WITTGENSTEIN, Ludwig, On Certainty, edited by G.E.M. Anscombe and G.H. von Wright, translated by Denis Paul and G.E.M. Anscombe (Basil Blackwell, Oxford), 1969 [first edition]

8vo; pp. vii, 90 [but paginated once only for each facing page]

A delightful copy of Wittgenstein’s ‘final’ work. The book is composed of notes gathered together by Anscombe, recording a very fertile and very late period of philosophizing on some of the most fundamental of all epistemological questions.

Around the time of his diagnosis with cancer Wittgenstein suddenly found energy to return to topics that had detained him long before. Specifically, he took up the questions of two of G.E. Moore’s papers (‘Proof of the External World’ and ‘Defence of Common Sense’), offering a profound meditation on the nature of certainty and doubt. So rich is the discussion here – and particularly the theme of the primacy of deed over word – that this work is now taken by some to form the major text of a ‘third’ Wittgenstein, i.e. post-Tractatus and post-Philosophical Investigations.

Very good condition: jacket very lightly worn to rear upper edge; a little dusted; internally fine.