(Over)Interpreting Wittgenstein

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-x

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2. Introduction

   1. Introduction

      • Anat Biletzki

      Pages 1-10

3. On Interpretation

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 11-11

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   2. Interpretation and Overinterpretation

      • Anat Biletzki

      Pages 13-28

4. The Standard Interpretations: Language and World

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 29-33

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   2. The First Station: Logico-Linguistic (Anti-)Metaphysics

      • Anat Biletzki

      Pages 35-46

   3. The Second Station: Sophisticated Metaphysics (And Meaning as Use)

      • Anat Biletzki

      Pages 47-58

   4. The Third Station: Reasonable Meta-Readings

      • Anat Biletzki

      Pages 59-79

   5. The Fourth Station: Taking Nonsense Seriously

      • Anat Biletzki

      Pages 81-93

   6. The Fifth Station: Over the Deep end, or the Ethical Reading

      • Anat Biletzki

      Pages 95-105

5. Off the Mainline: Non-Standard Issues

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 107-107

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   2. Mathematics

      • Anat Biletzki

      Pages 109-127

   3. Religion

      • Anat Biletzki

      Pages 129-144

   4. Social Science

      • Anat Biletzki

      Pages 145-161

6. Culture and Community of Interpretation

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 163-163

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   2. Going Continental

      • Anat Biletzki

      Pages 165-178

   3. Going Diverse

      • Anat Biletzki

      Pages 179-186

   4. Idolatry and Fashion

      • Anat Biletzki

      Pages 187-198

7. Back Matter

   Pages 199-251

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(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.

• Ludwig Wittgenstein
• interpret
• issue
• language
• metaphysics
• philosophy

"This is an impressive book: learned, judicious yet provocative, and very readable. It will interest not only Wittgenstein aficionados, but also a much wider readership. It provides a rapid and remarkably helpful orientation for readers who want to know more about Wittgenstein but have trouble navigating around the forbiddingly large and difficult literature. The survey of the extraordinary range of approaches is wide-ranging but well chosen, nearly always focussing on the most significant figures, but giving enough depth and detail of coverage to avoid the dangers that come with an overly schematic summary. Biletzki successfully steers between the Scylla of overly technical philosophical argumentation and the Charybdis of popular oversimplification."
(David G. Stern, Associate Professor, University of Iowa, Editor (with Hans Sluga), The Cambridge Companion to Wittgenstein)

• Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel

  Anat Biletzki

Policies and ethics