Wittgenstein: Understanding and Meaning, Second, Extensively Revised Edition by P.M.S. Hacker

Reviews / Votes

"A commentary on the Investigations is a colossal undertaking. Baker and Hacker skillfully conduct the reader through the tangles of controversy that surround the topics of sense and meaning. They have an admirable grasp of the whole corpus of Wittgenstein's writings, and they constantly display the sharp contrasts between Wittgenstein's thought and the currently influential 'scientific' semantics." Norman Malcolm, Times Literary Supplement "[Baker and Hacker] exhibit persuasively and lucidly the order, not to say structure, underlying the apparently haphazard assemblage of paragraphs constituting the printed text of the Investigations. Their detailed knowledge of the corpus of Wittgenstein's writings, published and unpublished, allows them to cast light on otherwise obscure remarks in the Investigations from a variety of additional perspectives. This procedure frequently explains the purpose of the remarks in question, the identity of the thinker or thesis against which they are directed, and so on." Review of Metaphysics "[The authors'] detailed textual comments are placed within a carefully thought out view of the structure of the whole. It thus provides a model for understanding Wittgenstein." Philosophical Studies "Wittgenstein: Meaning and Understanding is a sort of compendium which I wouldn't want to do without. As a matter of fact, I cannot do without it, both in the sense that I need it to get all kinds of historical or philological information, as well as philosophical stimulation, and in the sense that I have become addicted to the book's magisterial way of bringing out and dealing with the difficulties of Wittgenstein's masterpiece." Joachim Schulte, University of Bielefeld