Final Reflections on Wittgenstein and Other Topics

A concluding volume of essays offering P.M.S. Hacker's latest and archival reflections on Wittgenstein, completing a trilogy that documents decades of interpretation and defense of his philosophical thought. Peter Hacker is the leading authority on Wittgenstein, on whom he has written over a dozen books that have been very well received. The essays collected in this book represent the culmination of this decades-long endeavor to understand and give adequate description, interpretation, and defense of Wittgenstein's thought, as well as that of related thinkers. It is the concluding complement of Hacker's previous two volumes of essays: Wittgenstein: Connections and Controversies (2001) and Wittgenstein: Comparisons and Context (2013), which together form a trilogy of collected papers that represent his decades-long endeavor to understand and give adequate description and defense of the thought of the first philosopher of his age. The book brings together Hacker's most recent reflections on Wittgenstein's philosophy as well as some earlier essays worth preserving for historical reasons, since they involve information about personal relationships otherwise not easily retrievable by future chroniclers. It covers topics as diverse as those of how to read the Tractatus, certainty and possibility, other minds, metaphysics, psycho-physical parallelism, and G.H. von Wright's Varieties of Goodness.