Wittgenstein at His Word

Wittgenstein's work is notoriously difficult to understand and, at least superficially, deals almost exclusively with obscure and technical problems in logic and the philosophy of language. He has been blamed for leading philosophers away from the problems of the real world. Wittgenstein, however, was certainly a man of the real world. He once asked rhetorically: 'What is the use of philosophy...if it does not improve your thinking about the important questions of everyday life?' From this and other remarks it is clear that his philosophical work was meant to have real, practical value. Wittgenstein at his Word explains how Wittgenstein's idea of the value of philosophy shaped his philosophical method and led him to talk and write about the abstruse questions he dealt with in most of his work. Unlike many books, it examines not only the Tractatus and Philosophical Investigations, but also Wittgenstein's work on epistemology, ethics, and religion: Showing for the first time the real connections between Wittgenstein the man and Wittgenstein the philosopher, Richter's book will change the way in which he is read in the twenty-first century.