(Over)Interpreting Wittgenstein [Paperback]

This book tells the story of Wittgenstein interpretation during the past eighty years. It provides different interpretations, chronologies, developments, and controversies. It aims to discover the motives and motivations behind the philosophical community's project of interpreting Wittgenstein. It will prove valuable to philosophers, scholars, interpreters, students, and specialists, in both analytic and continental philosophy.

(Over)Interpreting Wittgenstein will be read by philosophers investigating Wittgenstein and by scholars, interpreters, students, and specialists, in both analytic and continental philosophy. It will intrigue readers interested in issues of interpretation and cultural studies.
This book tells the story - as yet untold - of Wittgenstein interpretation during the past eighty years. It provides different interpretations, chronologies, developments, and controversies. It aims to discover the (socio-cultural rather than psychological) motives and motivations behind the philosophical community's project of interpreting Wittgenstein. As a cultural history of ideas, it traces the parallelism between Wittgenstein interpretation and the move from metaphysics, to language, to postmodernism effected in the twentieth century.Preface. Introduction. I: On Interpretation. 1. Interpretation and Overinterpretation. II: The Standard Interpretation. 2. The First Station: Logico-Linguistic (Anti-)Metaphysics. 3. The Second Station: Sophisticated Metaphysics (and Meaning as Use). 4. The Third Station: Reasonable Meta-Readings. 5. The Fourth Station: Taking Nonsense Seriously. 6. The Fifth Station: Over the Deep End, Or the Ethical Reading. III: Off the Mainline: Non-Standard Issues. 7. Mathematics. 8. Religion. 9. Social Science. IV: Social Science. 10. Going Continental. 11. Going Diverse. 12. Idolatry and Fashion. Notes. References. Index of Names. This is an impressive book: learned, judicious yet provocatl.