay on the genesis of the text, and benefits from extensive textual notes that support deeper engagement with Wittgenstein’s arguments. The text also includes several appendices with new translations of select excerpts from other late Wittgenstein manuscripts with reflections on knowledge, belief, doubt, and certainty.

This definitive translation and edition of On Certainty enables readers to engage thoughtfully with Wittgenstein's final thoughts on the limits of doubt and the grounding of belief. Enhanced by Hacker's expertise, it is an invaluable resource for those studying epistemology, philosophy of language, or Wittgenstein's later work

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Cover

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

Acknowledgements

Editorial Preface to the New Edition and Translation of On Certainty

1. The previous editions and the New Edition

2. The translation

The Genesis of On Certainty

1. Wittgenstein’s last notebooks

2. Alternative publication plans

3. Anscombe’s edition

4. The New Edition

Abbreviations

Über Gewißheit

MS 172, 1–20

MS 174, 14v–40

MS 175, 1r–78v [komplett]

MS 176, 22r–46r

MS 176, 46v–51v

MS 176, 51v–80v

MS 177, 1r–11 [komplett]

On Certainty

MS 172, 1–20

MS 174, 14v–40

MS 175, 1r–78v [complete]

MS 176, 22r–46r

MS 176, 46v–51v

MS 176, 51v–80v

MS 177, 1r–11 [complete]

Notes to the New Edition of On Certainty

Anhang 1

MS 169, 71r–76r (= LW 2, 44(a)–46(f))

MS 169, Rückseite r (= LW 2, 49(a)–(e))

Appendix 1

MS 169, 71r–76r (= LW 2, 44(a)–46(f))

MS 169, back cover r (= LW 2, 49(a)–(e))

Anhang 2

MS 170, 4v–5r (= LW 2, 52(e)–53(c))

Appendix 2

MS 170, 4v–5r (= LW 2, 52(e)–53(c))

Anhang 3

MS 171, 7–14 (= LW 2, 57(e)–(g); 58(a)–(f); 59(a)–(b))

Appendix 3

MS 171, 7–14 (= LW 2, 57(e)–(g); 58(a)–(f); 59(a)–(b))

Anhang 4

MS 173, 31v–33r (= LW 2, 61(a)–(e))

MS 173, 38r–39r (= LW 2, 64(g)–65(c))

MS 173, 43v–45v (= LW 2, S. 68(c)–69(b))

MS 173, 89v–90r (= LW 2, 73(a)–(g))

MS 173, 99v–Rückseite (= LW 2, 79(f)–(h))

Appendix 4

MS 173, 31v–33r (= LW 2, 61(a)–(e))

MS 173, 38r–39r (= LW 2, 64(g)–65(c))

MS 173, 43v–45v (= LW 2, pp. 68(c)–69(b))

MS 173, 89v–90r (= LW 2, 73(a)–(g))

MS 173, 99v–Back Cover (= LW 2, 79(f)–(h))

Anhang 5

MS 174, 2v–3v (= LW 2, 81(f)–82(d))

MS 174, 6v–11v (= LW 2, 84(e)–89(e))

MS 174, 12v–13v (= LW 2, 88(f)–90(d))

Appendix 5

MS 174, 2v–3v (= LW 2, 81(f)–82(d))

MS 174, 6v–11v (= LW 2, 84 (e)–89 (e))

MS 174, 12v–13v (= LW2, 88(f)–90(d))

Appendix 6 Norman Malcolm’s Notes on Conversations with Wittgenstein in Autumn 1949

Register

Index

End User License Agreement

Guide

Cover Page

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

Acknowledgements

Editorial Preface to the New Edition and Translation of On Certainty

The Genesis of On Certainty

Abbreviations

Begin Reading

Notes to the New Edition of On Certainty

Anhang 1

Appendix 1

Anhang 2

Appendix 2

Anhang 3

Appendix 3

Anhang 4

Appendix 4

Anhang 5

Appendix 5

Appendix 6 Norman Malcolm’s Notes on Conversations with Wittgenstein in Autumn 1949

Register

Index

WILEY END USER LICENSE AGREEMENT

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ÜBER GEWIßHEITON CERTAINTY

LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN

The New Edition and Translation

Translated and Edited by

P. M. S. Hacker

This edition first published 2025© 2025 John Wiley & Sons Ltd

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Library of Congress Cataloging‐in‐Publication DataNames: Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 1889–1951 | Hacker, P. M. S. (Peter Michael Stephan) editor translator. | John Wiley & Sons, publisher.Title: Über Gewißheit : On certainty : the new translation / translated and edited by P.M.S. Hacker.Other titles: Über Gewißheit. German | On certainty. EnglishDescription: Hoboken, NJ : Wiley‐Blackwell, 2025. | Includes index.Identifiers: LCCN 2025021760 (print) | LCCN 2025021761 (ebook) | ISBN 9781394324620 cloth | ISBN 9781394324637 paperback | ISBN 9781394324651 adobe pdf | ISBN 9781394324644 epubSubjects: LCSH: CertaintyClassification: LCC B3376.W563 U313 2025 (print) | LCC B3376.W563 (ebook) | DDC 121/.63–dc23/eng/20250515LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2025021760LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2025021761

Cover Design: Wiley

Acknowledgements

This new edition and translation began its life as a joint project with Joachim Schulte in 2016. That project, as explained below in ‘The Genesis of On Certainty’, was discontinued as a result of a variety of factors beyond our control. The first drafts of the new translation begun in 2016 benefited greatly from comments and suggestions from Hanoch Ben‐Yami, Anthony Kenny and Gabriele Taylor. Extensive discussions with Joachim Schulte about the draft translation were invaluable. Since resuming the project alone in 2024, with Joachim Schulte’s consent, I have been much assisted by the advice and suggestions of Edward Kanterian, Anselm Müller and Swithin Thomas who generously read the whole translation and made innumerable improvements to it. Edward Kanterian also kindly checked the German texts for typographical errors. I am also much indebted to Hilla Wait, at the Bodleian Library, who made available to me photocopies of the relevant manuscripts from the Bergen electronic edition of Wittgenstein’s Nachlass. This made it very much easier for me to examine the variants in Wittgenstein’s last notes and to select those that seemed to me to be of philosophical interest. Lassi Jakola’s philological researches on the genesis of On Certainty were indispensable, as were his painstaking corrections to my successive drafts of the essay on this topic in this volume.

I should also like to thank my dear friends Hans Oberdiek and Claire Parker for the support they have given me in the course of my work on this new edition and translation. I am grateful to my commissioning editor Will Croft for his encouragement and patience, and to my copy‐editor, Nigel Hope, whose contribution to this volume has been far beyond anything that words of praise can capture.

Editorial Preface to the New Edition and Translation of On Certainty

1. The previous editions and the New Edition

On Certainty was published in 1969 by Basil Blackwell, edited by G. E. M. Anscombe and G. H. von Wright. The text was extracted selectively from Wittgenstein’s last notebooks, written between late 1949, after his return from his visit to the USA, and 27 April 1951, two days before his death. The English preface was written by Anscombe, with small corrections made by von Wright. The first edition was published without an index. The second edition was published in 1974, with corrections and an index.

The translation of these previous editions was made by Denis Paul1 with corrections by Anscombe. How extensive Anscombe’s corrections were is unclear. The translation contains numerous infelicities. Half a century later, it is evident that a new translation and edition are desirable. The first two editions tampered with the text of the manuscripts in various ways. Wittgenstein inserted forty‐four horizontal lines of four different kinds in his text. Most (twenty‐six) are crossed by a small vertical stroke in the centre, some are plain horizontals, one is a horizontal with a double small vertical, and one is a double horizontal. Whether these differences are of any moment is wholly unclear. The function of these horizontals is not clear either. Sometimes they appear to indicate a separation of different themes. More often, it is unclear what function they were meant to fulfil. They may simply indicate ‘enough for today’. Anscombe removed many of these lines from the text, and added separating lines of her own to indicate new MSS. This has been avoided in the present edition. All separating lines in this edition are in the original MSS, but I have not preserved their differentiation into four types. The commencement of a new MS source in the current edition is indicated by the MS number and pages printed in bold.

Because Anscombe was convinced that Wittgenstein’s last manuscripts included a self‐contained monograph on certainty, she omitted any passages that did not meet her criteria for inclusion. Since Wittgenstein’s concurrent preoccupation during this period with the Inner and the Outer (the mental and its behavioural manifestation) did not fit her vision of a treatise on certainty, she screened out all discussions of knowledge, belief, certainty and doubt regarding the mental attributes of others, even when they were continuous with more general reflections on certainty. This seems most distorting in the elimination of the remarks in MS 176, 46v–51v, which are, in origin, continuous with MS 176, 22r–46r (= OC §426–§523), although, to be fair to Anscombe, they were separated by horizontal lines from §523 and §524. Nevertheless, it seemed to me appropriate to restore them to the text in the new edition and they have been numbered §523(a)–§523(s). They were written concurrently with the remarks that preceded them and with those that succeeded them in the manuscript, and restoring them to their original locus and order seemed to me more illuminating than excising them. The numerous other remarks on knowledge, belief, certainty and doubt that were screened out by Anscombe have been allocated to Appendices 1–5. The rationale for their presentation is twofold. First, it is important for scholars to be able to trace the evolution of Wittgenstein’s thoughts during the last phase of his life on these important matters. Secondly, if On Certainty is used as a teaching text on Wittgenstein’s later views on epistemological and logico‐epistemological themes, it is desirable that teachers be able to refer students to his remarks on these topics in his contemporaneous writings on the Inner and the Outer. Appendix 6 consists of Norman Malcolm’s brief notes on his conversations with Wittgenstein in Ithaca in the autumn of 1949 on Moore’s ‘Proof of an External World’ and his ‘Defence of Common Sense’. This too, is relevant for the understanding of Wittgenstein’s text in as much as the conversations with Malcolm stimulated Wittgenstein’s final reflections on these and related themes after his return from the USA (see ‘The Genesis of On Certainty’ below).

It was Wittgenstein’s custom to inscribe general cultural, and sometimes personal, reflections in his MSS, marking them out by flanking them with short vertical lines. Anscombe removed most of these remarks. They have all been restored, leaving it to readers to reflect on whether their occurrence at any particular point is purely coincidental or whether the remark is associatively linked with its antecedent. They have been given the number of their antecedent together with a lower‐case bracketed letter. (For the most part, they have been extracted and printed in Vermischte Bemerkungen, edited by G. H. von Wright (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 2nd edn 1994).)

One form of editorial interference has been allowed in this edition. Wittgenstein, often scribbling hastily and engaged in intense dialogue with himself, frequently did not bother to complete lines, leaving instead either an ‘etc.’ or a sequence of dots (viz… .). It seemed warranted to insert the missing words or sentence in these cases in order to clarify and disambiguate. This editorial intervention is always placed between curly brackets (viz. { and }). Another use of the same notational device is to bracket the insertion of the word ‘kind of’ in phrases such as ‘That is: If I make certain false statements, …’ (gewisse falsche Aussagen mache) (§81) and ‘The truth of certain empirical propositions …’ (gewisser Erfahrungssätze) (§83) to read ‘That is: if I make certain {kinds of} false statements’, and ‘The truth of certain {kinds of} empirical propositions’ in order to make it clear that in such contexts the word ‘certain’ signifies a particular sort or kind of item, not something that is certain as opposed to doubtful.

Wittgenstein often scribbled two or three variants of a given word, phrase or sentence. Where these are philosophically relevant, they have been incorporated in the translated text, using one of Wittgenstein’s devices, namely double slashes (// … //). So, for example, one variant on the idea that he is certain that he had never been to the moon is that he had never been to the north pole. The decision as to relevance is an editorial judgement. Since this is not a critical edition, no attempt has been made to incorporate all variants (which can be seen in the Bergen electronic edition of the Nachlass).

Wittgenstein’s German punctuation and underlining is erratic and often eccentric. After several failed attempts to emulate it in English, it seemed preferable to abandon such futile efforts and to opt for perspicuous contemporary English punctuation and more circumspect italicization.

2. The translation

Wittgenstein was not particularly interested in exploring the differences between Gewißheit and Sicherheit, between gewiß and sicher, but used them as an Austrian native speaker of German would find natural. The two earlier editions did not attempt to cleave to his usage. The New Edition endeavours to mirror his usage, since the two expressions are not equivalent, and the differences are often important.2

As always in the translation of German texts, the expression ‘Satz’ is problematic and choices have to be made between ‘sentence’ and ‘proposition’ according to the exigencies of the argument. The expressions ‘Grund’ and ‘Gründe’ have been translated by ‘reason’ and ‘reasons’, rather than the more laboured ‘ground’ and ‘grounds’ (e.g. §18, 78, 90–92). This translation also maintains the nexus with reasoning and rationality. The German practice of referring to or listing concepts by inserting words in quotation marks, for example ‘den Begriffen “glauben”, “vermuten”, “zweifeln”, “überzeugt sein”’ (§21) is inappropriate in English and wherever possible such phrases are translated by disquotation, namely ‘the concepts of believing, surmising, doubting and being convinced’. The German definite article is not always to be translated by the corresponding English one. For example, Wittgenstein often speaks of ‘der Andre’ (e.g. §18). This has been translated as ‘some other person’ rather than ‘the other person’.

Wittgenstein is liberal with his use of ‘ z. B.’, ‘D. h.’, ‘u. s. w.’ and ‘etc.’. This is ugly in print, and an effort has been made to reduce the number of these abbreviations in the English text by more frequent use of ‘for example’, ‘that is’, and ‘and so forth’.

Double quotation marks have been used for quoted sentences, and single quotation marks for quotations within quotations. Single quotation marks have also been employed to mention as opposed to using an expression, and for scare quotes. When in doubt, clarity has overridden consistency.

The passages to which the notes relate are indicated by an asterisk in the German text and translation.

Notes

1

Denis Eric Paul (1925–2006) was an undergraduate at New College, Oxford from 1948 to 1951, probably taught by Isaiah Berlin (see Berlin,

Enlightening Letters 1946–60

, ed. Henry Hardy (London: Penguin, 2011), p. 353). He had already worked with Anscombe on her translation of the

Investigations

in 1951.

2

Those who are interested in pursuing the matter further are advised to read Alan R. White,

The Nature of Knowledge

(Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 1982), pp. 66–72, 75–8, his article ‘Certainty',

Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society

, supplementary volume 46 (1972), pp. 1–18, and, in his wake, P. M. S. Hacker, ‘Certainty and Possibility', in Christian Kietzmann (ed.),

Teleological Structures in Human Life: Essays in Honour of Anselm W. Müller

(New York: Routledge, 2022), chapter 10.

Notes

1

To be sure, Wittgenstein had engaged with Moore's April 1939 address to the Cambridge Moral Science Club entitled ‘Certainty', in which Moore had defended the view that sense‐experience statements, such as ‘I am in pain', are certain, and that they are certain in the same sense as some material‐thing statements. To this Wittgenstein objected vehemently, advancing the view that finds its mature expression in the

Investigations

' non‐cognitive account of avowals (PI §246; cf. PPF §315). This, however, is

not

the concern of his reflections in

On Certainty

, which has altogether different and novel issues in its sights.

2

According to Lassi Jakola, von Wright announced this in the very first, Swedish publication of his memorial essay ‘Ludwig Wittgenstein: A Biographical Sketch', published in

Ajatus

18 (1954), 5–23.

3

The title von Wright chose had the merit of not begging any questions about the thematic unity or diversity of the contents.

4

All the following information about the aetiology of the text is due to the philological research of Lassi Jakola, ‘G. H. von Wright's Unpublished Edition of Wittgenstein's “Late Writings”: Editor's Preface and Other Materials, ca. 1967–8',

Nordic Wittgenstein Review

10 (pp. 51–95), as well as an unpublished ‘Draft for an Editorial History for Wittgenstein's Last Writings'.

5

In a letter to Rhees, dated 22 January 1950, written from Vienna, he writes, “I have been reading again parts of Goethe's ‘Farbenlehre' which attracts and repels me. It's certainly philosophically interesting and I've been thinking about it and even written down some weak remarks.” Six days earlier, he had written to Malcolm, “I am not writing at all because my thoughts never sufficiently crystallize.” This suggests that the four pages on colour were written between 17 and 22 January 1950.

6

MS 176, 1–22r is concerned with colour and is printed in

Remarks on Colour

.

7

Preface to the 1969 edition of OC (p. vie).

8

I am most grateful to Lassi Jakola not only for his remarkable philological research on Wittgenstein's last writings and the history of their publication, but also for his invaluable comments and corrections to an earlier draft of this preface.

Abbreviations

BB

The Blue and Brown Books

(Oxford: Blackwell, 1958)

BT

The Big Typescript

, ed. and tr. C. G. Luckhardt and M. A. E. Aue (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005)

LSD

‘The Language of Sense‐Data and Private Experience’, in James Klagge and Alfred Normann (eds.),

Ludwig Wittgenstein: Philosophical Occasions 1912–1951

(Indianapolis and Cambridge: Hackett, 1993), pp. 290–367 (page reference to original pagination in

Philosophical Investigations

, vol. 7, 1984)

LW

Last Writings on the Philosophy of Psychology

, vol. 2, ed. G. H. von Wright and Heikki Nyman (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992)

MS/MSS 

manuscript/s

NB

Notebooks 1914–16

, ed. G. H von Wright and G. E. M. Anscombe, 2nd edn (Oxford: Blackwell, 1979)

OC

On Certainty

PI

Philosophical Investigations

, ed. P. M. S. Hacker and Joachim Schulte, tr. G. E. M. Anscombe, P. M. S. Hacker and Joachim Schulte, rev. 4th edn (Oxford: Wiley‐Blackwell, 2009)

PPF

Philosophy of Psychology – A Fragment

(previously known as

Philosophical Investigations

, Part II), published in

Philosophical Investigations

, rev. 4th edn, ed. P. M. S. Hacker and Joachim Schulte, tr. G. E. M. Anscombe, P. M. S. Hacker and Joachim Schulte (Oxford: Wiley‐Blackwell, 2009)

PR

Philosophical Remarks

, ed. Rush Rhees (Oxford: Blackwell, 1975)

RFM

Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics

, ed. G. H. von Wright, Rush Rhees and G. E. M. Anscombe, rev. edn (Oxford: Blackwell, 1978)

TLP

Tractatus Logico‐Philosophicus

, tr. D. F. Pears and B. F. McGuinness (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1961)

TS/TSS

typescript/typescripts

ÜG

Über Gewißheit